I’ve always thought of myself as most likely a Earn to give type person, but I’m looking at starting college in the next year or so and I realized that I’m not a bad candidate for some really important sounding colleges. (I.E. I imagine Oxford is a long shot, but it’s not unimaginable.)
EA seems to be talent constrained in a lot of ways, so if I get into a good college. Should I go direct work? And if so, what degree is most applicable?
Of note: I’m not turned off by the relative hardness of the degree to earn. So stick me in whatever hellish degree program turns out the best people for the job!
Previous experience:
2 years college with bad grades (I didn’t like it)
6 years naval nuclear experience as a reactor operator.
James is asking a good question below, but I’m going to dive into a hot take :)
If you’re about to start university, I’m wondering if you might be narrowing down too early. My normal advice for someone entering college for figuring out their career would be something like:
See if you can ‘try out’ all of these paths while there, and right after.
You can consider all the following ways to try out potential paths, which also give you useful career capital:
Doing 1-2 internships.
Doing a research project as part of your studies or during the summer.
Going to lots of talks from people in different areas.
Getting involved in relevant student societies (e.g. student newspaper for the media)
Doing side projects & self-study in free time (e.g. building a website, learning to program)
Near the end, you can apply to jobs in several categories as well as graduate school, and see where you get the best offers.
And even after college, you can probably then try something and switch again if it’s not working.
So, going in, you don’t need to have very definite plans. Besides being able to explore several paths within earning to give, I’d also encourage you to consider exploring some outside. As a starting point, some broad categories we often cover are: government and policy options, working at social impact organisations in your top cause areas (not just EA orgs), and graduate study (potentially leading into working at research organisations or as a researcher). Try to generate at least a couple of ideas within each of these.
Which subject should you study? A big factor should be personal fit – one factor there would be whether you’ll be able to get good grades in moderate time (since you can use that time to do the steps above and also to socialise—and many meet their lifetime friends and partner at university). Besides that, you could consider which subject will (i) be most helpful to the longer-term options you’re interested in and (ii) most keep your options open. If in doubt, applied quantitative subjects (e.g. economics and statistics) often do well on this analysis.
I agree with you whole heartedly! I definitely feel the pressure to narrow down and it’s hard to keep my “eye on the prize” so to speak.
I try to remind myself that I’m here to make “this” better, and it doesn’t matter how I do it. So I’ve been trying to diversify my overall look at the world.
I like the list of ideas, I hadn’t considered doing an internship or research project, it’s not something I’m very familiar with, so I’ll have to put a little more thought into it!
I definitely need to sit down and read everything 80K hours has put out, it’s pretty good advice (career and life!)
I’m kind of overwhelmed by the number of options I have, so I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it! Luckily for me I’ve got another year between now and when I have to start really making choices. A little time is better than none!
You seem to assume that if (and only if) you do well in a good college, then you will almost certainly be good at direct work. I’m not convinced that there necessarily is that much of a correlation because these things are so very different. I myself did quite badly in a mediocre university but people seem to think that I have been doing well working as a researcher at an EA organization.
Hey Will! Would you be able to say anything more about why you didn’t like the 2 years of college that you did? What sort of college degrees are you looking into right now? :)
I was one of those kids who was told they were smart and didn’t have to do much in high-school. As a result I got hit pretty hard in the face by the requirement of actually trying in college. Combine this with the fact that I didn’t do well away from a support network and you have a pretty bad downward spiral. I eventually recovered, but boy was it a rough couple of years!
Right now I’m looking at either technical work or more general purpose studying:
The difference between those is a kind of along the Engineering/computer science or Economics/Business divide.
I’m currently thinking that because I already have a background in engineering type work that maybe getting an economics/buisness degree to round myself out would be a good choice.
I’ll throw myself out there!
I’ve always thought of myself as most likely a Earn to give type person, but I’m looking at starting college in the next year or so and I realized that I’m not a bad candidate for some really important sounding colleges. (I.E. I imagine Oxford is a long shot, but it’s not unimaginable.)
EA seems to be talent constrained in a lot of ways, so if I get into a good college. Should I go direct work? And if so, what degree is most applicable?
Of note: I’m not turned off by the relative hardness of the degree to earn. So stick me in whatever hellish degree program turns out the best people for the job!
Previous experience:
2 years college with bad grades (I didn’t like it)
6 years naval nuclear experience as a reactor operator.
Hi Will,
James is asking a good question below, but I’m going to dive into a hot take :)
If you’re about to start university, I’m wondering if you might be narrowing down too early. My normal advice for someone entering college for figuring out their career would be something like:
Draw up a long list of potential longer-term options.
See if you can ‘try out’ all of these paths while there, and right after.
You can consider all the following ways to try out potential paths, which also give you useful career capital:
Doing 1-2 internships.
Doing a research project as part of your studies or during the summer.
Going to lots of talks from people in different areas.
Getting involved in relevant student societies (e.g. student newspaper for the media)
Doing side projects & self-study in free time (e.g. building a website, learning to program)
Near the end, you can apply to jobs in several categories as well as graduate school, and see where you get the best offers.
And even after college, you can probably then try something and switch again if it’s not working.
So, going in, you don’t need to have very definite plans. Besides being able to explore several paths within earning to give, I’d also encourage you to consider exploring some outside. As a starting point, some broad categories we often cover are: government and policy options, working at social impact organisations in your top cause areas (not just EA orgs), and graduate study (potentially leading into working at research organisations or as a researcher). Try to generate at least a couple of ideas within each of these.
Which subject should you study? A big factor should be personal fit – one factor there would be whether you’ll be able to get good grades in moderate time (since you can use that time to do the steps above and also to socialise—and many meet their lifetime friends and partner at university). Besides that, you could consider which subject will (i) be most helpful to the longer-term options you’re interested in and (ii) most keep your options open. If in doubt, applied quantitative subjects (e.g. economics and statistics) often do well on this analysis.
There’s a bunch more rough thoughts here.
I agree with you whole heartedly! I definitely feel the pressure to narrow down and it’s hard to keep my “eye on the prize” so to speak.
I try to remind myself that I’m here to make “this” better, and it doesn’t matter how I do it. So I’ve been trying to diversify my overall look at the world.
I like the list of ideas, I hadn’t considered doing an internship or research project, it’s not something I’m very familiar with, so I’ll have to put a little more thought into it!
I definitely need to sit down and read everything 80K hours has put out, it’s pretty good advice (career and life!)
I’m kind of overwhelmed by the number of options I have, so I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it! Luckily for me I’ve got another year between now and when I have to start really making choices. A little time is better than none!
You seem to assume that if (and only if) you do well in a good college, then you will almost certainly be good at direct work. I’m not convinced that there necessarily is that much of a correlation because these things are so very different. I myself did quite badly in a mediocre university but people seem to think that I have been doing well working as a researcher at an EA organization.
Hey Will! Would you be able to say anything more about why you didn’t like the 2 years of college that you did? What sort of college degrees are you looking into right now? :)
I was one of those kids who was told they were smart and didn’t have to do much in high-school. As a result I got hit pretty hard in the face by the requirement of actually trying in college. Combine this with the fact that I didn’t do well away from a support network and you have a pretty bad downward spiral. I eventually recovered, but boy was it a rough couple of years!
Right now I’m looking at either technical work or more general purpose studying:
The difference between those is a kind of along the Engineering/computer science or Economics/Business divide.
I’m currently thinking that because I already have a background in engineering type work that maybe getting an economics/buisness degree to round myself out would be a good choice.