Epistemic status: writing fast and loose, but based on thoughts I’ve mulled over for a while given personal experience/struggles and discussions with other people. Thus, easy to misinterpret what I’m saying. Take with salt.
On the topic of educational choice, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having legible hard skills such as language or, perhaps more importantly, quantitative skills. Perhaps the worst mistake I made in college was choosing to double major in both international studies and public policy, rather than adding a second major in econ or computer science. To my freshman self, this seemed to make sense: “I really want to do international security and like public policy, so this should demonstrate my enthusiasm and improve my policy-analysis skills.”
I’m somewhat skeptical that the second belief panned out (relative to majoring in econ), but the first clearly seems to have been misguided. Understanding what I do now about the application process, including how shallow/ineffective the process is at discerning capabilities and interest, how people will just exaggerate/BS their way into positions (through claims in their interviews and cover letters), that some positions will not consider people without STEM backgrounds (even when the skills can sometimes be learned prior to the job), AND how much of the process in some places relies on connections or prestige, it’s really clear that having legible hard skills is crucial. In contrast, you probably get rapidly-diminishing marginal returns with soft science degrees.
Epistemic status: writing fast and loose, but based on thoughts I’ve mulled over for a while given personal experience/struggles and discussions with other people. Thus, easy to misinterpret what I’m saying. Take with salt.
On the topic of educational choice, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having legible hard skills such as language or, perhaps more importantly, quantitative skills. Perhaps the worst mistake I made in college was choosing to double major in both international studies and public policy, rather than adding a second major in econ or computer science. To my freshman self, this seemed to make sense: “I really want to do international security and like public policy, so this should demonstrate my enthusiasm and improve my policy-analysis skills.”
I’m somewhat skeptical that the second belief panned out (relative to majoring in econ), but the first clearly seems to have been misguided. Understanding what I do now about the application process, including how shallow/ineffective the process is at discerning capabilities and interest, how people will just exaggerate/BS their way into positions (through claims in their interviews and cover letters), that some positions will not consider people without STEM backgrounds (even when the skills can sometimes be learned prior to the job), AND how much of the process in some places relies on connections or prestige, it’s really clear that having legible hard skills is crucial. In contrast, you probably get rapidly-diminishing marginal returns with soft science degrees.