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If I were to ask a question on what I would do with my biology major, would that be considered opinion based, and if so would there be anyway to hone that question down to allow it to be answered? I could not think of an objective way to state it.

As some background, I am a B.S in biology from a lower tier state school. I flunked out of computer science, and switched over to biology. I enjoyed a genomics course I took at my school and was considering grad school. But after consulting with my new professor, who recently just got her PHD, she told me that I shouldn't go to grad school if I was just worried about a job.

Therefore, if I was considering entering the workforce with a biology major, what kinds of jobs could I expect(if any)? My professor who I spoke about before was a chemistry PHD student and had friends who obtained jobs as "technicians" as biology majors, so I assume something along those lines. And affording schooling for any other job is a bit out of the question.

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    Most schools have a Placement Office that can help answer this sort of question far better than The Workplace could. Consider asking them.
    – Joe Strazzere
    Sep 10, 2015 at 12:06
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    I just want to say thank you for actually putting in the effort to understand our site and make your question on-topic before blindly posting. It is astonishing how many questions get closed because people don't bother.
    – David K
    Sep 10, 2015 at 12:54
  • Yeah, what @DavidK (and Joe) said. Career services will have a much better understanding than anyone here would because your specific circumstances are not known to us - and are known, at least better, by your school officials.
    – enderland
    Sep 10, 2015 at 14:27
  • General comment: there are basically two kinds of jobs you (or anyone) are live candidates for. One of them would be something your training is labelled as training for. Another of them is what you can do with transferable skills. Biology, like practically any other real mainstream major, requires and teaches certain basic and useful skills beyond the surface level. I would pick out, for biology, thinking abstractly, formulating and testing hypotheses, keeping track of details a lot more effectively than either of my majors calls for. A good career counselor could find more.
    – Christos Hayward
    Sep 19, 2015 at 0:02
  • I'd personally go through all the first-page links at tinyurl.com/ncbf8u6 exhaustively (the first page has an online inventory tool), and read cover to cover some edition of What Color Is Your Parachute?. And I know you might not be in a position to get an advanced degree, but depending on where you live if you are willing to deal with stress and adventure, training for an EMT was 10 credit hours for me at a community college. And scaling back on stress, there are a lot of "some sort of medical helper" professions that require surprisingly little training.
    – Christos Hayward
    Sep 19, 2015 at 0:09
  • I just posted an attempt to take your question as the basis for a permitted question and provided a useful answer. HTH...
    – Christos Hayward
    Sep 19, 2015 at 20:51

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It's highly likely that asking what to do with your biology major will be closed. It fails these two tests:

  • Primarily opinion based
  • Advice on what to do

Both of these are off-topic and the question is more a case of which close reason people will offer.

Without trying to answer an off-topic question on meta (where the posed question you are asking about would also be off topic), what you are better off doing is to talk to the careers guidance people at your university or faculty who can give you a better idea of the kinds of careers graduates in your field can expect.

As to how to reframe your question, I can suggest rephrasing it as:

How can I make an informed decision on the kinds of careers available with the qualifications I have?

Frame it in a generic way such that it's answering not just your question but be of value for others in future. Doing so should be on topic and (might) get you an answer without getting your question closed :)

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    I might comment, though, that ideally there should be some sort of question that could rightly be answered by talking about transferrable skills, identifying what transferrable skills one has, and identifying jobs one can do based on transferrable skills. I don't see an answer of that sort as spouting opinion, and perhaps there is some way of formulating a general question that lends itself to answers in terms of transferrable skills.
    – Christos Hayward
    Sep 19, 2015 at 13:03

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