Career Choices of Elite Asian American Grads
What separates top graduates of elite universities from the rest? More career options. For Asian Americans, there was a time when the engineer/accountant/doctor stereotype contained more than a kernel of truth.
During the past two decades, however, a marked increase in the percentage of Asian American students hailing from acculturated families have spread the elite Asian American graduate pool over a broader spectrum of careers. Engineering and medicine remain prominently in the mix, but ever larger numbers are entering business, law and the media.
Here are the careers attracting the most marked concentrations of exceptional Asian American recent graduates as of 2005.
Investment Banking/Finance/Business Consulting
If you've been wondering why Asian students comprise upwards of 40-65% of the MBA programs of top schools like Wharton, Columbia and Kellogg, just check out the compensation packages of brand new grads who opt for investment banking or consulting careers. Including salaries, signing bonuses and year-end bonuses, the average Columbia grad took home $157,000 last year. Those graduating from the other top 10 business schools fared nearly as well, with $136,000 for Wharton, $137,000 for the University of Chicago, $134,000 for Dartmouth's Tuck School and $123,000 for Michigan.
In terms of specialty, the best starting salaries, excluding bonuses, were paid to grads of top-10 schools working in business consulting, with an average of $90,450. Investment banking was second with $87,431, followed by finance at $86,075 and marketing and management, $84,843.
Before fixating on starting salaries, keep in mind that most top business schools don't accept applicants who haven't first worked for 3-7 years. And many junior analysts are known to work 70-hour weeks for much of their first couple of years.
Surgery/Anesthesiology
Masters of deferred gratification still flock to the more prestigeous specialties of the medical profession — even knowing that the price of entry is four years of college, four years of med school and 3-7 years of internship and residency. Those who survive the gauntlet reap what may be the biggest reward of all — bragging rights for long-suffering parents.
For those who stay on the long, arduous and grossly underpaid road to journeyman status, the money isn't bad either, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Anesthesiologists, the profession's surprising financial stars, earn an average of $306,964, even more than general surgeons ($255,438) and OB/GYNs ($233,061). Of course, the superstars lost in these averages are the neuro-, cardiac- and orthopedic surgeons in private practice who, at their peak, may earn upwards of a million dollars each year.
Engineering/Computer Sciences
Brainy people with a practical bent are frequently drawn to engineering, the only field that offers respectable starting salaries and solid advancement prospects to those who escape schooling after a bachelor's degree. The economic benefits of getting a masters or a PhD are marginal. The median income of engineers with bachelor's degrees and less than a year of experience is $44,500, according to a 2004 survey by the National Society of Professional Engineers. It rises to only $50,000 for those with master's degrees and less than a year of experience, and $58,500 for those with.PhDs and one to two years of experience.
As with all fields, top grads of elite schools enjoy starting salaries that are markedly higher than less distinguished peers from lesser schools. Pay also varies markedly by specialty. Here are the 2002-3 starting salaries of Michigan engineering graduates:
- Computer: $55,111
- Electrical: $51,761
- Chemical: $51,593
- Mechanical: $49,275
- Aerospace: $48,100
- Industrial and operations: $46,812
Recent heavy demand for video games have created a lucrative niche: videogame programmers with under two years experience earn an average annual salary of $59,400, according to a 2003 survey from San Francisco-based Game Developer magazine.
Law
Brainy young Asian Americans who are allergic to test tubes and calculators are discovering law to be an attractive default profession. Not only does it offer the opportunity to enjoy status and potentially major-league earnings, it offers the added advantage of defying expectations of those with stereotypical notions of suitable careers for Asian Americans.
Like engineering, law is a broad field in which practitioners' days are as varied as stitching together boilerplate provisions into massive contracts or going down to the courthouse on a daily basis to argue pretrial motions.
There are also huge differences in salaries, depending mainly on the size of the firm you work for and the city in which it's located. After three years of law school, top grads of top-10 law schools vie for offers from big national firms that pay starting salaries of $90,000-$150,000. Those who work for smaller firms can expect to start at about half those amounts.
Media and Advertising
Asian Americans who pride themselves on an exceptional grasp of American culture and strong creative abilities sometimes forsake traditional professions to take their chances in the mass media and affiliated industries like advertising and publishing. The firms in these fields see themselves as embodying a cultural elite, especially because they attract elite applicants drawn to the perceived glamour and opportunities for creative expression. Degrees from elite colleges can help land interviews though not necessarily secure job offers.
Even top graduates looking to break in as journalists, copywriters, publicists, marketers, assistant producers, TV reporters and graphic artists are judged more by their portfolios and personalities than their credentials. The difficult entry is rewarded by starting salaries under $30,000. For at least the first five years, most media types will have to survive on less than half of what their classmates earn in more conventional fields. The reward? A shot at becoming one of the arbiters of popular culture.
Biotech/Pharmaceuticals
Those entering this nascent field hope to participate in the next big technological revolution, just as those who worked in Silicon Valley in the 70s and 80s became pioneers in the digital revolution. The field attracts elite grads who have shown exceptional research skills in areas like molecular and cell biology and plan to earn advanced degrees. Unlike in engineering, there is a pronounced jump in earnings and advancement potential with each added degree.
Elite grads with only a bachelors can expect starting salaries in the sub-$40,000 range while those with masters can expect over $50,000. A PhD raises the starting salary to the $60,000-plus range.
Mathematicians/Physicists
Those who take more pleasure in using their brains to solve difficult problems than to make money or jockey for power, are drawn to careers in mathematics or physics. These are fields for the truly elite braniacs. The entire U.S. has fewer than 3,000 professional mathematicians outside of academia though there are ten times that number on university faculties. A mathematician's job is to use various mathematical techniques to solve practical problems that baffle ordinary mortals — like coming up with optimal signal-light sequencing in a traffic grid for various times of the day or optimizing the flight schedules of an international airline or coming up with encryption schemes that will baffle determined crackers, for example. Physicists wrestle with similar mind-benders to improve ways to isolate characteristics of matter and energy at the subatomic level.
Considering their elite intellects, mathematicians and physicists earn surprisingly modest salaries. Their median annual incomes are only $76,470. This is a field in which the federal government pays better than private industry: $83,472 for mathematical statisticians, $78,662 for cryptanalysts and $80,877 for mathematicians.