Jobs for the Major
How this major affects a job search
Let's say you love white lab coats, stylish goggles that cover half your face, and occasionally having to dump an entire project in a hazardous waste bin. If that's your dream, a genetics degree will help you get there.
It doesn't have to be a completely lab-based job, though. There are plenty of opportunities to get out into the world and interact with people (and animals, too). If you go deep enough into genetics, you could do any of the following: map the honey bee genome, develop cures for genetic disorders, create tests for diagnosing disorders, and even create a clone or two.
Holy smokes—when it gets laid out in a list like that, it almost sounds like a breeding ground for mad scientists.
Provided that you don't want to go with the good ol' "take over the world" approach, you can do a lot of good for your home team, Homo Sapiens. Technology is growing at a bonkers rate. Consider that the abacus was a huge breakthrough one day, then look at your computer. This is a field where breakthroughs happen daily. It'll keep you on your toes, like it or not.
Common Career Fields
Agriculture and Plant Sciences: Think about how much agriculture has changed over time. On one hand, you've got cavemen who looked at plants and probably thought they were just the Earth's hair. Now, we are producing absurd amounts of food with fewer and fewer expended resources.
Consider that we need even more because of the increase to population. Working in this field could mean feeding more and more people by selecting the genes in plants that make them grow bigger and faster.
Animal Sciences: For thousands of years, humans have bred animals. From race horses to super wooly sheep, we have learned how to select the traits we want and emphasize them. With that in mind, there are different avenues to take here. You could aid in the breeding of dairy cows to produce more milk or help create more disease-resistant pets.
You can work in a lab if you're more of an indoor person, or a zoo...if you like manure. Just kidding. No one likes manure.
Environmental Conservation: Genetic diversity is an issue that you will be very familiar with if you study genetics. Diversity in genetic makeup is the key to the survival of our species (or any species, for that matter). When plagues were alive and jumpin', certain people were immune to them. This not only diminished their spread, but it meant there was a population that needed re-populating after they ran their course.
The people who were immune carried a mutation called CCR5 Delta-32, which incidentally also makes carriers immune to HIV. Pretty nifty, huh? Geneticists work with this kind of stuff on a larger scale, illustrating the need for biodiversity in greater environmental ecosystems.
Forensics: There are approximately 1.5 billion trillion crime scene shows on television, and that's because that stuff is pretty darn cool. All the lab work that gets done comes from people with hard science degrees, and those with genetics degrees are clearly more qualified to do DNA testing than others. Say a department needs a skin sample analyzed. You can check out a perp's skin and be all, "Yup, he did it." Cool, huh?
Human Genetics: Here's where all that disease stuff comes into play. Human Geneticists study how different genes express themselves in different ways. Remember that Delta-32 gene? Figuring out how it works is the key to curing HIV, which has been proven to be possible in the past few years.
Everything from cures to the most devastating illnesses to having perfect teeth is hidden in our genes. It's up to geneticists to go looking for 'em.
Veterinary Medicine: Think about the last time you heard of a promising new drug. Odds are, it was tested on animals first. Sure, it isn't the most heartwarming thing we've thought about all day, but there are benefits for the animals, as well. They get sick, too.
Genetics play into how well certain chemicals work on different animals (or humans), so geneticists have a wealth of knowledge to contribute to any sort of medicine related field.
Wildlife Biology: Determining migration patterns is harder than looking up and watching the birds fly over your head. Similarly, deciding whether to group a salamander closer to a fish or a lizard isn't easy for an untrained mind. This is where all your years of genetics courses come in handy.
Current unemployment of the major
5.6%Percentage of majors who get a higher degree after college
61%Stats obtained from this source.