[Wendero]

I think that just in general studying liberal arts (ie english, history etc) has never been a very good way of getting a job. The subjects may be interesting, but from a career perspective they don't measure up to engineering and computer science. That's nothing unique for Maynooth.

Of course, if you really really love a liberal arts subject, then go ahead and major in it. The problem is that many people choose a major after what they think is easy, not what they're interested in and not what may give them a job they're interested in having (a lot of people will find history interesting as a subject, but would still find the job of a historian to be boring).

[Wendero]

Absolute Zero,

Ask the people at your local McDonald's

Seriously, here is a site you might find useful: http://www.aag.org/cs/jobs_and_caree...reers_overview

[Absolute Zero]

Originally Posted by Wendero

Absolute Zero,

Ask the people at your local McDonald's

Seriously, here is a site you might find useful: http://www.aag.org/cs/jobs_and_caree...reers_overview

Getting depressed now. Why did I bother going Maynooth now. Honestly didnt know the difference when I put down the CAO two years ago...

whats the point of it all.... getting myself and my parents into debt like this just to go on the dole again.

[SSS2012]

True...I would say a major problem in this country is a lack of GOOD career advice available. When we are doing our leaving cert there is not much advice on what career paths we are suited for, but more on what areas to choose in college. Most people I know chose ARTS because either they really liked the subjects they were going to study or because they were confused on what career they wanted or both.

It would have been beneficial to have had a lecture in college as part of the English module on what careers we could do after our degree and what masters we should do or think about. Instead I found they were trying to encourage people to continue academic masters in Maynooth...it was just advertising people to stay in Maynooth and bring more money to the college... and not helping people overall.

In my last year, the career guidance office was completely closed. An email was sent out after Masters deadlines were over, and it was in the middle of exams saying...the career centre is now open to go for advice on masters to apply for. But it was way to late for me as I had already done interviews and all deadlines were over for any msaters I was interested in. I just thought this was a disgrace and of course I was not going to go when I was in the middle of exams. Out of everything in Maynooth, this is what annoyed me the most.

[SSS2012]

Trust me I feel exactly the same especially after graduating. I kind of just kept telling myself it will be worth it when I got the degree...but it was not worth it at all! Sorry, but it's the truth. I would say just keep doing your research on careers and look into a good practical masters after it. Also, trying to get work experience in college would be helpful.

[Absolute Zero]

Originally Posted by SSS2012

Trust me I feel exactly the same especially after graduating. I kind of just kept telling myself it will be worth it when I got the degree...but it was not worth it at all! Sorry, but it's the truth. I would say just keep doing your research on careers and look into a good practical masters after it. Also, trying to get work experience in college would be helpful.

I have to say , you are correct. In second year doing single honour geography and I can safely say its pretty useless. I am only writing essays or doing ICA's once a month.

Half the people dont show up for lectures, I find its just like leaving cert again, sitting around class and half falling asleep and not paying attention.

No skills being learned really, the compulsory module is all over the place and lots of people are getting terrible grades in it. Looking at other colleges such as UCC, they offer loads of practical skills as part of their geography degree.

When I applied to Maynooth 2 years ago, I had no idea of the difference. I wasnt told these things in secondary school or whatever, I even went to a career guidance but that was useless. I came from a family in which no body went to college so I couldnt get any information of older brothers or sisters.. and to be honest never knew the difference between Ba or BSc or whatever...

I didnt come to college to do a postgrad, but now it seems necessary to gain practical skills.

[philologos]

The Career Guidance office in particular provide materials which explain options for students. Meetings can also be arranged with them while at university. There is also the option to transfer between degrees after first year. I swapped from BA Politics, to general arts after first year.

If the Career Guidance office was completely closed, then that was simply unfortunate. Without the Career Guidance office I wouldn't have known what paths to consider after university. The fact is that they are available to students.

As for the university not being friendly, it's clear that Maynooth to me was clearly a very different place to Maynooth for you. One of the strengths of NUI Maynooth was the friendly environment on the campus. I regarded my philosophy lecturers and my computer science lecturers to be really helpful when I talked to them about things.

I still hold to my position that NUI Maynooth as a university is of an international standard, and it does provide people with clear futures. Having a peek on LinkedIn as to what NUI Maynooth graduates are doing convinces me more of this actually.

[Absolute Zero]

Originally Posted by philologos

The Career Guidance office in particular provide materials which explain options for students. Meetings can also be arranged with them while at university. There is also the option to transfer between degrees after first year. I swapped from BA Politics, to general arts after first year.

If the Career Guidance office was completely closed, then that was simply unfortunate. Without the Career Guidance office I wouldn't have known what paths to consider after university. The fact is that they are available to students.

As for the university not being friendly, it's clear that Maynooth to me was clearly a very different place to Maynooth for you. One of the strengths of NUI Maynooth was the friendly environment on the campus. I regarded by philosophy lecturers and my computer science lecturers to be really helpful when I talked to them about things.

I work in a credit union and I find that the general consensus about Maynooth with the general public is that you go there to "teach"... thats what 99% of people say when they ask me what im doing in college.

I actually went to career guidance last year too, got depressed during the start of first year when freinds I met here were telling me its really only for those who want to do teaching.. and I guess they are right..

[philologos]

^^ People can have whatever conception of the university that they like. The reality is that loads of people who leave NUI Maynooth do get jobs other than in teaching. I would say to anyone that they should be thinking about what they want to do pretty much from the first point that they enter. At the same time, I would have never expected to be working where I am.

LinkedIn tells me that people registered who attended NUI Maynooth between 2008 and 2011 are currently in the following industries:
Sales, Administrative, Information Technology, Creative, Engineering, HR, Support, Operations, Entrepreneurs, Business Development, PR, Finance, Medical, Marketing, Law, Accounting, etc.

It also tells me that people who attended there work for companies like:
Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, Paddy Power, AIB, Oracle, FAS, PwC, HP, SAP, eBay, etc. Quite a few work in other universities.

Edit: These lists only contain companies and industries with more than 1 NUI Maynooth graduate, there are plenty of others.

[XxMCRxBabyxX]

Originally Posted by Absolute Zero

I work in a credit union and I find that the general consensus about Maynooth with the general public is that you go there to "teach"... thats what 99% of people say when they ask me what im doing in college.

I actually went to career guidance last year too, got depressed during the start of first year when freinds I met here were telling me its really only for those who want to do teaching.. and I guess they are right..

I'd imagine that would be more your subject than Maynooth. The common perception is that most people who study Arts (anywhere!) end up in teaching

[mickstupp]

Bearing in mind all I'm giving is my own personal experience, and of course it's not representative, especially not these days... but for a good many years I worked in various software companies, both testing and engineering, and my experience was very different. Granted, at the time the country was in a better state and there were jobs all over the place, but still. Having interviewed and hired a great many people over the ten years or so I spent in IT, I mostly found the Arts students to be the best in general. Again, granted, I'm not talking about full on programming positions here, but more general localisation engineering.

What we often found was that computer science graduates were not nearly so useful as general Arts students, at least not in the beginning. Favourites for engineering positions were often History or Philosophy graduates, but English, Ancient Classics, Sociology, whatever, were just as useful. The reason is that when working on a software project it's often necessary to keep track of a great many threads of information at the same time. You need to be doing and paying attention to multiple things at once, still retaining an idea of the big picture. Similarly for test lead positions and even project management. Arts subjects are great at teaching that sort of general skill. History graduates were great at this stuff. Testers, too, were often better with Arts backgrounds. Having spent three or four years writing discursive essays they were much more literate which helps enormously when dealing with engineers who need to fix thousands of bugs, or staff in other countries who couldn't necessarily understand colloquialisms or sloppy grammar. Attention to detail is paramount, and if you've spent four years trying to get 1sts in your Philosophy essays, your attention to detail will be very good indeed.

Reputation isn't everything either. And if anything, I think the reputation of the department matters just a little more than the reputation of the college as a whole. But in any case if you show up to an interview with a 1st, you'll be taken seriously no matter which college you got that 1st in. Likewise if you're only pulling a 2.2 you'd have to do a hell of a lot to impress me as an interviewer, and again whatever college you attended wouldn't really matter a damn. Things are obviously different now, but to many employers all a degree will show is that you can stick to something for three or four years without screwing up. In a practical sense, the content is often not as important as your commitment, or your common sense for that matter. There's an awful lot of highly qualified idiots in the working world.

But! To be on-topic, and not get into too many more extremely boring details, I chose Maynooth because a) there was a bus going to it everyday from where I live, b) it had a high proportion of mature students and I'd heard good things from all the graduates I'd met over the years about the general friendliness of the place, c) the departments I was interested in taught the parts of their subjects that I was interested in. E.g. I looked at the undergrad course for one of my subjects in Trinity and it wasn't nearly so interesting to me as the syllabus in Maynooth. I decided to stay here for my MA because, again, I looked at the course content offered in other universities and they were not in areas I was interested in. And the reason I chose to go to college at all was not just because all the work dried up, it was partly because working in IT can suck the soul out of you and I grew to hate it with all my heart.

[Effluo]

I chose Maynooth solely because of the unique course, unfortunately I regret it now. Not only did I choose the wrong type of course, but I don't think I went to the best University I could have.

I cannot say I was never told that UCD & Trinity for instance were generally regarded as providing a better education than Maynooth. I had read the University ratings, but with the ignorance of youth I disregarded it all and unfortunately there was nobody there to knock some sense into me.

Due to the nature of my course, I've experienced a god few of the departments so I can comment on them at least

I have a lot of good to say about the electronic engineering department and the quality of the course they provide is shown in the employment rate of it's graduates.(although this year the 3rd years have struggled to find placements)
It's a broad course, very challenging and have heard it's quite highly regarded in the industry. Be prepared to do a lot of work though, it's like having a full-time job and then having to take the work home with you too!


The product design department has some really great, creative people in it, but the organisational side to it leaves a lot to be desired. I know I'm particularly unlucky in my situation, I'm the only person doing the specific strand of the course, but even so that's no excuse for what has happened in my time here.
I don't claim to be a particularly good student, well I certainly haven't been over the last 4 years, but when I end up in a module which I have not done the pre-requisites for, that is very wrong. In first year I started studying for an exam and realised that I had never covered some of the material that everyone else in the class had done in a previous module.
After that, I found several more issues with my planned degree and ended up having to with the department, choose different modules myself as the course that was set out for me was full with errors. Every year since 2nd year I've had overlapping lectures, every year I've made my departments aware of the issues and nothing was ever been done about them.

Anyone I've spoken to in the same "vein" of courses that I belong to feel very much abandoned by the department. It's the last year they're running the course and I think we've all had some issues. I can't clarify this, but I think our course was done away with due to the high failure rate and general poor organisation. This wouldn't be an issue if you went with the more established courses, but I'd warn anyone who has cross-departmental lectures that isn't arts.

In relation to the quality of lecture, I wouldn't be overly enthusiastic about it... Nearly all of my economics & finance lecturers have given terrible notes. Electronic Engineering was generally much better and I really enjoyed the more creative business modules(Product Design department), then there were the marketing and management modules, which had adequate notes and were just basically like Leaving Cert business subjects.


If you're an ambitious person, if you're passionate about something, go to a GOOD career adviser, talk to them, then go to second one. I think if I had the chance to do it all again, I know I wouldn't have chosen my course and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone to Maynooth.

That's just me and I'm not going to dwell on it.

[Moon Indigo]

I am currently a coming near enough the end of my first year in Maynooth studying for a BACYW (Bachelor or Arts Community and Youth Work).
In many respects the course is like a life of it's own as I know people with 200 people in a lecture whereas my whole class is just 32 and capped at that and its a big class at that!

The course I am on is very specialised in the area but then again so is the area and the course is great for the work I/We hope to enter. I can't speak for all of Maynooth and the first time I visit it I honesty wasn't crazy on it but when I found the course I decided to go for it. I like Maynooth but as has been said it truly depends on what you want and how you want to go about it. If you want to party 24/7 its like anything you can but I feel that some of the best teachers and educators I have encountered have been either NUIM grads or those that teach in the classrooms.

[snoreborewhore]

Originally Posted by Absolute Zero

Hey, I would be very interested to know what people have done after college who studied geography??

My brother studied Geography in Maynooth and is in University of Edinburgh for the year studying his masters. Don't listen to anything anyone else tells you about what few prospects you have - if you work hard enough for something you can get it.

[unclejunior]

tbh, if i had the choice again i would of gone to another uni preferably in the city. but having said that, i may not of had the opportunities to study the subjects i ended up studying so for that reason its not all bad.
as far as the 'reputation' of a university is concerned and how it reflects on your degree should never be a concern for you. if you can pull a 2.1 or 1.1 in any reasonable dicipline and you are in anyway pragmatic, you should land yourself a good job if you try hard enough. anyone who is long term unemployed with a degree falls into one of these categories imo:
either
(a) they've been spoonfed all their lives and now lack direction since they've qualified
(b) they think inside the box, and fail to see the opportunites afforded to them if they immigrate
or
(c) they are idiots

a degree is much more than securing for yourself a job. after studying for three or four years, you should have the dicipline to initiate a business plan and focus on becoming an employer and not an employee if your so concerned about securing a job. theres no point been a sheep all your life.