Department of English
What Do English Majors Do?
With an
English major, and with the knowledge, values and skills you learn over
your four years of study, you will be developing an adaptable set of “tools”
that you can take with you to any number of future careers. You will learn about how
the right words can change the world, and how you can find those words. You will learn how to think critically about
the world around you, and become aware of how our world is largely constituted
in and by language. In English, you will
deeply analyze how and why language works and what kind of work it can do, and
you will learn how to write clearly, coherently, and beautifully.
Thus, as you might expect,
being an English Major isn’t like being in a pre-vocational major such as Accounting
or Journalism. With those
pre-professional degrees, it’s very clear what you can do after you graduate:
you become an accountant or a journalist.
If you like being an accountant or a journalist, then you’re all
set. But if you spend four years training
for those fields and then discover that you don’t like that particular job,
you’re in a bit of a bind, since you’ve only really prepared yourself for one
thing and one thing only.
Below is some information about what our most recent majors have done. Please note, too, that several majors have
already done more than one thing. For
instance, one student who went into the business field is now retooling himself
for a law degree. A recent creative
writing major went to get a graduate degree but then decided to follow a career
in advertising. As a gifted poet, this
student was already aware of how the sound of language, and the proper choice
of words, can communicate emotions – something the slogans and jingles we hear
every day try to do.
With an English major – you
have options – lots of them! Here are
some of them:
About 15-20% go on for graduate level education either at the
Masters, MFA (the terminal degree for Creative Writers) or PhD level, and
continue on to become college professors
and administrators. Creighton
English majors have had very good success at winning scholarships and
fellowships to study at the graduate level.
Last spring, all 5 seniors who applied to graduate programs were
accepted into multiple programs, and all received at least one fellowship offer
(some even more). Our majors have gone
on to study across the country – at Brown University, Boston College,
University of Minnesota, University of Iowa, State University of New York at Buffalo,
Sarah Lawrence, and University of Nebraska, to name just a few schools.
About 15-20% go on to law school and work in the fields of law and politics. Creighton’s Dean of the
Interestingly enough, about
15-20% of our majors are Pre-Health
Sciences students as well as English majors! Recent majors have been successful in
getting accepted into medical school,
dental school, and even veterinary
school! This is the group of majors
who knows what it means to educate themselves as whole people. They also know how important the critical
thinking and coherent writing skills they gain in the department are to their
work in the health-care fields. One
recent grad actually was able to win a national scholarship for writing a paper
about the images of veterinary science in English literature – who says English
doesn’t pay?
About 10% take up work in the
non-profit sector. Recent grads have served in the Peace Corps,
About 10% work in the business and publishing fields, most
often as technical writers and editors, but sometimes working in the PR department or even as financial analysts! Our recent grads have found employment at
Mutual of Omaha, First National Bank, Bozell
Advertising, and, one poor recent alum was, at least
until last November, an analyst at Enron (he’s applying to law school
now!). Such firms actively seek English
majors, because they know that English majors are typically creative,
hard-working individuals, gifted with an ability to write in a variety of
contexts, situations and genres and to help others in their writing. For instance, recent grad Nora Spencer is now
a features writer at
And, yes, despite how clichéd
it is – you can teach! About 15-20% become
high school teachers. Creighton English
Education majors have had great success finding jobs in schools all over the
area – from Omaha Central High to Creighton Prep
and beyond.
Although our numbers above
add up to 100%, our recent grads have done a few other things as well…one is
now getting a degree in Library and
Information Sciences…another is working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood…another is an officer in the U.S. Army serving in Germany…yet another is doing
graduate work at Georgetown’s Graduate School of International Relations and
planning a career in international
diplomacy (talk about a field where you need to know how to use language
carefully!)…other grads have gone on to become Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists or even the Mayor of Omaha!
What are you going to do with your English Major?
Don’t hesitate to contact us
so we can help you to figure out what you will do!
Brent Spencer,
Chair, Department of English
280-2192