Has anyone here started university at 28 or older? Is it any different than starting at 18/19 in terms of finding jobs?

I have not done what you are asking personally, but I am an advisor at a large school. From what I've seen in my students who come/come back to school later in life, they have no problems graduating and getting jobs. I think this is for a variety of reasons.

1, overall maturity. 2, you've most likely worked some crappy jobs and you realize school is actually interesting and kinda fun, so you actually work at it. 3, you have an excellent story to tell recruiters/interviewers. 4, those people tend to like the story you have to tell, you phuqed up, realized it, and changed things, 22 year olds who look successful haven't been through that yet, so they don't know what will happen with them in the long run.

So you situation is not common, but that is not a bad thing. And no, it is not too late. Econ and Math are also super interesting. Those will open a lot of doors for you in business/government/possibly research if you go far enough.

I was like this in many ways...started junior college and didn't really make any progress until I was about 30. Then by 32 I finished my Bachelors in Civil Engineering. By 2015 and age 35, I finished my Masters. My situation is kind of unique though.

I got out of the military at 22 and started working in the engineering/construction industry on the labor side of what i do now. Slowly started working on a degree, but didn't have the motivation to make any real progress. Worked for about 6 years (some school here and there) until I went back to school full-time in 2010. Got lucky my senior year and my soils lab instructor was a local engineering design firm owner with about ~25 employees. He offered to me an internship-to-full-time deal because I had previous field and work experience in the industry. I was one of the small handful of my classmates to have work right out of school, but the market is different now.

I'd say it's really never too late to go back, but you're at the sweet spot because you should be more mature than your younger classmates and still be "hungrier" to do well with the potential to perform better. Use that to your advantage.

Oh, and it's sometimes advantageous to be a little older and cooler with the younger college kids ;)

Iadvisecollegekids- I really appreciate the thoughtful answer, thank you for taking the time :)

lateschoolstarter- your background gives me hope, and thanks for the encouragement and insight!

Columbia has a General Studies program that is a BA specifically designed for older students ("non-traditional background"). I went there for grad school and I assume that the job opportunities coming out of the GS program are comparable to those of other undergrads, but at the same time it has a much higher acceptance rate than Columbia College (33% vs. 6%) and seems to have lower admissions standards (SAT range 1330-1530 vs. 1490-1580).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_School_of_General_Studies

Finished my BS just after my 30th birthday. I didn't have a problem finding a job, mainly because I had a solid work history outside my field (proving I wasn't a slacker) and I did work-study jobs in my field while attending school. I'm fairly certain the 22yo me wouldn't have been hired.

Now that I'm farther up the ladder, I do the hiring. Would I hire a 32yo grad over a 22yo grad? It depends. Demonstrate to me that you can work independently when necessary, work with a team when necessary, and act professionally. BTW, I work in IT, and I have not experienced or seen the ageism that is supposedly prevalent in this industry.

I had a similar story. Through my 20s I dropped out of undergrad and worked odd jobs and goofed around for years. Returned to college at 30. Went through community college to undergrad 4-year, then a PhD program. Left grad school at age 43. I found myself unprepared for the office-worker culture, as I had never experienced that in my life.

I’m a former exec who now runs a business advising companies’ HR mgmt on how to interview to get what they want in a new hiree. Here’s my 2 cents:

32 is not too old for almost anything, and esp. for business.

While a degree is important, your work experience is even more so, so keep working through school.

Experienced managers actually prefer someone slightly older for mgmt positions. (No offense to young folks - just don’t act like a precious snowflake.)

Get a math degree with a minor in business instead of the other way around if you’re up to it. You’ll get a better education, impress prospective employers more, and be a better candidate for a graduate degree later if you choose to pursue one.

Learn how to interview. Find a mentor or pay a reputable professional to help you. And unless you acquire superb business writing skills while in school, have your résumé professionally done. Again, try to find a mentor first in your business program to refer you to someone reputable for this. When I review candidates’ résumés for companies, I can almost always tell whether the candidate wrote his/her own, paid $50 to have it done, or had a professional do it. It’s not a strike against you if you didn’t write it yourself; it is if you submitted a crappy representation of yourself.

Good luck.

kartelite- thanks for the insight and link man

nontraditional student- really appreciate your background and encouraging story

110011- wow props to sticking it out for a phd, did you find your job searching efforts to yield any success after your graduation?

beentherehiredthat- thank you very much for your advice; I do really like math (although and I hate to say this as it sounds lazy and ill-informed, im not very good at it but I'm willing to work hard) so I'll definitely try to make it my priority; I was hoping to major in math and from there progress to a masters in economics but I'm not getting ahead of myself yet lol.

Really appreciate once again you guys' taking the time to dispense some very useful advice :)

Your main concern is having current study skills to do college-level coursework and having the patience to put up with the academic rigor in a degree program and being comfortable taking classes with younger students. Lots of people hit a dead-end in their jobs without a college degree, join the military and get out with GI Bill money, start a family and return to school when their kids are half grown, or do a second bachelor's degree in a "applied" field like Nursing, etc. You shouldn't worry about entering the job market after going back to school with a bachelors degree and being older than most recent college graduates. You will have more maturity and work experience in you favor. Try to find a school that has a high enrollment for non-traditional students. If you haven't taken any math classes recently, and you want to study a subject that requires a lot of math, then you'll need to take some refresher classes, so that you are ready to take college level math classes.

Taught many older students; in general they are more mature even with more life distractions. Probably a majority of those I taught were women, that that is because this was back quite a ways. I had the same combo that you cited, econ with math. However, I started on the math side and was only so-so. When I switched to economics late (beginning of my senior year) it was immediately apparent that that was the right shift and a year later I was in a PhD program. It took me a long time to get through, maybe because I had so little economics early and I could not well at all, so envisioning a dissertation was the problem.

As for your prospects, they always seemed good for many of those adult students. The father of my sons best friend was a goof of starting college and flunked out. He eventually went back, got his degree and now has tenure (Applied Economics) at, I think, Wisconsin, which is a really hard place to get an offer and tenure).

Another example is the couple across the street, they both went back to college in their 30s (mid-30s, I think) and have really made it work.

Good luck. The most important thing is probably to get the motivation to go after it, and I generally saw my older students 'get after it' at substantially higher rates than young kids. Especially in economics that was important as the kids often didn't have a clue, and didn't have a clue that they didn't have a clue, and I cannot remember a single older student like that.

I'm a l0ser, trying to change that wrote:

I do really like math (although and I hate to say this as it sounds lazy and ill-informed, im not very good at it but I'm willing to work hard) so I'll definitely try to make it my priority; I was hoping to major in math and from there progress to a masters in economics but I'm not getting ahead of myself yet lol.

I suggested math because a hard science bachelor’s stands out more on a résumé these days as a basic college degree has replaced the high school diploma minimum requirement for many fields.

2 things:

1. Your willingness to work and humility will help you both in school (see ret. prof’s comments above) and in the workplace.

2. Don’t take the humility too far. Both your posts are very self-deprecating, as is your handle. Don’t put yourself down. There’s nothing wrong with getting your s...t together at 28. You’re doing it, and it sounds like you’re doing it on your own. A healthy ego is good for you. It’ll help you in school, at work, and in life. Get “loser,” “I sound lazy,” and “I’m not good at,” out of your vocabulary. The first two you are not, and the latter applies to all of us in some area, but we get successful by showing the world what we ARE good at, and recognizing our weaknesses privately, then working to address them.

It really depends a lot on the industry and the culture of the employer. There are a lot of industries that expect entry level employees to do time in the trenches. They really want young 20something who have nothing better to do that plug away in the office 24/7 to try to prove to their bosses that they are worthy of being accepted into the upper echelons of their field.

Finance, big law and big corporate management can be like this with some exceptions. So, the question for these sort of employers may not be whether your prospects of getting a job are good but whether you want to spend 5-7 years trying to out work a 23 year old who has nothing else in his or her life other than work.

For many other occupations, having some life experience can make a big difference. I have interviewed people who range in ages from 22 to 45. All of the fresh out of school job candidates are basically the same. There real world experience is usually little more than some internship program or summer job. All they want to know about the job is how much hand holding will there be. Older candidates, regardless of relevant experience, have lived a life and are able to get their foot in the door by relating their life experience to how they can contribute to the job. One guy we hired was in a cover band that played weddings and corporate gigs. He basically managed the band and did all the booking, maintained the equipment and kept all the personalities in the band in check. He was basically radioactive to big employers because he originally wanted to be a rock star. Everyone thought that he would just sit at his desk staring out the window wishing that he could be out playing his guitar. It turned out that he was an incredibly effective guy because he had lots of real world experience getting things done and dealing with people in a commercial setting.

Yeah, man starting school at 28 is just like starting at 18............... Good lord.