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Career Preparation

What can you do with an English degree?

English prepares you to produce, understand, evaluate, analyze, and enjoy language in every medium of communication. You know how to play with words, and how to put them to work.

We know that English graduates become teachers, professors, poets, novelists, editors, comedy writers, screenwriters, speechwriters, playwrights, and journalists. They also work in marketing, finance, law, medicine, and public health.

They become industry executives, research consultants, radio and television hosts, and online media experts. They work with designers on podcasts, publications, and product development. Their skills are highly valued in government agencies, public service, the business community, and as policy wonks.

Your career path

Most people today expect to change careers more than once during their lifetimes. Wherever your interests and experiences take you, your training in English will help you design and identify a career path.

Your undergraduate degree gives you tangible and meaningful skills. These abilities are desired in first destination jobs that often evolve into longer-term careers.

Your degree also provides outstanding preparation for advanced graduate or professional study in law, business administration, management, medicine, and other fields.

Learn more about career advising

Liberal arts skills are prized by employers and vital to a 21st century career.

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Tangible skills prepare you for many specializations

You know from experience how the study of remarkable literary achievements enriches our knowledge of the world. It gratifies the imagination and gives us insight into the lives of others across the broad centuries-old reach of popular culture.

English offers other pragmatic benefits. You develop valuable irrefutable skills in recognizing a sonnet or a citation, deeply reading and discussing Middlemarch or Invisible Man, or crafting a seminar presentation. These bring value to every environment in your future.

Learn about marketable skills

I had brilliant, passionate teachers in my IU English courses whose commitment to deep critical thinking and interdisciplinary fields of study broadened my cultural awareness and prepared me for a happy, fortunate career writing about what I love.

Aja Romano, English alumna + writer for Vox