Brother choose a different career track (comissions), and unfortunately in his current company, unless someone dies, advancements are nil. Or is senior sales still acting as a salesman, just in the headquarter/main city area? Because basically that’s what he did. Oh, and he works in the biomedical field.
“Senior sales” could involve managing the lower levels of the sales force, as well as calling on the company’s biggest clients. (Though, I’ll admit, my experience is primarily in consumer products, so biomedical companies may work somewhat differently.)
Well EpicBacon I would suggest going big if your going to college. Something specific and practical. Even though your not interested in a medical position, lets use Nursing as an example. If you graduate, you can get a license and count on always having a job. Like a solid back-up plan. It doesn’t mean you have to be a Nurse. You can still pursue the same positions you would with a Marketing degree. But, IMO, you’re not as limited. You can’t be Nurse with a marketing degree, but you can be a Salesman/woman with a BSN.
Theoretically, you’re correct. But, practically, it’s going to be very difficult for someone with a degree in nursing to get that first sales job – most employers who are hiring entry-level salespeople are going to favor someone with an education in marketing / sales, over someone whose education almost undoubtedly had no business coursework whatsoever (from what I’ve seen in the US, specialized programs like nursing afford fairly little in the way of elective coursework).
If you could secure an interview with a company for a sales job, imagine the conversation:
“So, Mr. EpicBacon, why are you interested in a sales position? You’ve just graduated with a degree in nursing. If you were interested in sales and marketing, why did you go to nursing school?”
I might just be honest and tell them what I said in my post. It might take some time but I think you would land a job sooner or later. Also, there are medical sales positions.
Were I you, OP, I would look at all of the job posting I could find specifying “Marketing,” and see if you’re interested in doing any of the things they’re asking.
IMHO, they want people to set up “events” and collect email addresses etc. from people to get leads.
Talk about studying marketing made me think of this Portlandia skit:
That, would be my dream job. If you could perhaps find any more information relating toward that and PM me, that would be amazing. 
Well, he is stressed out a lot (thanks to his job, heh). I’m sure he’d be less stressed out if family situations were different. That is one thing about comission sales, you get as much as you sell. So in a year that you don’t /can’t sell much (sometimes due to things outside your power), your income may suffer. Also, I learned from him you really need to have a good sales partner/direct manager.
But before that… All I know is that he majored in one of the business degrees (IIRC, accounting?) from a simple state university. I’m not sure he minored in anything, but again, we’re already bilingual, so I’m sure learning a foreign language could only benefit you. Instead of going the CPA route (which is also a good option), he got hired as a salesman for a biomedical company. For the next 5 years, they’d put him in various places over the world. He got to live in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez, Chicago, Santo Domingo/Dominican Republic, and travel to Argentina and Japan, among other things. Eventually he got as far up as he could with a bachelor’s, and the company paid for his master’s. He choose the MBA. Went back to the company for some years, but then the company wanted to move him around again and he had enough of that, so he jumped ship and went to another company. End of story.
Skills? Well, again, he is bilingual. He is very very extroverted, a people-person. Extremely charming and very nice fellow (particularly if not stressed out, which I’m sure is not helping his sales right now). He is also quick to learn as it goes. I don’t think he had much training in science (so some formal coursework could be helpful if that’s the career you’re interested), but he has learned a lot over the years.
Also, in the US, health-related degrees, like engineering degrees, while quite practical, are very specific. I’ve known of nursing students minoring in some foreign languages, but it would be harder for them to take some of the business classes that are not basic (like micro/macro economics).
I think it is important to choose a major that you’re interested in, BUT
not in terms of “oh, this course looks neat”,
rather in terms of “the kind of jobs this typically leads to look interesting”.
A typical example of the second case is “choosing biology because ‘animals are cute!’” - those are the people who either run away screaming the first time they have to do a dissection (either from the dissection itself or because “it’s an earthworm!” and earthworms are not cute), or finish the degree and don’t have the slightest idea what kind of jobs to apply for.
There’s a field which loves people with medical/nursing degrees as salespeople: medical sales. Excuse me, presentations. They’re not sales, no no, not at all.
I do have a couple of veterinarian colleagues who turned to sales (better salary). One of them eventually did get his MBA. Both also still practice on the side, as a side job.
As to the “animals are cute!”… yup. I’m the only one from my cohort who said “I want to a be a vet!” who turned out to be one. Must be because I liked looking at roadkill… 
But it is a reason I didn’t major in the humanities and instead choose a science field. Science, I can do jobs in that area… Humanities… lordy save me, no way. Except translation, which I’m stuck doing it unofficially.
A friend of mine is a professor, Agricultural Engineering. His father is a farmer, his grandparents were farmers, there are tracts of land his family has farmed since the Middle Ages; a lot of his research is focused on “stuff that can help farmers get better results without large investments”. Things such as “figuring out how far to plant trees for best yield” and “which short plants go better when co-planted with different kinds of trees”. He’s had whole classes (we’re talking on the order of 200 students) who, in his words, “have never so much as cared for a geranium pot, and they’re in Aggie!”
Don’t you know you could make more money as a butcher?
If only this thread were in the Pit.
I think majoring in something youre going to do badly at because you have no aptitude for it is one of the least practical pieces of advice ever. A D-accountant is not in a better employment position than an A+ classical studies major. Engineering is not some panacea. A huge percentage of people who begin engineering majors quit because they cannot succeed at the work.
I have a BA in archaeology with a minor in theater. I worked in marketing for 6-7 years at the late, lamented Borders’ corporate HQ (however I worked up from customer service- I was not a direct hire into the marketing dept) , then managed a horse farm, then went to law school.
My father has a PhD in sociology, my mom a Masters in English literature and a MSW (never practiced) and they have a business doing observational studies, a niche area of market research.
There are quite a few good answers in here and I salute my fellow Dopers for covering the field. I’ll throw this out, which is a massive distillation of a much bigger body of advice:
If you see your college efforts as leading to a job ticket for a specific industry or field, you are likely to be disappointed, in the short or long run, with any general degree such as business or marketing. You won’t end up where you think you’ll end up, and you will likely have been able to get just as far with a degree in a less job-oriented field that genuinely appeals to you. MANY hires are made based on ANY degree - they care about the dedication and the polish, not the specific course of study.
If you see college as a job ticket generator for a specific field that demands a particular degree (most areas of engineering, medicine, law, etc.) then make sure that’s what you want to do with your life, because it’s a tough course that will cost you a lot and you will need to have a solid career path to ever see financial daylight again.
Or… you can forget about a specific job course and use college to become a more rounded, educated, useful person. Any degree will see you through four years or so of maturation and general intellectual polish, which is all many companies look for. If you are just looking for something interesting in a career, any career with decent pay and prospects, go for a degree in whatever interests you - English, languages, journalism, communications, even education - and trust that you will find a suitable match when the time comes. And will have done it without locking yourself down with a “trade” degree and a mountain of debt.
I am, obviously, on the side of making yourself into a fuller person and choosing work that suits you, and I believe most people would be best off choosing that path. If you’ve only wanted to be a _______ since you were a wee sprat, fine… but choosing a narrow education path to a narrow career path because “the money looks good” or whatever is a huge, huge, huge mistake.
I agree that entering into Nursing when you get grossed out is a bad idea. But thats not really what i was getting at. I was just using that as an example.
What I am talking about is practicality. I mean if you want to get into Marketing do you have to get a degree? I imagine there are companies that hire entry level without one. You build your skills, you get experience, you produce results, and you learn. I would say that goes double for someone interested in English or Journalism. Just read books and write them. Get a job at the local newspaper. Minors in language are not going to teach too many people to actually speak the language. Moving to the country along with study will.
The OP stated desires are in languages and foreign countries. It doesn’t seem like the interest in marketing so much as it is a means to an end. So when I see that the OP goals is to travel and immerse his/herself in a different culture, I don’t think Marketing is a good way to go about it. I think Nursing or Engineering is a much better way to go about it. Of course, those are just examples and I’m sure there more that fit the bill.
But, I could be wrong. EpicBacon, I’m only speaking from experience. I got a bachelors in Communication. It cost a lot of money and is not getting the results I hoped for. Now, I’m in a Nursing program. Just look at the big picture. College and Marketing in particular, are conventional methods to achieve your goals, and it will continue to be that way. But theres a good chance it might not work out. I’m just saying to explore your options.
I’d say major in something that interests you but is not wildly impractical. When I went to college I majored in Radio/TV/Film. You might think that’s the impractical one, but my minor was History and Literature of Religion. To be fair, my plan at that time was to go to business school and get into corporate media.
With the economy in a downturn when I graduated, I parlayed my “communications” degree into a customer service job in a benefits call center, which led to project managment experince, then benefits processing, then benefits and HR administration - now I’ve got a pretty good corporate management job at a Fortune 250 company and nobody cares what my major was 20 years ago.
My wife has a degree in Marketing. She was able to acquire marketing jobs right out of college (early 90s SF Bay Area). She eventually landed in publishing, and was responsible for those annoying little ads that fall out when you open the magazine, and the other ones that are binded to the magazine that prevent you from turning the page. Now that print media is suffering, I doubt the path she took is still there. However, online marketing as well as data mining has become big recently.
A marketing angle I once considered with my degree (Geography) was location analysis. This combined spatial thinking and real estate with business data, and offered the potential for travel, which was attractive to me. Think about how businesses choose locations - smart ones will crunch a lot of data to sort out the best prospects for setting up their warehouse, factory, or retail store. I never pursued this as other things came along, but I understand this is still considered in the realm of Marketing.
I think there is some good advice here. You need to balance what is practical with what interests you. Too much of one or the other will not make you happy. And, don’t just do what is expected of you - find your own path.
Unless you want to go straight to grad school, Marketing is not a great major.
I am a Business major with Marketing focus. I really didn’t know what kind of job I wanted after college, but I quickly found out what I was qualified for – Sales. If you’re lucky, you can get an entry level job as a “Market Research Assistant” and work your way up the Marketing ladder, but that didn’t really appeal to me.
Luckily, I have strong computer skills. I started out selling computer equipment and then went into the software industry, starting at the bottom – as a tester. If you think you might go in the computers direction, a Business degree with a focus in information systems is not bad. Certainly a better option than marketing. A C.S. degree is even better.
Generally, unless you plan to go to grad school, a degree in a hard science always beats a degree in a liberal arts field of study… yes, and that includes Business. I was similar to you in college, I thought Ick! Medicine is not for me… looking back, I wish I had gone the hard science, pre-med route. I could have done it. You only get one chance at an education. (well, you CAN go back, but with kids and a mortgage payment it gets a lot tougher)