The majority of students using Penn State's Career Services Center are in the business, engineering and liberal arts colleges, center figures indicate.

For the 2001-02 academic year, Career Services encountered 3,465 students from the university's 13 colleges, the center's annual report said.

From that group, the largest amount of students the center served last year were liberal arts majors, with 760 (22 percent) students seeking staff assistance. Business administration and engineering followed closely behind with 581 students (17 percent) and 442 students (13 percent), respectively.

The colleges of communications, division of undergraduate studies, education and health and human development also had a strong turnout, but did not come close to the top three colleges.

The gap in numbers should come as no surprise, said Career Services director Jack Rayman.

He said business, engineering and liberal arts majors are in high demand and students visit career services to figure out which of the many available opportunities are best for them.

"You would expect that [large number] because liberal arts majors aren't certain where they can go for careers ... There are many options for them," he said. "On-campus recruiting is governed by supply and demand and those areas [business, engineering and liberal arts] are in high demand year in and year out. Bottom line is, these are the students who are in the best position."

There are also other leading factors for the discrepancy in the volume of students using the center, Rayman said. Several companies have imposed hiring freezes and even if firms are hiring, variability within certain job fields occurs frequently, he said.

The report also showed information sciences and technology (IST), earth and mineral sciences, and agriculture had among the lowest turnouts for 2001-02. Only 33 IST students used the center last year.

Rayman said those low figures may be attributed to a simple numbers game.

"It tends to follow the percentage of students that exist in those colleges," he said. Rayman noted that IST is still a growing major with a decidedly lesser amount of students enrolled in it, compared to the high quantity of business or science students.

Frank Tedesco (senior-mechanical engineering) registered with Career Services his sophomore year. His main motivation, he said, was to gather information for possible summer internships.

"I was looking to see what kind of companies were in my field," he said. "I'm pretty independent on that [finding internships]. I really just wanted to see what they had to say."

Jenna Luka (senior-international politics) has not consulted with Career Services but had considered going to decide whether to attend law or graduate school, having heard from friends of the sound advice the center gives out.

Luka said that in her major, you need more than just a degree.

Prior to transferring to the University Park campus, Matt Carroll (sophomore-chemistry) spoke with career counselors at Penn State Altoona College.

"For my major, [counselors] don't have very many suggestions," he said, noting the acute focus of the chemistry field which allows for little career confusion. "It seems like they help the majors that have more of a broad focus, like liberal arts."