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When giving lectures to school groups, everything from 8th grade on up to college students, one of the more popular questions is how do I become a forensic scientist. Now a “forensic scientist” is a pretty general term, not specific to any real job role. Forensic scientists are any scientists who can help out a trier of fact reach a conclusion by a greater scientific understanding of the evidence in the case. Forensic odontologists, forensic entomologists, and forensic pathologists as just a few examples. Compare that to a criminalist (a scientist in the field of criminalistics). This is the specific type of forensic scientists routinely depicted in popular TV shows. Areas of specialization include latent prints, DNA, drug chemistry, toxicology, and firearms and toolmarks examination.
That being said, I always tell students it’s significantly more difficult to get hired as a criminalist now days because of how popular the field is. In order to get hired, you have to be a more desirable candidate than the rest of the applicants. One way is to get a master’s degree, instead of just a bachelor’s degree. In such cases I always recommend someone get a bachelor’s degree in a “hard science”, such as chemistry (or biology if someone really wants to get into DNA), and a master’s degree in the same, or forensic science if they really want to. The problem with getting a bachelor’s in forensic science, is that people end up sacrificing important science related classes for criminal justice classes — a bad idea in my book. I don’t think anyone hiring in crime labs today thinks a “forensic science” degree is better than a “chemistry” degree.
The second option, if you really don’t see yourself getting a master’s degree, is to volunteer or get an internship, in a local crime lab. Talk to your college career counselor about this process, but most labs have some kind of system in place. The benefit here is two fold. First, you get practical hands-on training about criminalistics. While you won’t be working cases, you get to help out in the laboratory, and usually there is a requirement wherein for X many hours of grunt-work, you get Y hours of training. The second benefit is people in the lab get to know you. If you routinely show up on time, have a good attitude, and are sincerely helpful and interested in the career, you have a much higher chance of being hired by that lab, than someone else who might have a slightly better resume on paper.
That’s it in a nutshell. Good luck getting hired as a criminalist if that is what you are aiming to do.
