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With graduation around the corner, many seniors are still figuring out exactly what they will do after they step out of their last class at UCLA.

While some students line up postgraduation plans long before they receive their diploma, others are still scrambling to finalize plans with less than a month before the end of their college careers.

“I’m looking for a job right now, scary as it seems,” said Julian Sachs-Weintraub, a fourth-year communication studies student graduating this year.

Sachs-Weintraub does not plan to go directly to graduate school and said he hopes to enter the workforce with just his bachelor’s degree.

“I figure I’ve gone through enough school and, for what I want to do, I don’t think a graduate degree would help me out much more,” he said as he surveyed graduation gowns.

And though an undergraduate degree alone will not guarantee a well-paying job, it does give an applicant an advantage over others who have not attended an institution like UCLA, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, an independent provider of economic and financial research.

A college degree is “a necessary condition for getting a good, high-paying job,” he said.

For those students who have not yet secured jobs, their reasons and plans for finding employment vary.

Alec Harris, a molecular, cellular and developmental biology student, said he began his job search two days ago by e-mailing a past lab partner looking for a position as a lab assistant. His plan for now does not include finding a long-term career or earning a large paycheck.

“The goal for next year is paying rent while gaining experience in my field,” he said.

Further experience is also a motivation for Josh Klein, a graduating computer science and engineering student, who said his current career plans do not go beyond a summer internship.

Klein signed up for a summer internship with Deloitte & Touche, a firm that consults businesses on the efficiency of their programs. Klein said students entering business practices like this can make as much as $40,000-$50,000 a year, right out of college.

If he has a good experience working for Deloitte & Touche this summer, Klein said he may pursue a full-time job with the company.

But at the same time, he said he also may choose to look elsewhere if the Deloitte & Touche internship does not draw him to the field for his career.

Internships can aid students in planning their future, both by providing a stepping stone to future employment and by giving students contacts in the area they are considering.

Sachs-Weintraub does not yet have job plans, but plans to find one through connections he made at an internship at an advertising firm last summer.

Uncertainty is another factor that has kept some graduating seniors from picking a career path.

Klein said jobs in the software industry, where he is currently looking, are unreliable and that he would like to understand the industry better before committing to it.

“I’m concerned about the direction the industry is going because it is very unstable and outsources a lot of the lower level labor to countries like India,” Klein said.

For seniors who want good jobs but have not done their job connections homework, hope is not yet lost, said Career Center Director Kathy Sims.

“The good news for this year’s graduating class is that the job market is great,” Sims said.

For more info, visit the Career Center’s Web site at www.career.ucla.edu.