I would highly recommend an Engineering degree, and this comes from a guy who was a business major in college. Specifically, I have a major in Accounting as well as Economics. I worked in investment banking out of college and then joined a private equity firm afterwards. The reason I say engineering is because I do think it gives you a higher ceiling. While in private equity, I could see the advantages when it came to analyzing a potential deal that some of the managing directors (who came from a technical background) had. If you work as a petroleum engineer for 3-4 years and then get your MBA from a good institution, you can really set yourself up for an incredible career track in finance. You could argue, well - why go through all that if you can just be a finance/accounting major and just get into finance right away? Well, for starters, the path to get to that coveted PE job is true hell if you start off in finance. You need to put in 2 - 3 years of investment banking at a top firm, which usually means your first years of making money out of college are spent getting killed at the office for 80 - 90 hours a week. On a $ / hour basis, pretty sure that a solid engineering job pays better than finance. Secondly, I will make the point again about your ultimate ceiling. There are plenty of finance professionals around who know how to build a financial model. There are much less candidates who can do that plus truly understand the technical dynamics of an oilfield development program. As one poster said, it's easy to go from Engineering --> Business. The other way around is not the same.
This is what I tell people who ask me about majors.... 1) IF you know exactly what you want to do and you are ABSOLUTELY sure that is only what you want to do, go for it, but be aware of the risks, eg. job/income problems for art majors, dangers in certain jobs etc. 2) If you are not certain what you want to do in the future, and have to go with a major right now, go for either Mechanical/Electrical/Chemical engineering. When you are done you can work in these fields or you can go on to grad school etc with a favorable standing. eg. Business schools love folks with and engineering degree. You have job opportunities and you have several future career options open to you. Everyone loves folks who can think critically and solve problems. Thats what an engineering degree is for. My friends and family members with engineering degrees have gone on to work in financial sectors, industrial sectors, as well as management. Nothing beats the versatility of an engineering degree.
People are lazy. #1 (the highest paid career is by far a ceo of a company). Doesn't require engineering. The reason you recommend engineering as a major is that the entry level jobs pay more, which to me is like hiding behind a degree. If you have talent, as I've said before, you don't get an engineering degree so you can make an entry-level salary. You work your ass off in the real world and move up in a company. I'd like to know the people in this thread that are engineers and WHAT specifically they've worked on? The truly elite spend their time working not posting on this board. It's laughable.
Well, the OP asked for the most useful degree; so your rebuttal regarding a CEO's job is irrelevant. Engineers are the most paid because they have the most unique skills out of school, because they "work their ass off" there on the hardest and most unique subjects in the university curriculum. By the way, if you think "moving up" in a company is based solely on hard work, you just don't know what you're talking about.
I'm an electrical engineering and international business major with English and mandarin as my languages in my 4th year. Very very maths and physics intensive with an increasing emphasis on being programming efficient. I enjoy it, but it truly takes a toll on your social life. Gotta put in heaps of work to get above average grades and study wherever possible. There's always subjects that sift out the pretenders, so you don't end up with bad partners in your later years for projects which is good. I plan to either move into EE or finance when I graduate. All my friends study and have graduated from a wide range of different fields and the one people regret most is either useless business majors like marketing and advertising or fine arts.
<img src="http://www.my-favorite-coloring.net/Images/Large/Famous-characters-Troll-face-Troll-face-me-gusta-51996.png" width="200" height="150">
My son graduated with degrees in Computer Engineering and Computer Science in May, and within 6 weeks had an outstanding job here in Austin. He had just turned 22. I'm still a bit astonished that the guy's my kid. ;-)-
An engineering degree will never have an skills that will benefit becoming a ceo of a company. Like i said, all an engineering degree does for people is say (hey look, I put myself through hell and now I have this degree that says I'm great, so I must be great, now give me my entry-level 70 thousand) in and out. If you truly great an engineering, go for it. But if you are just getting an engineering degree for an entry-level salary, you are a douchebag. Lazy and you are hoping that your degree will take the place of true talent at something.
Working at a hospital is physical. I just know when I get older I won't be able to keep up that's why my I'm researching about other careers. Right now, this career fits me well. Talk to a bunch of young nurses, docs, etc... It's like I'm hanging out and not working. Since I was little I always thought I was ten years older, never could grasp that I was just a kid. Even now, I feel like people don't respect me cause of my age and where I'm at. Can I speak to the owner of the house?, he's a troublemaker, youre so lucky to have this job.
there are more major CEO's with an engineering degree than business/finance. you truly are an ignorant fool lol. whaaaaaat.
My sister is like half-a-year away from her RN degree. She is actually truly great at the nursing profession. She is extremely detail-oriented (which is an important skill, that most people believe that they are good at, but most at.) I could never be a nurse because of this one skill. It also requires understanding how to perform detail procedures the right way, and a good bit of memorization to understand all of the conditions by the jargon-filled technical name. My sister tells me about how a lot of these LVN's who try to get their RN degree, but struggle at it, whereas she hardly studies and is able to ace tests. I am amazed at what she does.
Maybe its more work, but it isn't harder than getting an engineering degree. I would not recommend being an engineer. The best profession is a doctor. Doing engineering probably isn't as conducive to getting a super high gpa as much as say biology. However if you do bio and don't get into med school you are screwed.
When I was first thinking about getting a second bachelors, I talked to one of the developers for our in-house pipeline TMS. I asked him about comp sci, and true to form he suggested I just try to learn programming on the side. I asked him about math, which was his major, and he said it was doable; but suggested I try to get through Calc 2 before deciding. I also asked him about physics since it was the one online/Continuing Studies degree that seemed closest to engineering; he pathed the careers of two or three of his friends who'd had bachelors and ended by saying it was the "worst possible degree" for a career: it was the one part of our discussion where his tone of voice was genuinely emphatic. Ironically enough his manager, who was in charge of all the in-house business/logistics software, had a bachelors' and masters' in physics from UNC. A couple of years later at another firm I had the same discussion with one of our Environmental guys who himself had a bachelors in physics, and got the same sentiment about job opportunities. I would be tempted to suggest that Chemistry is just as "cerebral," and might be more useful and possibly easier to get grad/PhD degrees in. I also hear informally that there might be only 20 - 30 hours of difference in curriculum between BS Chem and BSChE.
