<p>Head's up, I'm going to be pretty blunt here.</p>
<p>I'm a first year student at Georgia Tech currently majoring in Business, but I'm debating switching to Industrial Engineering. I'm pretty bummed because the more time I spend here the more I feel like the business school is just an MRS degree mill / fallback for students who drop out of the engineering program. I want to go into banking or consulting or private equity, and I don't want to do grunt work for a Fortune 500 company for ten years before rising all the way to a middle-management HR position, which is what I feel Tech's B-school is setting me up for since I'm getting no quantitative background, and all the "success" stories I've heard have been as such.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I don't think I want to be an engineer. Looking at the course catalog, I'd spend about a semester's worth of classes on things that actually interest me, and the rest learning general engineering topics. I still don't fully understand what industrial engineering is, and I think the same rings true for most people here also. They market it as the you-can-do-anything-super-degree, but I feel like the real value of an IE degree is in the quantitative background you get, and the rest is just generic engineering filler which doesn't really have any value in itself.</p>
<p>Ideally, I'll be able to transfer after spring semester and do what I want elsewhere, but I there is a high probability that I'll get screwed financial aid-wise (hence my being here in the first place), so I need a contingency plan. So in summary:</p>
<ol>
<li>What's the value of a business degree? My whole outlook on B-schools has kind of been warped by the past semester. If you're not getting a background in applicable quantitative skills, then what's the point? I don't need a four-year degree to know how to work a printer and put on a tie.</li>
<li>What can you do with an IE degree? In general, it feels like it boils down to Math + a lot of stuff you'll never use. Would you actually be competitive in finance/banking against other candidates because of it? I don't really see how Physics 2 would give someone an edge on Wall Street.</li>
<li>What degree is worth getting for finance? I feel like for what I want to do, most programs just wast three years of your time, teach you semi-valuable skills for maybe a year, and then give you a piece of paper that says "this guys cool to hire" at the end. What kind of program will actually give me valuable skills, and not just certify that I'm capable of completing a bunch of useless general education classes?</li>
</ol>
<p>Hope no one takes the generally pessimistic attitude of this post the wrong way; in my defense, I'm pretty jaded about Tech at this point, and it's 4AM right now.</p>