<p>I'm a civil engineering major. I'm in a construction internship right and it's not going well and I can't imagine doing this for the rest of life. It's too late to change majors. I want to know if anybody ever worked outside of engineering as a career even though they have an engineering degree. Is it possible? Is it hard to do? Can your engineering skills translate to other fields? I really don't want to start over in a new major.</p>
<p>A lot of jobs only require a college job but most of them the pay is not great. People going to ask you why would you want to work their with an engineering degree.</p>
<p>Grad school will probably open more doors for you. Not sure what are you interests. If you have a solid GPA and a good writer maybe law.</p>
<p>Teacher career is probably an obvious alternative.</p>
<p>Always could stick it out. One internship shouldn’t shape your whole civil engineer experience. May be another internship will be more your thing.</p>
<p>Could look into banking also</p>
<p>Ask yourself why you chose this engineering major in the first place. Talk to your campus advisor and the career center on campus for other internships in the future and to find out what types of careers you can branch out into after choosing this major. You may be able to do related jobs that interest you more.</p>
<p>What would you like to do as a career? That is what you need to convey to the people at school that will help set you up with the right internships.</p>
<p>Btw: Internships are just as important to weed out careers you DON’T want to do as much as identifying what you do want to do.</p>
<p>If you take certain required classes (biology, physics, ochem, chem, etc) then you’d be allowed to apply for med school. i know plenty of people who got an undergrad engineering degree opted for medicine. i believe law school and business school do not matter in terms of major either. </p>
<p>i know you said you don’t want to change majors but wouldn’t it be feasible to check out other engineering majors that overlap a lot in terms of course load with civil? i dont know too much about civilE but I do know majority of engineers take the same general classes the first year or two and then it becomes more specialized.</p>
<p>Engineers are good problem solvers and are good at project management, that is if one is a good engineer. As others have said, figure out what is it about civil engineering that you do not like. I know of engineering graduates who have gone into finance by taking few accounting, math and finance courses. I had an IT project manager with engineering background (he didn´t program, his job was to make sure projects got delivered on time and on budget.</p>
<p>We were at a wedding reception last year and met an older gentleman who told us that he graduated with a degree in aero engineering, but had retired as the administrator of a hospital. Don’t know the specifics of how he wound up being a hospital administrator, but we found that combination to be rather unusual.</p>
<p>We also know several Doctors with undergrad degrees in engineering…they are some of the best docs we know. I think their gruelling undergrad engineering work helped prepare them for med school.</p>
<p>Also know of several recent engineering grads that have landed pretty decent paying IT jobs, due to this economy. They did not graduate with IT degrees, but had enough experience to land jobs in the field since that seems to be one area that continues to hire.</p>
<p>Hope this helps…all is not lost with your engineering background. And, certainly don’t let one internship change your mind!</p>
<p>What exactly is it about your internship that you don’t like? Is it specific to the company? the industry? The kind of work you do? This may help others in giving you suggestions on what other fields to look into. </p>
<p>Just realize that working in the field in construction can be a very different experience than working for a civil engineering design firm in the office. </p>
<p>I’ve known civil engineering majors who’ve gone into law, architecture, IT, business, real estate, urban planning, and management consulting.</p>
<p>Most engineers become managers in one form or another. The analytical skills gained in engineering make them good candidates for Law School (think intellectual property and patent law) and MBA’s (a large percentage of Fortune 500 corporate execs are engineers).</p>
<p>ken285- Where I work, we spend most of the constructing and managing buildings. I’m not all that interested in floor layouts, building structural design and all that. And then you have to worry about putting in the HVAC systems and eletrical systems. It’s just seems so mundane to me. I would probably be more interested in constructing bridges or dams, but there are none of those we work on.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of focusing on environmental engineering or transportation engineering, since those are subsets of civil engineering. But I don’t know if those are in demand at all. Since state budgets are drying up, I’m assuming a lot of transportation agencies are getting gutted across the country. I don’t know if environmental is really as hot as everyone says. </p>
<p>I don’t like law and real estate. I have a minor interest in architecture but I don’t want to go back and get another degree. I have only a year left. I like urban planning, but like I said, I don’t know if there’s a future there anymore. I like IT and I am considering it, but I have limited programming skills and I don’t think IT firms hire civil engineers. I don’t know anything about management consulting. I have some experience in project management from my internship, but not in consulting. </p>
<p>Got ideas?</p>
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<p>Perhaps I’m not understanding something correctly, but wouldn’t the easiest route be to work for a company that builds bridges and dams? Going into an entirely different field is of course harder. You’re not tied down to your current company.</p>
<p>The examples I gave weren’t meant to be suggestions for fields for you to consider. It was just to show that people can go into various fields other than their major. Maybe first figure out what you want to do and then figure out how to accomplish it, instead of limiting yourself to options dictated by others.</p>
<p>With an engineering degree, you can go into engineering, business, law, or medicine. Essentially you can do anything because you’ve proven you’re smart.</p>
<p>Well I’m saying I might be interested in bridges and dams. I’m not entirely sure it may be for me because it’s still construction . And at my school, environmental and transportation engineering are under the civil engineering department so I don’t have to change majors. Do you know the job market for transportation and environmental engineers?</p>
<p>I’m guessing there’ll be a demand for enviro engineers with people becoming increasingly conscious about the environment and all. I’m considering doing that too! But I think I might do biomed. Do you plan on going to grad school?</p>
<p>I don’t want to go to grad school but i fear i may have to because master’s is the new bachelor’s. what’s the job market for transportation engineers?</p>
<p>I really don’t know the job market for transportation engineers, sorry! I’m only a senior in high school. Are you talking about like industrial engineering? And yeah, you really have to go to grad school nowadays. Do you think if you go you’ll get a MS?</p>
<p>My friend’s mom majored in engineering and ended up working in investment.</p>