I just can not make my mind up on what I want to study. I need to decide by Feb 13 and I only get one shot at it, so I want to make the right choice.
It is down to Civil Engineering and Industrial Engineering.
I prefer to say I am a Civil Engineer rather than an Industrial Engineer, but part of me wants to still go the industrial route. I just like that it is much more broad. If I choose Civil and do not like it, I feel my options are much more limited…Going the industrial route I will be able to pursue both engineering and business jobs.
I am taking a Civil Engineering internship this summer, so if things go well and I like it, maybe I could still pursue this career with an Industrial Engineering degree
I just hate that I only get one chance to choose what I want to major in…seems a little unfair for all the money I am paying for this education.
At my school you must declare major during your sophomore year. Due to a limited number of seats there is an enrollment control on certain majors. These majors you must enter during your sophomore year, therefore I will not have the ability to switch at a later time.
You can change major. I’d actually be pretty surprised if they honestly max out their seat cap in Civ E and IE. Purdue has a similar thing and pretty much anybody can switch into Civ E and IE.
I have degrees in both :). An undergrad in CE and graduate in IE (specialization in Human Factors Engineering).
Hard as it may seem to believe, depending on what IE specialization you choose, IE could come in handy. A friend’s kid is doing a PhD in CE and was told due to the nature of his research that he should pick up an MS in IE along the way (he’s doing research in optimization of waterways or some such obscure area). CE is very broad, as others noted, but invariably it focuses on building big, expensive stuff. IE, on the other hand, applies to all kinds of things (I use my skills for user interaction / user interface development).
If you like to make and break things and enjoy labs, the outdoors, and the like, CE will be great. If you spend hours thinking how to improve the workflow at Wendy’s, IE will be great. I’ve done both, and these days prefer the subtleties of IE work versus the hard hat CE work.
Yeah changing majors is fine, but you cannot change into a major that is under enrollment control. You have to choose that major during your sophomore year.
What do I dream of doing…I have no idea, which is why it is so hard for me to pick a major. Certain aspects of IE seem cool, I love problem solving. I also loved to build things in my youth (flow gardens, dirt jumps, retaining walls, and I liked to fix the structural things around the house). Although all of these projects were done using trial and error, no math was involved.
“I prefer to say I am a Civil Engineer rather than an Industrial Engineer” - Don’t base much on that thought because you can just say “I am an Engineer”.
It sounds like you’d have reasons to enjoy either major. Trying thinking of it as No Bad Choice here.
Went with mechanical… i think mechanical is a good in between. can probably get jobs doing mechanical, civil, and operations/systems (industrial) engineering work.