<p>-Computational Finance/ financial engineering
-Actuarial Science (i.e. insurance math)</p>
<p>How much do these people earn?Im very curious.I'm doubling in chem E and math but was thinking about dropping math(it'll be a tough decision since i'm really looking forward to the upper level math courses)-but i might just stick with the double major.</p>
<p>I am upset to see that the core of these arguments is salary. When choosing a major, first assess things that interest you. Things that spark your curiosity. Things that you do when you take a break from regular school work. Things that you can spend all day doing without realizing the sun has gone down. I think that if more people did this, the stress level of many jobs would considerably decrease.</p>
<p>I understand that it is extremely difficult to find your passion before college. But it is not entirely imperative that you know what you want to do before you ship off. If you are not absolutely certain what your passion is (which is highly likely), then spend the first few semesters exploring different areas. Being good at something doesnt mean youll enjoy it. But the opposite is usually true. If you find your passion, chances are you will end up being good at it; with this, comes money (probably). </p>
<p>When you find something you enjoy, you will stop at nothing to study the inner depths of the subject/topic. Because of this, you will know more than other people in the field (assuming they dont like it as much as you) and will consequently get the better job, with the higher salary. On the other hand, if you dont end up getting big money no big deal. You will be doing something you enjoy, and thats the crux of the biscuit. </p>
<p>
[quote]
In fact, our all too familiar poster quotes,
"I agree that in many cases, engineering is overworked and underpaid, especially in relation to top management, or to 'prestige' jobs in consulting or banking."</p>
<p>Then switch into the area, consistently get top grades and get a masters a top school. It's NOT rocket science.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Again, Id like to point out that going for these prestige jobs because theyre prestigious and high paying is typically a bad idea. These are high-stress high-hour jobs. Doing something 80+ hours a week that you dont particularly enjoy is tasking (both mentally and physically). You will burn out quick. The money incentive is never enough to subside the stress of a job you dont enjoy. You will wake up in the morning, in your king size bed on Fifth Street, and dread going to work. The only thing that will keep you going is the paycheck from week to week. Is this how you want to live red-eyed and stressed out?</p>
<p>Dont get me wrong, there are many people doing these jobs that absolutely love what they do. You will find they generally make more money than those who dont. Youll also find that those people who love what they do are generally getting the front office jobs. </p>
<p>Please please please, take my advice. Find something you love and follow it. Dont let society, friends and family influence your decisions. If need be, go camping alone for a week. Assess your likes/dislikes take some books. Find your passion. </p>
<p>I hope I don't get heat for my argument here. I understand finances are important. But, in my eyes, self-fulfillment is the #1 priority.</p>
<p>i dont think its safe to assume that EVERYONE who asks about starting salaries for a given job is planning on pursuing that profession solely because of high pay.</p>
<p>I didn't mean to portray that I assumed that. But I gathered from many of these posts that people were "swaying" decisions based on salary statistics.</p>
<p>fool,</p>
<p>If I was solely interested in money and salary, I would have recommended investment banking. But I wanted a job that was more quantitative, exciting, and far more intellectual.</p>
<p>The reason why I brought up quant. finance and act. sci. is because of the both the salary and job nature.</p>
<p>These two are among the best professions and they are consistently ranked among the highest. Criteria taken into account when rating the profession are both salary, stress levels, hours per week, and many other factors.</p>
<p>Ah, I see. But then I would argue that many of the people in actuarial science are those who pursued mathematics as undergraduates and, typically, math majors are mostly those who love math. This would show why stress level is low. </p>
<p>Good statistic, though.</p>
<p>waleed janaab
the cost of living in pakistan is much much lower as compared to that in the US</p>
<p>
[quote]
Engineering is a terrible thing to choose if you're interested in a "back-up profession".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Huh? If you want a backup profession out of a bachelor's degree, then it is one of the few choices available. Maybe nursing, maybe accounting, but that's about it. Certainly you have to agree that engineering gives you far more of a backup career than the liberal arts do. </p>
<p>
[quote]
There are many people who pull near perfect scores as liberal arts students and attend medical school. In fact, I remember medical school adcoms were saying that liberal arts students, in general, have a better performance in medical school then students who majored in science/pre-med oriented majors. I also asked a few current med students at UCHSC and they said that an unusually large amount of their peers were english/history majors and that most of them were excelling. Do you know which group of majors are the most successful at gaining admission into medical? Biology? Biochemistry? Think again. These aren't even close. I believe it's history and philosophy top the list. For many people, these majors are simply better at developing critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>My point is that you cannot simply correlate liberal arts with engineering. Sure, you won't get jobs at liberal arts major. But guess what? Many liberal arts go into top law schools, top medical schools and make great careers. Also, the success of liberal arts majors who make it into medical/law school is FAR higher than engineering majors and for that matter, significantly higher than even chemistry/biology/biochemistry majors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I guess it all depends on what you mean by 'more' and 'higher'. First off, only a tiny fraction of liberal arts grads get to go to top law/med-schools simply because those top law/med-schools have very few spots available. The Department of Education has shown that about 1.3 million new bachelor's degrees are granted in the US every year, the vast majority (probably about 1 million) being in the liberal arts. But clearly there are not even close to being a million spots in the top law/med-schools classes.</p>
<p>Hence, the odds are, as a liberal arts grad, you will probably not get a spot in one of the top med/law schools. So now what are you going to do? </p>
<p>Secondly, I think your quotation of success rates of liberal arts grads to med school specifically is deeply misleading. After all, you have not accounted for the notion of self-selection. Only those liberal arts grads who ALSO happen to complete the premed group of classes and do well will be the ones who apply to med-school. Most liberal arts grads will never take the premed suite of classes, and many that do so won't do well. </p>
<p>Look at it this way. If you're an English major and you're thinking of med-school and so you start taking the first class in the premed sequence and you get a 'C' grade (or worse), you're probably not going to finish the rest of the premed sequence. And if you don't finish the sequence, then you can't even apply to med-school at all. Contrast that with the biology majors who, by default, HAVE to finish the entire premed sequence as a consequence of their major. Since that Bio student has to finish the premed sequence anyway, it is not much of a hurdle for that student to then apply to med-school. After all, he's already finished all the premed course requirements. </p>
<p>Hence, when you say that liberal arts students are highly successful in getting into med-school, you are looking at a highly self-selected pool. The ones who are bad don't even apply because they never finish the premed sequence. </p>
<p>The point is, the vast majority of liberal arts graduates out there will never be able to get into a top law/med-school. Sure, some will. But what about all of those that can't? I maintain that most of them would be better off if they had gotten a more practical, more marketable degree. Otherwise, a lot of them will end up working at the mall or working at other low-end jobs, which is exactly what is happening now. </p>
<p>So, sure, I agree with you that if you are confident that you are a star and that you can do extremely well in the liberal arts, then do it. But what if you're not? It's like saying that if you're a basketball superstar, then you should shoot for the NBA. But what if you're not? Most people who try to make it to the NBA do not succeed. That's why you have the tragedy of all of these basketball players who were never quite good enough to make it to the NBA, and never bothered to get any marketable skills, so now they're left with nothing. </p>
<p>
[quote]
So to our writer who "reaps joy in arguing ad-neauseam the supposed virtues of engineering as a profession" (and I agree with this description); stop saying that engineering is far better to major in than something like liberal arts. That's not only not true, it's also very misleading to future students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What is this, censorship? You are now trampling on my right to free speech. I have the right to say anything I want to say. And I will continue to say that engineering is far better to major in than a liberal art is, whether anybody likes it or not. You have the right to free speech, and so do I.</p>
<p>Right to free speech or no, this forum is not a sounding board for one's beliefs and opinions, guys. It is an open forum to attempt to help high school students figure out how to get the best education available to them. </p>
<p>The problem here is that everyone has differing opinions on what it means to get the "best education available." Does it mean personal fulfillment? Does it mean happiness? Does it mean financial solvency and economic advancement and stability, or is it a matter of pure academic pursuit of knowledge?</p>
<p>That's the sticking point here; being argumentative and standing on soapboxes isn't doing anybody any good. Y'all just have different, though perfectly valid, definitions of what a "good education" ought to provide to a student.</p>
<p>Being a student I both accept and appreciate different viewpoints on this topic. I don't think stopping a discussion like this would be more beneficial than letting it continue.</p>
<p>Being a student, I consider this a waste of time, because this is definitely not the best way to look for advice about careers. I would rather look for information at other, more confiable, sources.</p>
<p>Yes, but there's productive debate, and then there's name-calling and the hurling of epithets. I'm all for productive debate, but this is getting a bit "Jane, you ignorant slut"-ish for me.</p>
<p>Oh, please tell me you've seen the Dan Akroyd/Jane Curtin SNL debates of yore...</p>
<p>"Engineering is a terrible thing to choose if you're interested in a "back-up profession". Engineering is also very risky to choose if you're interested in persuing law or medicine. There are always those who get top grades in engineering who go into law or medicine but this is very rare. Just go to college, study hard in a business or pre-med or pre-law or poli sci - whatever - and work hard!</p>
<p>It is very deceiving to compare engineering with liberal arts. At first glance, history/english/philo majors seem useless but look at the whole picture.</p>
<p>There are many people who pull near perfect scores as liberal arts students and attend medical school. In fact, I remember medical school adcoms were saying that liberal arts students, in general, have a better performance in medical school then students who majored in science/pre-med oriented majors. I also asked a few current med students at UCHSC and they said that an unusually large amount of their peers were english/history majors and that most of them were excelling. Do you know which group of majors are the most successful at gaining admission into medical? Biology? Biochemistry? Think again. These aren't even close. I believe it's history and philosophy top the list. For many people, these majors are simply better at developing critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>My point is that you cannot simply correlate liberal arts with engineering. Sure, you won't get jobs at liberal arts major. But guess what? Many liberal arts go into top law schools, top medical schools and make great careers. Also, the success of liberal arts majors who make it into medical/law school is FAR higher than engineering majors and for that matter, significantly higher than even chemistry/biology/biochemistry majors.</p>
<p>If you're confident that you can do well in English and pull top grades, then do it. I know that I'm a good writer but I simply don't like literature and I could never major in English. If I wanted to go into law school, I would major in poli-sci or something like chemistry - not English. So I guess what I'm saying is that this "liberal arts" is certainly not useless when compared to engineering even though it appears to be."</p>
<p>This is quite humorous. I liked the laugh.</p>
<p>Also, your stats are highly biased. If you can't figure out why, perhaps you should work on your critical thinking skills?</p>
<p>That question is very difficult to generalise since many factors will come into play. Where you go to school is very important, where you want to work, (i.e. TX is good for chem/pet eng) etc..</p>
<p>I personally believe that the engineering profession suffers from a severe glut of talent made redundant by years of cut back and offshoring. I also think the schools graduate too many engineers. Again, just an opinion. </p>
<p>I honestly believe that you will have more options with a double honours degree in maths and computing or maths and economics. This leads to the traditional corporate jobs and the fields banking and consultancy quite well. </p>
<p>Of course, if you're primary goal is to design bridges etc... then of course maths/computing or maths/economics is not the right choice.</p>
<p>sounds pretty good</p>
<p>"Don't automatically think 50k starting salary for engineers...my sister is starting out at 80k with a masters in EE from MIT. I do think, however, that the technical engineer salaries cap off at around 110k and beyond that is mostly on the management side of engineering."</p>
<p>Keywords in the above are "my sister".......I pretty much stayed away from the female/minority/handicapped quota type of effects in my posts on the other thread, as any discussion on that theme could have poisoned the legitimacy of the points I was trying to make.</p>
<p>However, since it came up here from someone else, allow me to just say it...IF YOU'RE A FEMALE, ENGINEERING IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE BEST CAREERS YOU COULD CHOOSE. You will not be subject to most of the negative factors I've enumerated elsewhere, and there won't be any pre-conceptions from your male peers or management about effective work output. Stated differently, if your effective work output is really good, that will be cheerfully appreciated, but if it's not, you'll still be fine insofar as job security, advancement, etc.</p>
<p>How About Black People?</p>
<p>Um, right.</p>
<p>Because I was at a company conference a week or so ago and the guy sitting next to me, a coworker I'd just met, started talking about how he wasn't sure that it was going to work real well with this huge influx of women because what was gonna happen when all of them left and had babies? The company would go under, because they'd hired all these women and now they were all busy with their families.</p>
<p>I just kinda sat there, slightly slack-jawed, unsure of what to say.</p>
<p>So maybe we're not subjected to the negative factors that you've enumerated elsewhere, OH_DAD, but there certainly <em>are</em> some preconceptions held by male peers that make the job less favorable. There are situations I've been in where I've been the only woman, and have been regarded as though I had a spare arm growing out of my forehead. In order to talk with some of the "good ol' boys" engineers, I have to slide back into my southern accent (which I typically don't use, but it gets people to listen if I use it loud 'n' proud) and talk really loudly in order to shock them into listening to what I have to say.</p>
<p>It's nothing overt, and it's rarely anything that anybody <em>intentionally</em> does, and that's why I don't hold it against them, but I let a lot of stuff slide. Advancement's tough, as a woman, because there's always the unspoken idea that as soon as we get married and get pregnant, we're no longer worth the trouble, because we're going to disappear once any babies arrive.</p>
<p>It's not a hopeless cause, by any stretch, but it's not easy street. Every advancement is a triumph.</p>
<p>Gals: I highly recommend a very excellent book to help give you some strategies on how to present yourself confidently and how to play the unspoken game of the workplace, if you're a woman in engineering or any other non-traditional-for-women field. "Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office," by Lois Frankel, is a great book that pointed out a lot of stuff that I didn't even realize I was doing that might have undermined my efforts to advance. Such a good book. Check it out.</p>
<p>Yeah I wonder if there are any minorities in the work place on this board who could give us a viewpoint similar to aibarr's?</p>
<p>my dad does EE stuff and doesnt ever tell me about any type of racism, but maybe its different other places. I guess it isnt gonna be perfect everywhere anyway</p>
<p>harvey mudd = liberal arts school = engineering school, sorta.</p>