Hello everyone! I am looking to put my decision to an end and I would like to recieve some advice. I specialized in math and science in High-school and started my first semester in college as a Petroleum Engineer. By all means my grades are fine, but the ambiguousness and riskiness of this major is just tempting me to change major. To my main concern. My first decision before starting college was a finance degree, but I was tempted to go to engineering as it is more lucrative and better for the long term. I am currently confused between Industrial Engineering ( The so-called Engineeeing buisness ) and Finance. My ultimate goal is to work with money and I have a passion for it, Im not sure if engineering is the right thing for me. But if Industrial is way better than a Finance degree and it involves some similar courses but in a more advanced way than Im willing to work for it. What are your thoughts on this ? And finally do u think that an Industrial engineering with an MBA can overwhelm any Buisness degree ? Thank you
If you are chasing money (and it seems like you are) then you will need to decide whether you prefer a higher average with low variation or a lower average with a high variation. Engineering degrees are, on average, some of the most lucrative out there… but there are relatively few opportunities to make the kind of money that makes people make reality TV shows in your living room! Business degrees on average pay substantially less, but the handful of people who do make stupid high incomes disproportionately come from business/finance/banking.
As to the MBA, there is no one answer. Like with law degrees, the value of an MBA depends a lot on where it is from. An MBA from an elite school will absolutely overwhelm an undergrad business degree from a good school, but an undergrad business degree from an Ivy can likewise swamp an MBA from a merely good school. It also depends on what you use the MBA to do - if you use it to move from engineering into engineering management it will probably not be a huge improvement, but if you use it to break into Wall Street finance then it can be huge.
Those are generalities. If you are worried about PE then I would absolutely switch to something else, and if you like working with money and are willing to work at it then Finance seems like a reasonable major for you. IE might be a decent compromise but I see nothing to indicate that you have any real passion for it and I believe that IE (one of the least lucrative engineering majors) makes less than Finance (one of the most lucrative business majors).
I have looked at many job ads out there, and there is a huge overlap between engineering and finance. In other words, employers are looking for the quantitative background that is usually a part of the core courses for both of these majors. Look through some of these ads seeking majors in “engineering, finance, math” or related field to see what I mean: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=%22engineering%22+%22finance%22&l=
You should have a lot of the same job opportunities with either major, so pick the one you feel most comfortable with and that you can enjoy and excel at.
Industrial engineering is more about designing processes, logistics, etc. based on math and statistics.
Some industrial engineering graduates do go into finance, although the higher paying finance employers do tend to be school-prestige-conscious, regardless of major (though in some cases, they may recruit at a school only for certain majors that are more selective than the rest of the school).
Industrial engineering will generally be more math-heavy than any kind of undergraduate business major.
You are talking about “quantitative or computational finance”, and those jobs are just as restrictive as other top-tier finance jobs - only a tiny fraction of engineers are even considered for such work. While they pay much better than standard engineering jobs they require an extremely deep focus in mathematics and computing and generally do not reach the same stratospheric heights as traditional finance, if that factors in at all.
IE’s versatility and focus on productivity (which equals profitability) has them rising quite high in the corporate world. Georgia Tech, the top IE school in the world, boasts that 1 in 10 of their IE grads has risen to the highest position in their organization (CEO, University President, Army General, etc.). Many IE’s also go into management consulting. It is a very lucrative major.