Hello,
I am a senior in high school and I am about to go into college. I am good at math and science and have been trying to figure out whether I want to major in business or engineering. I seem to like both. I want to make a lot of money in the future as well as be happy while working. Can anyone give me any idea of how I am supposed to decide a major that will influence a large part of my future?
Major decisions are made with a combination of understanding your likes and dislikes, interests and passions, and some fuzzy idea of your future career goals. You may not know what you want to do for the rest of your life (and that’s fine), but you may have some vague idea of the kind of work you want to do and how you like to work.
And your major may not influence your future as much as you think. When I majored in psychology in college, I never imagined working for a tech company helping build video games in the future. My office neighbor was a neuroscience major. I just read a story about an English major who got a $250,000 total package offer from Airbnb as a software developer. I know a linguistics major and a nursing major who are program managers at my company, and a women’s studies major who’s a producer. People change careers all the time. Your major is just a start.
The difference here is that engineering is a professional field; if you want to be an engineer, you pretty much have to get a BS in engineering. Do you like thinking about how things work? Do you like to tinker? Do you want to build things (not necessarily literally with your hands, but in the abstract sense)?
There are also majors that combine engineering/engineering principles and business: management information systems, informatics, supply chain management, industrial engineering, financial engineering, operations research, etc. Does your future college have any of those majors?
I’m personally going into a STEM field with anticipation of going into business. I’m going to minor in business to learn the basics.
I figure, like Juillet is saying, your career isn’t limited to your major, EXCEPT in the STEM field.
Drexel has a special major that seems interesting
http://catalog.drexel.edu/undergraduate/collegeofbusiness/businessandengineering/
Also, you can go for a major like “Engineering mgmt” which is a bit of both.