Hi. I am posting because I have no idea what I want to do with my future and it scares me. I am currently in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and just finished my freshman year. I have completed the general engineering coursework (math/physics/chemistry) but have not started work on a particular major.
I am not sure first of all what major in engineering to choose but also whether or not I should consider doing pre med. I originally chose engineering because I love math and science and thought that it would be cool to apply this, but I am very unsure about what I want to do moving forward. It is so hard for me to tell what I want to do for the rest of my life when I haven’t really done anything yet. And I also really want to decide on my path after this summer or else I will have taken courses that I don’t need, wasting time and money. I just feel like there is a ton of pressure placed on college students to know what they want to do, get good grades, financially manage college, and many other sources of stress all at once.
I have done well at NU so far (3.8 GPA in engineering). I know it doesn’t sound very humble of me to say this but I am pretty smart (more than most of the undergrads at NU). Again, it doesn’t sound very modest and I apologize for that but I think it is still something that needs to be said and taken into consideration. Because of this I think I can manage to have relatively good grades no matter what I major in. My GPA would be even higher but I had a bit of trouble adjusting to college first quarter freshman year which brought me down a tad.
I have heard that medical schools want a 3.8+ GPA for acceptance. If I continue majoring in engineering (ChemE or Biomed) I think my grades will remain high for an engineering standard but probably not 3.8+. Do medical schools look more leniently on engineers’ GPAs? Also, would going to a more selective/prestigious university like Northwestern make a difference?
In terms of money for future jobs I want to make enough to live comfortably but that’s pretty much the extent of that. If I make at least $100k-125k per year by the middle of my career I would be fine with that. I don’t believe making $200k or $300k would make me that much happier in all honesty.
This post has probably seemed very convoluted because I just threw everything going on in my brain down on the page but I guess my overall message is that I really don’t know what I want to do and I’ve been kind of stressed about that fact all summer. I know this is VERY open-ended but if anyone has any advice on what I should do or really about anything I have just said I would greatly appreciate it.
