<p>Okay, so I'm a freshman right now (enrolled fall 09, uw-madison) in engineering (still unsure of specific major). At the beginning of the semester, before classes started, a ton of people I knew (a good 30-35) were 100% sure that they wanted to do engineering and were completely sure of graduating with some sort of engineering degree in four years.
Two months into the semester, nearly every one of those kids has decided to switch out of engineering. The reasons? Not having enough fun in classes, other majors like psychology/anthropology seem more fun, economics/business is easier work for a similar future salary, doing horrible in chemistry/physics/calculus, too much work, no 'wiggle-room' to pick classes that actually interest them, they don't see themselves doing any of this in the future, they want to have fun/party instead of study 20 hrs a week for each single class, credit requirement for graduation is too intense and other random reasons...</p>
<p>I, for one, can't believe the amount of people who have decided to switch out for good in two months of classes. I find all my classes (except for chemistry) relatively fun, I'm doing fine in all of them also (except for, again, chemistry). </p>
<p>I seriously think that their parents force it into their child's brain that an engineering degree is where the money is at. A LOT of those kids that I mentioned are having issues with their parents about the fact that they are switching out of engineering; why are parents so pushy about this? They're dropping classes and slacking a lot too...
Incoming freshmen really have to be warned about what they're getting themselves into. Moreover, parents need to encourage kids to take up what interests them (instead of convincing them into engineering because of the fat paychecks later on in life). It just saddens me to see so many unhappy people being forced to do something that they really have no intention of doing.</p>
<p>Those are just excuses for “I can’t handle this, I need the easy way out.” It’s kind of hard to say you’re not interested in EE before you even take any real EE courses. They just don’t want the pressure and responsibility associated with an engineering major. Once they graduate and can’t find a job (or find one paying not very well) they will be wishing that they had stuck with engineering instead of switching to psychology and partying.</p>
<p>Well, I went to an engineer/math/science school so people couldn’t remove themselves from techy classes even if they did get out of engineering…</p>
<p>But engineering is one of the few disciplines that turns high school graduates into professionals that have the power to improve or destroy people’s lives on a pretty massive scale. Every bridge that collapses, building that falls down, or plane the crashes is a testament to why engineering rigor needs to be maintained in education. In four years you are given the tools and power to do much… I sure want to know that engineers made the mental cuts before the power was granted.</p>
<p>Engineers get paid well but I don’t think that they really make that much money. I know very few rich engineers and the really rich one that I know made his billions through software engineering and a sweet-ass business model.</p>
<p>Yea, If you are in just for the money. Software engineering is great.</p>
<p>But it seem that most people do not know what engineering and software engineering is.</p>
<p>They are also many great software developers in the world without a degrees. But a degree always helps.</p>
<p>It’s nice to make a iphone/andriod app over a period of a month and make $25,000-30,000 in a year. It might not be much for an app but it helps a lot.</p>
<p>Which is the crux of the problem. Engineers have tremendous responsibility, but that responsibility isn’t matched with tremendous pay, particularly at the high end of the human capital scale. Some of you may remember ariesathena, a former CC contributor who was congratulated and envied by her engineering coworkers when she decided to quit her engineering job to attend a top-ranked law school, for they knew that she would probably make more money in her first year out of law school than the old-timer engineers at her company who had decades of experience.</p>
<p>I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Engineering is indeed a strong career choice for the average American who attends an average college. For example, if you’re an unremarkable student at Arkansas State University, then leveraging an engineering degree to a $50k starting salary is a savvy strategy. To put it bluntly, what other career opportunities were you really going to have? But the OP is at a highly ranked state flagship university where students have extensive career choices available to them. </p>
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<p>Or they may be headed for cushy jobs in consulting or banking for which the undergrad major doesn’t really matter and that pays better than engineering jobs do, or they’ll be admitted to law or med-school, boosted by the strength of their inflated grades. Then they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. </p>
<p>I knew a guy back in college who enjoyed partying, nightlife and consorting with his (numerous) girlfriends at the complete neglect of his studies, and earned mediocre grades despite majoring in a creampuff subject that required little work. In other words, he was in an easy subject, and still earning subpar grades. Other students saw the way he conducted his life and thought him to be crazy, and figured that they were better off trading the short-term pain of studying hard in a difficult major such as engineering in return for the long-term gain of securing a more lucrative job. Then that guy was hired by a consulting firm that paid better than the engineering jobs of his detractors. He certainly was crazy - like a fox - for neglecting his studies. </p>
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<p>Well, you should look at it from the parents’ point of view. Parents assume all of the downside risk - if their child finishes school and can’t find a decent job, he’s going to try to return home and few parents have the emotional fortitude to refuse to take him back. Hence, parents are understandably concerned about reducing that downside risk, and an engineering bachelor’s degree is a (relatively) safe degree.</p>
<p>and that is why you should go to a tech school-where most of the people around you are working their asses off as well. It prevents you from facing the conflict of – “why do I have to work so hard when they don’t?”</p>
<p>So… A question. Does Econ really have a similar starting salary compared to Engineering? The school I go to, which has one of the best few BBA programs in America, has lower average starting salaries than the college of Engineering (still highly ranked, but not top 3). I imagine Econ must be lower than that, right? I simply can’t imagine Econ being up there with Engineering.</p>
<p>Our school does not provide starting salaries for Econ majors, so I can’t just look it up. Don’t do some “Let me Google that for you” crap.</p>
<p>For example, the Econ (and Sloan management) majors at MIT earn higher starting salaries than most engineering disciplines. Note, this isn’t some scrub engineering school we’re talking about here, this is MIT. </p>
<p>OP, I’m glad you posted this. I was in Eng. school many years ago, and while I saw drops I don’t remember droves of them (in most classes). Maybe this generation expects things to be easier?</p>
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<p>I really wish that big schools like Madison gave engineers a place to live where they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the majority that don’t work all that hard. It’s very discouraging, distracting, and in my case has left a permanent resentment for slackers. And a sadness too, because they spent so much time while in an intellectual ‘heaven’ playing around.</p>
<p>Re: the parents, it may be that they want their kids to work hard in school and know that many majors won’t force that work ethic on them the way engineering will.</p>
<p>Hang in there - chem wasn’t my favorite either, but most courses I took weren’t very much like chem.</p>
<p>sakky, your example of the guy that partied all through college and got hired by a consulting firm is extremely unrealistic. I believe that it can happen, but I can tell you that 99% of the time this will not happen.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why everyone on this forum seems to downplay engineering jobs. The fact is that engineers on average have the highest starting, mid career, and end of career salaries. Sure you can read over on the business majors forum that they all think they will be partners at a big 4 firm and occasionally you will find business majors or other majors saying that their salaries will quikly surpass engineering salaries and engineering is a dead end career. This is simply not true. The fact is that for every ibanker that makes millions, there are thousands of graduates with very average to below average jobs. Sure there are many great carrers in business or other non-engineering areas, but if we compare apples to apples, meaning we compare similar positions for both professions, engineering will beat out almost any other undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>Sure you could say that investment bankers or CFOs or partners in an accounting firm make more than the average engineer but this comparison makes no sense. What about large engineering companies? Typically many top managers and executives have engineering degrees. I could use the same argument and say that a high level engineering manager makes more than an average business position. Its like people think that all engineers sit in a cubical, crunch numbers all day, make the same salary their entire career, and have no opportunities for advancement. </p>
<p>The fact is engineering is one of the most rigorous degrees and leads to many career opportunities. I’m not buying into all of the talk about how easy college majors are the smart way to go. I’m sick of hearing about ibanking jobs and things like that and how those are the smart people because they make so much more than engineers. We are talking about an extremely small percentage of graduates, most likely from places like Harvard. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from majoring in engineering if they really enjoy it. It can be a challenging and financially rewarding career. Don’t buy into the rhetoric that you hear about low salary caps for engineers or how creampuff majors can lead to more lucrative jobs as sakky suggests. This is very unlikely.</p>
<p>And more to the point of this post, I agree that many freshmen major in engineering not really knowing anything about it. However, it isn’t unusual for many people to drop out of engineering. I know that probably less than 50% of the people that started out in my ME class actually graduated with me. I think that this is mainly due to people that can’t handle the curriculum. Freshman chem, physics, and calculus are eye opening for kids that are used to high school classes. All you can do is hang in there and do your best. Most every freshman is in the same situation so you are not alone.</p>
<p>I was a female engineering student in a dorm full of sorority girls at Texas. I didn’t mind it at all! It was a nice change of pace from all the serious engineering classes. I could go up to the attic to the study hall if I needed real quiet. Saturday nights were always very quiet, too, lol! I also saw the effects all that partying had on a lot of girls - not good. If you want to find a way to focus on studying, you can. If you’re that easily distracted by the people you live with, you’ll have a long road ahead of you. There are ALWAYS distractions!</p>
<p>I would argue that it depends on the school. At the top schools, it is far more likely than a 1% chance that a guy - even a hard partier - will be hired by a consulting (or Ibanking) firm. For example, before the recession hit, a whopping 58% of Harvard male undergrads who entered the workforce took jobs in consulting and banking. </p>
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<p>Exactly. That’s the point. The reason why people on CC downplay the value of an engineering degree is that the average population of CC is an exceptional student. I’ve always agreed that if you’re an average student at an average college, an engineering degree is an excellent strategic career choice, and for that reason, I think that more average Americans should major in engineering. But the average CC reader is not the average American, rather, he is likely to be a strong student at a high ranked college. For those students, careers such as consulting, Ibanking, law, and medicine are indeed viable career choices. </p>
<p>The heart of the problem is that while engineering provides a highly respectable career for the average man, it doesn’t become exceptionally attractive or lucrative for the exceptional student. The very best engineering students from the best schools don’t make much more than do the average students from the average schools, which is why the former students often times don’t really want to work as engineers, instead preferring careers in consulting and banking that do appreciate their exceptional ability. </p>
<p>Consider the poignantly sad quote of former MIT engineering student Nicholas Pearce:</p>
<p>Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.”</p>
<p>How unlikely is it? Again, the key interacting variable seems to be the quality/prestige of the school that you’re attending.</p>
<p>As a case in point, take MIT. While MIT has no true ‘creampuff’ majors, some majors are nevertheless easier than others, and in particular, Sloan Management is undoubtedly easier than any of the MIT engineering majors. Yet the fact remains that Sloan Management students earn higher average starting salaries than do most MIT enginering majors: CivE, ME, ChemE, BioE & NucE; and is surpassed only by EECS and MatSciE. I can recall many MIT engineers bittersweetly remarking that they should have instead majored in Sloan Management and had a more enjoyable undergraduate experience. </p>
<p>One counterargument might be that MIT Sloan is a top-ranked business school and hence the graduates would be expected to earn top business salaries. While that’s certainly true, that logic is obviated by the fact that MIT is also clearly a top-ranked - probably the #1 ranked - engineering school, and so the engineering students should be expected to earn top engineering salaries. But, with the notable exception of EECS, they don’t. The correlation between school prestige and starting salary seems to be far stronger in business careers than in engineering careers. Unsurprisingly, nearly half of all MIT undergrads who enter the workforce - most of them being engineering students - took jobs not in engineering but in consulting or banking. In fact, before the recession, some of the largest recruiters of MIT engineering students were not the major engineering firms, but rather McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. </p>
<p>To reiterate, I agree that engineering is an attractive major for the average student at the average school for which consulting and Ibanking are simply not viable options. If you’re the average student at Arkansas State University, you’re not going to be recruited by McKinsey, and so engineering may be the best realistic career choice you have. But most CC readers are not average students at average schools.</p>
<p>Well, engineering has been a wonderful career for me. I get to work out of an office in our home in the Maine woods. I look out at 75-foot tall pine trees all day. I go running whenever I want to. I can take walks down to the river at the back of our property, or drive five minutes and be at the ocean. We’re home when our three kids get out of school, and I go to almost all of their cross country and track meets. My husband and I are our own bosses, and charge in the three digits per hour for our work. We can take off and go to our cabin in the mountains in the summer, and downhill ski in the winter at a great resort an hour and a half away.</p>
<p>So maybe a high salary is not everything? I would not trade my job for one on Wall Street, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>my job is fantastic as well. my situation is a bit different though; i work in the private aerospace field.</p>
<p>there are only 130 people at my company… most of them are very cool people. we get free snacks and drinks at work, don’t have cubicles, are expected to be “hands on” and are treated very well by the company owner jeff bezos. we are not just building rockets, we are building a company that is building spacecraft. as such, the environment is like a laboratory and research and development center and each person has been hand picked to be a part of the journey.</p>
<p>the hours are flexible, we have a nice gym, we can come in whenever we like, there is a special beautiful garden for employees and lunch is often catered for meetings.</p>
<p>The appeal is not solely or even mostly about salary, but more about future career prospects. Let’s face it: most 22-year-old fresh college graduates do not really know what they want to do, who they want to work for, or where they want to live. That holds true even for those who majored in a preprofessional subject such as engineering, for as we all know, the study of engineering differs greatly from the practice of engineering. I there tend to view management consulting as the perfect career for new college graduates - even more so than investment banking and its higher pay - for the simple reason that management consulting provides opportunities to rotate through various business functions, serve a number of different clients, and travel to a multitude of cities in the world. Consulting therefore serves as an extended and lucrative, albeit exhausting, job search. </p>
<p>But engineering doesn’t really provide those sorts of opportunities. I wish it did, but it does not. As Nicholas Pearce said regarding an engineering career: “…you’re locked into it.” Unless perhaps you work for a startup, you won’t be allowed to work on a marketing project, then a strategy project, and certainly not on an organization design project. You’re going to be stuck working on an engineering project. But the 22-year-old management consultant can work on a kaleidoscope of projects. </p>
<p>Perhaps even more importantly, the consultant enjoys opportunities to build high-powered social networks that few engineers can match. Management consulting firms, by their nature, ‘call high’: they are hired to advise the highest leadership of their clients. I know several people in consulting a mere few years removed from school who have already had opportunities to speak to a number of Fortune 500 CEO’s and board directors. On the other hand, many engineers I know have never had the opportunity, even after decades of experience, to talk to even their own CEO or board, much less the CEO’s/boards of other firms Engineers, sadly, tend to ‘call low’, speaking to Directors or VP’s of Engineering, but rarely anybody higher than that. </p>
<p>But to reiterate, I agree that engineering is indeed an attractive career choice for the average American at the average school who isn’t going to be meeting CEO’s and Board Directors at age 22. But the best students at the best schools do have those opportunities. My sincere wish is that engineering firms would provide better opportunities for top students. But as long as they refuse to do so, those students will continue to rationally choose other careers.</p>
<p>Hence the attraction of the high-tech startup/entrepreneurial culture, which I view as the last and best hope for the future of the US engineering profession, precisely because of the perks you described: a highly dynamic work environment, groundbreaking projects, excellent work conditions, and a crack staff of coworkers. If the best engineering students from schools such as MIT and Stanford are not headed for consulting and banking, then they’re usually taking jobs in startups, or in the rare larger companies such as Google that have heretofore managed to maintain a startup culture.</p>
<p>Sadly, however, most engineering employers do not provide that sort of environment. You’re instead stuck working for a certain number of highly circumscribed hours on the shop floor of a manufacturing facility, and/or are assigned a small feature of a boring or obsolete technology. For example, many software engineers do little more than build maintenance patches for old software versions that the employer doesn’t even sell anymore (but is still contractually obligated to support). I don’t know too many people who wake up every day excited to fix bugs on an obsolete software version.</p>
<p>saaky, just curious are you a consultant? what industry are you in? I assume you’re from MIT.</p>
<p>I’m currently at stanford getting a MS in civil engineering…I started looking into careers in consulting as well because, as you’ve so vehemently preached, they seem to offer more salary. And hey, if i’m paying 40K a yr to my school, i want the best return i can get. More importantly, I don’t like the fact that if I stick with my industry, that I can very easily be going to work with a cal poly graduate in the next cubical.</p>
<p>However, when I was reading Vault’s guide to consulting…they described elements of the typical management consultant, which seemed quite unappealing to me. For example, they work 50-70hr weeks depending on if they’re currently on a project or not…they travel a lot (maybe too much…)…etc. What’s your take on this, saaky? Also, I was wondering…IF I ended up working for, say, McKinsey, right out of stanford…and I only wanted to work 2 years…is it feasible/easy to transition back into a civil engineering job? Or will the civil engineering employer view my resume and see the lack of relevant experience and possibly a lack of passion for his industry?</p>
<p>Well, first of all, as I’ve always said, if you truly want to maximize your return on investment, you wouldn’t choose consulting. Better would be investment banking or, better yet, alternative investment/asset management such as hedge funds, private equity and the like. However, those professions do not provide the diversity and flexibility of experience that consulting provides. Working as a hedge fund trader basically qualifies you to be only a hedge fund trader. </p>
<p>Now, to be fair, I have a plethora of criticisms of the consulting industry as well, which I have enumerated on other threads. The consulting industry does run exhaustingly long work hours, particularly in the case of McKinsey. Although to be fair, many engineering firms do as well - the old joke regarding Microsoft is that it offered complete flextime to its engineers, for you can work any 14 hours of the day that you want. Nevertheless, I can agree that, on average, consultants work longer hours than do engineers. I can also agree that the travel is extensive to the point of excess, although I would argue that most young unattached people would tend to prefer such a travel-oriented job so that they can visit a new city every 1-3 months, as opposed to most engineering jobs in which you are rarely assigned to travel at all, but rather are stuck in the same office or the same plant every day. {I agree that those who are married, and especially those with children, are ill-suited for the travel requirements of consulting.} </p>
<p>But, like I said, I would simply treat the consulting experience as an extended (and lucrative) job search. So while you may be overworked, you may become tired of travel, you also know that you can quit at any time for a ‘regular’ job. Most new consultants leave after 1-2 years, usually for an attractive position at a client that they like (or to enter an MBA program). </p>
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<p>I suppose that could happen…if you simply wanted to become an entry-level engineer. However, what’s far more likely is that you simply won’t want such a position anymore. Not after breathing the rarefied air of a top-flight management consultancy, building deep global social networks that stretch to the world’s elite employers and tasting the power to influence multi-million (or even multi-billion) dollar decisions. As the old WW1 song goes: once you’ve seen Paris, you’re won’t want to return to the farm. </p>
<p>I’ve never known a single engineering student who took a job at a top management consulting firm and then afterwards decided that he wanted to revert to being a basic engineer. Granted, many of them became engineering managers, or founded their own tech startups, where they can leverage the social capital and all-around business expertise that they developed as consultants. But none of them would ever dream of working as regular engineers. Not anymore. '</p>
<p>Like I’ve always said, the real problem is that most engineering firms refuse to offer comparable opportunities to develop your career. The engineers are locked into working as engineers, with little opportunity to experiment with other business functions. As a result, they’re never provided the opportunity to develop all-around business skills.</p>