So I used to think it would take 5 years for double major but I actually only need 3 years to graduate in petroleum ( I had almost a full year of AP’s). I have almost straight A’s as a first semester sophomore (including the current semester).
What double major would you recommend if I decide to double major at all? Note: I own stocks and I intend on someday retiring to work the stock market. Is getting a degree in anything related to this worth it? I’m 19 and a current sophomore.
…
…
Why do you feel the need to double major in the first place?
If the pet industry is down, don’t you think completing two degrees in a normal 4 years is worth it since I can work as a mech engineer?
In that case you are probably better off just doing mechanical engineering in the first place rather than double majoring. Mechanical engineers can and do work in both upstream and downstream petroleum engineering jobs. The opposite does not necessarily apply. If you did have both degrees and left petroleum during a downturn, anyone looking at you for a mechanical engineering job will always have that question on their mind about whether you are just going to turn tail and run back to Exxon when the petroleum industry rebounds.
In other words, double majors are rarely, if ever, worth it. You’d be better off just graduating in 3 years, saving a year of tuition and fees, and banking an extra year of salary, or else just taking your time to stretch the one degree into 4 years while having a lot of fun and getting good grades… in most cases.
Are you positive that is a good enough reason (that they’ll think I’ll run back to Exxon)? If you’re suggesting four anyways, why not add a degree to it? Good grades probably will not be an issue as I don’t even attend lectures unless I have to. I just cram the night before and I’ve only gotten one B on an exam all year. Although I realize in my final years I will need to attend labs and the books and exams will probably become less synchronized. In your experience, how much more work is needed when you enter your junior and senior year?
Also, how good does a 3 year degree in engineering look on a job resume? Thank You.
Good luck with that strategy. I bet classes don’t get any harder.
That depends entirely on how much of a hoot you give about them and how well you learn the earlier material. It sure sounds to me like you couldn’t care less about class right now, so I’d imagine your future classes will likely require much more work. After all, cramming is a really good way to remember a few random facts for an exam and promptly forget them, and that doesn’t even factor in the fact that memorizing facts is generally a terrible way to learn engineering. In all, I’d say you are setting yourself up to have only a very cursory knowledge of your current subjects and getting to later classes and scrambling to relearn the things you should be learning now.
It isn’t possible to be positive. Every situation is different. Companies, however, don’t care about whether you have two degrees: they want you to be good at what your job entails, and very, very few jobs would require several degrees. It also is a real possibility that you can be judged, whether intentionally or not, if you have two degrees and such obvious circumstances and only using one of them because your other degree’s field is in a downturn. And why not add a degree? Probably because most people have better things to do with their time. You would also be better off using that extra year to do half of a MS degree and finish that up a year early. It will pay off more.
It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look bad. It looks just like any other engineering degree.
Are you actually in your second year and taking a courseload of junior classes or in your first year taking a courseload of sophomore classes (due to AP credit for many freshman classes)?
Sophomore classes are still pretty easy … organic can be the most difficult due to memorization required.
Junior classes - 2x harder.
Your idea of cramming for exams will become completely worthless when you are studying concepts (thermo, fluid dynamics, etc) rather than just factoids like chem 1 or DiffEQ. And by doing this now … well cramming typically results in very poor long term memory production or understanding of concepts, but can be somewhat effective at allowing regurgitation of simple factoids within about 2-5 days. So my guess is that if I would quiz you on something you crammed … excluding high school classes … a month later, or expect you to build on something you crammed, you would not do well.
Right now you are coasting on good high school prep (Required attendance, spoon-fed classes, one year to learn calc or physics 1) and I would guess, attendance at a school where you are in the top 75% of SAT, GPA, etc. Bad news is that you are getting dreadful prep in college now due to you poor habits, that the bottom 25-50% of your classmates are transferring out of engineering (ending the coasting on the curve of those beneath you strategy), and you are also not learning good study habits like your peers that are actually attending classes, reading the book, doing HW + supplemental problems, starting study groups, etc. You also will probably miss the clues that you need to study and end up one night at midnight realizing you understand nothing on the exam you are cramming for and then just get a D.
You also likely are really underestimating the other students in your major, they are catching up pretty quickly due to better teaching than their high school and mostly just good work habits (most engineering students are studying a lot with maybe some time out carousing once or twice a week).
Double major is an idea and if there is not a lot of required classes might not be a terrible idea (assuming you actually successfully finish even one degree in 3 years, which I doubt). You could also take interesting classes outside your major, take a minor, take additional engineering electives in say mechanical or petro etc.
ME is a much more versatile degree and no one typically thinks it is bad to change fields from say petro industry to auto industry or heavy machinery or whatever. You will specialize in certain skills in the workplace, which will limit the specific jobs you can fill well, so for example if you do CAD design engineering for 5 years, you may not be a plant engineer, or if you do plant engineering you may not have design and analysis skills, etc.