<p>I am going into my 3rd year of petroleum engineering. I am thinking about switching majors.
I am doing well in engineering but I do not like doing it. I would not enjoy a career in it.</p>
<p>My interests instead lie in criminal investigations, agency field work.</p>
<p>Is it worth it to stick with engineering and finish the degree even if I do not want to work as an engineer?</p>
<p>Or should I switch entirely to something such as investigation forensics.</p>
<p>You are already into your 3rd year - assuming you can graduate within two years. </p>
<p>How did your interest shift from engineering to criminal investigation? What kind of criminal investigation? What kind of agency? What kind of forensics, as a matter of fact?</p>
<p>Forensics is a huge field and science and engineering majors are always welcome.</p>
<p>It’s a heck of a lot easier to get into forensics with an engineering degree than the other way around. Get the degree and then narrow your options.</p>
<p>I didn’t know engineering had much forensic application. I did some more research into the field and found that there are a lot of opportunities in Arson forensics for fire protection engineers.</p>
<p>My old university offers the FP program but it might not be worth the trouble to transfer back.</p>
<p>Investigation forensics? This doesn’t sound like a very legitimate major. Lots of directional state schools offer a lot of very appealing sounding majors (often with a real job application focus) but because they aren’t actually grounded in a primary foundational discipline, they are usually considered to lack rigor (which doesn’t help with the job market, and certainly not for graduate school if you pursue that later). A good general rule of thumb is to take a well established, foundational academic discipline that is relatively broad rather than some that sounds very cool but is actually very narrow and very applied. It’s all university marketing. Don’t get sucked into it.</p>
<p>If you want to become an investigator or go into forensics, stay with engineering, or at least choose a primarily basic discipline that is related to your area of interest (e.g. instead of majoring in ‘criminal investigation’ or ‘forensics’ look at say a degree in chemistry). Google is your friend here. Find out the actual degrees of folks actually working in the area you are interested in working in.</p>
<p>Why not switch to chemical engineering? I’m sure there is application of that in forensics. Engineers are welcome in a huge variety of fields, and if you do any sort of research / lab work before graduating, the better your chances. </p>
<p>I’m not very well informed in that field, but I’m sure you could find a way.</p>
<p>alchemist007 what makes you disklike petroleum engineering? you say you would not enjoy a career in it. why is that? Is it just because you would much rather do forensics?</p>
<p>After taking a few Petroleum engineering courses Ive learned it is a little on the boring side. Its a field with excellent job/money prospects but I might switch to something I am more interested in.</p>