<p>A member of this forum ( Treetopleaf I believe ) wrote in another thread that "Engineering is hard. It's not a virtuoso performance. I think it's a process - one is growing an engineer brain with logical and analytical skills. That takes time and mental exercise." He/she was referring to Mechanical Engineering.</p>
<p>I just finished my freshman year in Industrial Engineering. I originally was thinking of majoring in Business but figured that i'd be better off getting some technical background and major in Engineering. I picked Mech Engg in my first few months at school but quickly switched to IE since it was more business related. My question, however, is that does IE require the same logical and analytical skills that other engineering disciplines offer since it seems to be perceived as an easier major? I was hoping to improve my logical/analytical skills with an engineering degree and not sure IE would do that for me? Could anyone comment?</p>
<p>IE does require logical/analytical skills and the same mindset development as other disciplines. However, while a MechE’s ultimate goal is a perfect motor or a robotic assembly line an IE ultimate goal is a seemless supply chain or a perfectly manned assembly line. IMO, the more technical engineers will always see degrees outside of their own as easy, because narrowmindedness is a side effect of the degree. I think most of them who decide they want an MBA and don’t want to end up managing engineers, like myself, will find themselves wishing they had gone the IE route. IE is probably more logic and less analytical, though you’ll find the greater your role in a company the more you will use statistics which is something engineers seem to scoff at, yet is the basis of analysis.</p>
<p>IMO, if you want business and engineering stick with IE. If you want to develop your analytical skills more take stats courses, and if you want to develop your logic skills more take philosophy classes. If you want to be a SME and stay in all the technical stuff switch to MechE. Personally, I like the idea of knowledge workers and would rather use my logic/analytical skills to tackle business strategy.</p>
<p>Hey.. Sorry for the late response.. Just saw your post. From your post, IE definately seems like the better option than ME. However, I’m trying to figure out whether IE would help me professional as much as it does intellectually?</p>
<p>1) What jobs do IE’s usually get after having graduated from undergrad school? My goal is to get into banking or financial consulting and I thought that by getting my MBA, I’d be at par with peers who got a BBA and then an MBA.
2) Until I do manage to get my MBA, however, what kind of jobs would I be able to work in? I hope to work for big corporations ( GE, P&W, Northrop Grumman, Bose, Gillette ), preferably aviation related.
3) Once I do get my MBA, would I be able to get positions that my business peers might get or would I be at a disadvantage due to my lack of experience in hardcore finance? </p>
<p>Any IE’s who got into finance, banking or consulting after a few years of graduating care to share their experience? I dont want to steer away from the business world by working in a strictly IE job for long.</p>
<p>Actually, I’m an OR ‘practitioner’. My MSOR came from a university that did not have an IE degree, and right now my PhD will be from another such school. While IE and OR are combined in many places, I really can’t offer much information about IEs: What they do, where they work, etc. </p>
<p>I don’t see Industrial Engineers in the government sector very much. The similar degree that I see most commonly is systems engineering. And, of course, there are lots of OR degrees around. </p>
<p>So, I certainly saw this thread and the other one asking for somebody to answer questions about IE degrees. I was waiting along with the rest of you for somebody to show up.</p>
<p>Just as an aside: remember that the CC audience is almost completely students, and heavily biased toward the younger end of that range. There are probably more HS students on CC than there are college students. As for the grizzled old veterans such as myself, I don’t think your target audience is very large. For questions such as these, you probably need to do some net-surfing over to the websites for the professional societies. Try googling “industrial engineering”. </p>
<p>Carefully guarding my CC “junior member” status,
RB</p>
<p>I just graduated from Georgia Tech with a BS in IE, so let me try to answer as much as I can from my experience.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>With an IE degree, much like other engineering degree, your choices are numerous. You can go into finance, technology consulting, business, traditional engineering and even marketing. What I’m saying is, if you can convince the interviewers that you’re the person for the job, you will get the job. Of course, a relevant experience helps, but you will be spoilt for choices, so you need to decide what you want to do. I was open minded, I had a computer/technology experience from my internships and had offers from finance, technology consulting and supply chain industries.</p></li>
<li><p>Same as question 1, you can work in pretty much most industries. If you enroll at a well known IE program, chances are, many corporations will be there to hire graduates. I’ve seen GE, Siemens, Toyota, Wal-Mart, UPS, Microsoft, Bank of America and many other Fortune 100/500 companies hiring IEs. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and GE Aviation are hiring IEs too.</p></li>
<li><p>What you concentrate on during your MBA will probably decide what job you get after you complete your MBA. A lot of IEs do finance or management and end up going to that track. MBA somewhat neutralizes what you did for your undergraduate, but having that technical background in IE will definitely come in handy. So in short, you can get into finance if you do a finance track in your MBA.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I could have gotten into finance, but chose to get a more technical experience before doing so. There’s tons of people going into finance all the time, there’s always demand. But there’s starting to be a shortage of proficient engineers in traditional engineering jobs, so I think it’s better to expose yourself to many different industries. That way, when you get up there, you have wide range of experience to draw your decisions from.</p>