I am not enjoying my classes (especially upper-level math). I am a quarter and a half into my studies as an industrial engineer, but am currently not enjoying it. My GPA is fine and the workload is taxing but not impossible. I’ll likely graduate in four years, whatever major.
How do the job prospects/pay differ from one major to the next? Will an econ/finance/accnt degree get a job with similar ease as IE? I ultimately desire to work as an international business something (international accountant, sales rep, etc). IE can go into econ, but not the other way around…
I am undoubtedly most afraid of regret, and am having major (haha) issues deciding. Any and all advice (knowledgeable or not) is greatly appreciated!!
Addendum: I’ll have zero loans leaving college and, for what it’s worth, I attend a “Tech” school.
If you are getting a business degree, your job prospects and pay may be similar. Not very sure about econ. In engineering, if you don’t enjoy some of your core courses very much, it’s fairly normal. It usually gets better when you move onto upper level courses because you will actually be doing something. However, if you are not enjoying any of the core courses for your major, then it may be worth the switch.
I’m interested in this too…
Can an IE get into better business jobs?
@Morbidicus bump. I’m fairly set on what I want to do after school, it’s just getting a (good) job in that field.
What focus area of IE are you thinking of going? A quarter and a half into any engineering school generally means being able to tell apart the EECS from the Civil Engineering building, so the interesting stuff comes later.
As you move along in IE you will need lots of IE math - not necessarily the calculus type stuff early on, but probability, statistics, optimization, and the like. This is - as you probably know - also true for business analysis type classes as well.
My school has a pretty rigid structure for any engr major, from what I can tell.
http://coes.latech.edu/ug-programs/curricula/curriculum_ie.pdf
^^ four year plan is page two. Two quarters in and it’s been pretty Draconian. Very few directed electives.
In four years Civil Engineering at the Elbonia College of Mines and Engineering (a small engineering school in the country of Elbonia in Europe) I had 2 electives total. The curriculum is fairly well rounded, and has a good amount of general engineering courses (Thermodynamics for IE’s REALLY? whose brilliant idea was that?). Also LA Tech is a smaller university (I graduated from Univ. Louisiana at Lafayette btw!) so there may not be a lot of electives.
Now the big question is what do you want to do with your life. IE is just the beginning. The curriculum looks well rounded, and not focused on anything specific.
I have taken many of the courses listed - some were even in Computer Science at ULL, Operations Research. That was a fun class. Work Design is full of those “wow this is simple but nobody does it” moments - we spent hours defining work processes for fast food workers :). Facilities Planning too.
If you’re doing well in the science/math part I would say stick to it, you’ll start seeing fun classes by late second year (Materials Lab was fun, and Cost Analysis? I have friends who calculate the cost of half an inch of wire on a board down to 5 decimal digits. Fascinating stuff).
I did a minor in business at ULL and believe me, I was horrible at it. Accounting? not me. Finance? do you really want me doing finances? Economics was interesting at least.
For international work, it depends on your language skills and overall business experience. International accounting is a very serious - and mind boggling boring probably 
- field. That’s way too specialized. Sales rep? probably, subject to having a good engineering background and language skills. International assignments with a multinational US company? fairly common, especially in engineering.
Talk to your advisor and see how you can choose electives to do it. But in general international assignments require a job here for a while, then short term assignments, and then maybe long term. IE and engineering in general are good paths.
Wow! @turbo93 thank you for coming through with a droll Dilbert reference and actual useful advice!!
I’ll be speaking with the folks at the career center Monday, who can hopefully add to the above. I detest upper-level mathematics, though I enjoy lower, applied mathematics. I’ll finish this quarter out IE, and make calls/pros-and-cons lists and deliberate over spring break. Thank you for your assistance!
I did not detest upper level math - I was outright bad at it, saved only by the fact that the Elbonian higher education system requires 50% to pass. Not 70 or 80%. That did not prevent me from acing every statistics or applied math or operation research or IE math class I ever took.