<p>Agree that a prospective engineer should do the type that interests him or her most. You have said your husband is a physician and I’m sure there are different levels of “prestige” in that profession. Most of the whole prestige thing is nonsense but it tends to exist. My husband is an engineer (and his father was ) and both kids are engineers. My kids’ great grandfather was a physician (back in the old days when they still made house calls and were not paid that well). Nobody had an interest in medicine since then but it certainly is “prestigious” to the majority of people. As colorado_mom said, the majority of people just don’t see what engineers do (unlike doctors, firefighters, etc.) but certainly benefit from what they do in many ways. </p>