<p>I plan to major in either civil or petroleum engineering at Penn State this fall. My dream is to someday work on the business side of an engineering firm or construction company. If I plan to get an MBA/Masters in Eng. Management a double major with business would be useless right? And instead of just minoring in business would I be better off minoring in the offered Engineering Leadership Development and Engineering Entrepreneurship minors?</p>
<p>And just as a side question in case anyone knows which would be a better major for job stability? Civil or Petroleum? I like the pay and lifestyle of a Petroleum engineer but I'm worried about job stability due to layoffs and the shaky future of oil. Since Pete. engineers have a schedule where they work for say 3 weeks then are off for 3 I could use some of that time off to begin my managerial career.</p>
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Correct - an MBA essentially supplants and surpasses an undergrad business degree, and a Masters in Engineering Management places you on the engineering side in a management role, not the business side, so an undergrad business degree would still be useless.</p>
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Neither of those minors are really oriented towards working on the business side - the Leadership Development is essentially preparing you for managing engineers down the road (like a mini-Masters in Engineering Management), while the Entrepreneurship minor is giving you help to start your own company from scratch. A business minor MIGHT be better, if you can narrow down your aspirations.</p>
<p>FWIW, I would only really recommend the Entrepreneurship minor, and then only if starting your own company is really an aspiration in the next few years. For the rest, you can get better training down the road when it is more applicable anyway.</p>
<p>To plan in any detail, you really need to have a clear picture of what you want to do, more than just “work on the business side”. That could mean any of a dozen different roles, each with a different skill set and different educational paths.</p>
<p>By work on the business side I mean being the ceo of a major engineering company or firm. That’s my dream to make very good money.</p>
<p>Hmm… there are many routes to this goal, and I have never heard of any particular educational program that is really key. I would certainly not consider a business undergrad as being useful in this context, and I think the minors would help only a little, if at all. An MBA several years down the road would be the best bet, but most of this will be done in the workplace, not the classroom.</p>
<p>If you are dead set on still getting a minor, go the Engineering Leadership route - it might help you with motivation and methods for easing into low-level leadership postions, but even then you will have the inherent time gap. It will almost certainly take a few years before you are really put into a leadership position, no matter how hard you try, so by that point the lessons of the minor will probably be forgotten.</p>
<p>So neither of these would help for my long term goals?</p>
<p>I do not think significantly, no. The problem is that there are so many possible routes to being the CEO of a major company, and education is a pretty small factor that far out. An MBA would seem to be a good bet or you down the road, but in the near term all I can really tell you is to back-track from that end goal and see if you can identify any intermediate or starting positions that interest you - THOSE might be helped by certain degrees or minors.</p>
<p>For example, one possible route to being a CEO would be to start off by launching your own small company and using that experience to launch you into increasingly better executive positions. This route would be helped by the Entrepreneurship minor.</p>
<p>As an other example, you could instead join a company in an entry-level position, and begin working towards management-path positions and roles, starting small but workign up the ranks until you are the CEO. This route would be helped by the Leadership minor.</p>
<p>Regardless of what degree or minors you hold, there will be paths open to you that lead to beign a CEO of a major company. So instead, think about intermediate positions and try to prepare yourself for them - you will need to succeed at nearly every position you take to someday lead a major company.</p>
<p>So pretty much good grades can get me a good start then just tons of hard work.</p>
<p>Not JUST good grades (although they definitely help!), but also some research and/or internships, a little networking… the usual. And after that, tons of hard work.</p>
<p>I’ve talked to the CEO of my company on a number of occasions, as well as several of the VP’s. One of the biggest characteristics of these jobs is that they are hard work - often 7 days a week and 80-100 hours. I entered a program at work for new employees eventually interested in management positions, and by the end only about 1 in 8 actually wanted to be a VP or higher.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I’m fully prepared to work as much as I have to.</p>
<p>I know one PSU engineering grad who picked up the two minors you mentioned (Engineering Leadership and Engineering Entrepreneurship overlap alot). When he began interviewing for internships and jobs, he felt the minors helped him acquire his positions.</p>