<p>PE = Private Equity
VC = Venture Capital</p>
<p>Both terms are pretty similar. Private Equity is the practice of investing in the equity of firms that aren't publicly traded, which covers a wide array of investing. Venture Capital is little more defined in the sense that it usually refers to investing in start-up companies with high growth potential.</p>
<p>"This my corny answer, but Investment banking and high arbitrary finance was the only type of field that ever gave me the rush that I wanted. Up until this year, I had wanted to pursue medicine, but I really didn't care to much about it, but once you see that rush at the age of 22 or 23, you question yourself and get this unstoppable urge for wanting more. Honestly, for me its the only field that is competitive enough to help me excel and live for that rush of living on the edge. All I ever saw in my life of being an immigrant in New jersey was being filthy poor, but in order to undertand how bad I want it, I wouldn't just do it for the money. Its all about the Rush. Read Ugly Americans, even though it really isn't about Ibanking, its still high-wire finance deals and living on the edge plus its really entertainging."</p>
<p>I like the way you put that. You somewhat explained why I may wan't to go into i-banking after college.</p>
<p>"This my corny answer, but Investment banking and high arbitrary finance was the only type of field that ever gave me the rush that I wanted. ..................................................... Honestly, for me its the only field that is competitive enough to help me excel and live for that rush of living on the edge. All I ever saw in my life of being an immigrant in New jersey was being filthy poor, but in order to undertand how bad I want it, I wouldn't just do it for the money. Its all about the Rush. Read Ugly Americans, even though it really isn't about Ibanking, its still high-wire finance deals and living on the edge plus its really entertainging."</p>
<p>kind of like what i feel as well... the sense of working with huge somes of money just gets my adreline(spelling? or sth like tht...) going</p>
<p>Let me know how working with huge sums of money at 2 a.m. feels when you haven't been home before midnight in weeks. Oh, and you'll never actually see any of that money, even at the closing of a deal, because the vast majority of money transfers are by wire.</p>
<p>^Hahah no shi*, you never see the money, I thought everyone knew that was common fact, but anyways its good that so many of us want to do something with our lives that actually make a visible difference. Engineers sit around all day at Boeing and try to build new things that 99% of the time do nothing. Lawyers are greedy sob's too, I mean most of them defend criminals and drug lord's and sue innocent people so they can make tons of $$, not really law and order now is it? Doctors half the time were forced into the proffesion by demanding parents and half of them hate their lives. Most of the time they never even get the chance to perfrom actual life changing operations, but instead help people who are in the emergency room because they have severe diahrea, not like that new show on ABC called miracle workers , now is it? But then there is us. The business people. We honestly make the world go round. Capitalism is our middle name and you know what, we acknowledge our greed and take it into a new level and say that we are put on this earth to do ourselves a favor and make advancements in our life. Whether that be money, power or prestiege we WILL at one point get it. Not everyone is a loser, just look at the 1% of engineers from Boeing....lmao</p>
<p>sallyawp: I'm not going to walk around NYC at 2AM with a $100k check in my wallet. Duh of course they'll transfer by wire. It's too big of an amount to walk around with in your pocket.</p>
<p>Seriously engineering is a ridiculously hard major that screws you over for grad school because of the severe grade deflation, and is also a major that leads to mediocre jobs with mediocre pay and mediocre hours and mediocre benefits, therefore leading to a mediocre lifestyle.</p>
<p>There's not another industry that even ALLOWS you to work 90 hours/week for 2 years straight.</p>
<p>^My point exactly futurenystudent.</p>
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Seriously engineering is a ridiculously hard major that screws you over for grad school because of the severe grade deflation, and is also a major that leads to mediocre jobs with mediocre pay and mediocre hours and mediocre benefits, therefore leading to a mediocre lifestyle.
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<p>Really? Because you were asking about Venture Capital and if you'd bother looking you'd see that many VC groups have tons of ex-engineering types. Engineers are also poised to switch industries. Consulting, Banking, etc. Every time a job is posted on the boards at my school for McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, UBS, they always include engineering kids as people they'd like to fill the position. Fact of the matter is that if you're an engineering major with knowledge of the financial markets you're good to go.</p>
<p>^yeah, but that is the best of the best from places like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Cornell, and UC-Berkeley. Your average engineer from most other schools does have a mediocre lifestyle compared to most business majors of their caliber.</p>
<p>No. Most business majors from regular school have significantly lower compensations than your engineering major. To head to the big business positions that pay outrageous amounts you must be from the best of the best places. To get a very good engineering package you can actually be from an average school. Thus the reason why in a universal compensation rank engineering positions always come out near the top.</p>
<p>An example: <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/index.htm%5B/url%5D">http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/index.htm</a></p>
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^yeah, but that is the best of the best from places like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Cornell, and UC-Berkeley. Your average engineer from most other schools does have a mediocre lifestyle compared to most business majors of their caliber.
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<p>My post above was referring to UT Austin, but yeah we have well-ranked engineering programs.</p>
<p>Obviously if you're at a mediocre school you wont have some of the same opportunities w/out substantial work experience, but if you've got that work experience you could make the switch to finance because you'd be a specialist.</p>
<p>If you go to a mediocre business school you'll end up be doing **** work, the engineer at a mediocre school is better off than the business major at a mediocre school.</p>
<p>^not realy because engineers tend to have lower GPA's and thus don't get accepted at good MBA programs because of it , even though admissions officers favor them. The get fuc*ed over by grade deflation so that mediocre business major has a second chance if he has decent GPA which is very easy to get with decent work experience all from some mediocre school.</p>
<p>I would know the lifestyle of an engineer. My dad is one. My dad's friends are engineers. I can assure you that my dad works A LOT and still can't make $100k, even with 15-or-so years of work experience. Also there was a point in time when my mom, who used to be a PERSONAL BANKER for Citi, made more than my dad. Actually my mom made more than my dad for basically the duration of the time she worked for citi. And my dad went to the best university in Korea (Seoul Natl U).</p>
<p>spoken like a true businessman, lol.</p>
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^not realy because engineers tend to have lower GPA's and thus don't get accepted at good MBA programs because of it , even though admissions officers favor them. The get fuc*ed over by grade deflation so that mediocre business major has a second chance if he has decent GPA which is very easy to get with decent work experience all from some mediocre school
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<p>Wrong again. GPA is a lesser factor when it comes to MBA admissions. Wharton has a 3.5 average, that means that people will be coming in with less than that. Northwestern's average is a 3.45. Harvard a 3.5. Dartmouth 3.4. Stanford 3.5. </p>
<p>These numbers are much less than the average GPA for the top law schools.</p>
<p>Fact of the matter is that the only place you might get hurt would be with law school admissions or med school. MBA programs care less about GPA and more about the work experience you bring to the table. Many of the people who go to top MBA programs ARE engineering majors.</p>
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I would know the lifestyle of an engineer. My dad is one. My dad's friends are engineers. I can assure you that my dad works A LOT and still can't make $100k, even with 15-or-so years of work experience. Also there was a point in time when my mom, who used to be a PERSONAL BANKER for Citi, made more than my dad. Actually my mom made more than my dad for basically the duration of the time she worked for citi. And my dad went to the best university in Korea (Seoul Natl U)
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<p>Okay, just because your parents didn't do anything with them doesn't change the fact that many engineers make up other fields. Like I said, look at Sequoia Capital, many ex-engineers there. You'd see the same for consultant jobs like at McK, Bain, etc. And then for the analytical positions at banks.</p>
<p>Take a look on Doostang at all the ex-engineers and where they are now. The founder of doostang went from engineering to credit derivatives at ML to working at a VC to now running doostang.</p>
<p>"Seriously engineering is a ridiculously hard major that screws you over for grad school because of the severe grade deflation ..."</p>
<p>I disagree. Engineering can be a great background for investment banking and other finance jobs. In my experience, students with engineering degrees are sought after by management consulting firms, investment banks, hedge funds and other fields where strong analytical skills are in demand. Of course, you would have to have strong interpersonal skills as well. The companies that recruit engineers out of college and the admissions officers at MBA programs know that engineering programs are tough, and they take that into account when making their decisions. In fact, a significant number of students at top MBA programs have engineering degrees, and either worked in engineering or finance before applying to business school. While I don't know that much about lifetime engineering careers, I do know that engineers have many opportunities for careers in finance.</p>
<p>I agree. People only in ibanking for the money are not going to last. You actually have to genuinely like finance and take interest in the capital markets.</p>
<p>Honestly, how many engineers are in actual investment banking and not in the technology or operations department, very few except for some traders and some very rare in PE or merchant banks or whatever you want to call them. The fact of the matter is that there will be less of them and they will be less likey to be recruited with a 3.0 from cornell engineering or a 3.5 from Cornell AEM for example. The business program is almost always favored by recruiters in Investment banking because engineers nearly all the time tend to have no social and verbal skills. I should know because my uncle is a proffesor at the Middle Eastern Technical Institute, which is equivalent to MIT, IIT, and ETH Zurich and he even taught a course in social interaction for engineers.</p>
<p>You inherently have a statistical problem justifying your statement: Most engineers don't want to be bankers/traders.</p>