Petroleum Engineering

<p>S from New England accepted into college of engineering. Hoping to major in petroleum engineering (although he has never seen a pump jack)! Appreciate hearing from students in this major regarding rigor of major, internship possibilities and job prospects senior year.</p>

<p>Hi. I am a Junior at Tech.</p>

<p>The major is about as rigorous as it gets, and just getting accepted into it can be rough. The sophomore level courses like Thermodynamics and Statics (especially if you take the ME classes instead of the CE alternates) are very challenging. You’ll need to be top 5% to pull A’s in these classes, and over half of the students who took Thermodynamics last semester got a D or F in the class.</p>

<p>Internships can be tough to come by for foundational students whether they are freshmen or transfers. And they are having trouble now placing all their graduates because of the absolute deluge of new PE grads coming out of college now. The average offer for PE students coming out of college last year dropped by 15-20%. It’s still better paid than CS or Chem Eng by about $10K per year, but the gap is narrowing and there could be a glut of grads soon, so I’d keep my options open.</p>