<p>Overall do you engineers or future engineers hold schools like georgia tech and university of illinois urbana champaign or ivy league schools like columbia fu foundation and cornell engineering in more pretige</p>
<p>which schools would you rather go to</p>
<p>for engineering? georgia tech/etc over any ivy, except cornell</p>
<p>"for engineering? georgia tech/etc over any ivy, except cornell"</p>
<p>QFT.</p>
<p>oh and I forgot, I think columbia has a good engineering school, but I never checked it out before</p>
<p>but other than those two yea ivy sucks for engineering</p>
<p>If I met someone that went to an ivy for engineering, I'd know they weren't one of those people that didn't go to college knowing they wanted to do engineering (unless they went to Cornell, in which case they really wanted to do engineering).</p>
<p>Depends on the school, and the field. For computer science (which is an engineering subject in many universities, including all that I have attended), a lot of the Ivies are extremely good. For engineering in general...some of the Ivies are a lot better than they're stereotyped to be here, but Cornell is the only one that competes with Ga Tech and UIUC.</p>
<p>FYI, I know that you can only trust US News rankings so far, but at the grad level (which I think they do better at than undergrad) they consider Harvard and Princeton engineering better than Columbia (and all of them below Cornell, Ga Tech, and UIUC).</p>
<p>I would rather go to an ivy league school for engineering hands down no doubt about it.</p>
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I would rather go to an ivy league school for engineering hands down no doubt about it.
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<p>You're in the minority, dude.</p>
<p>Other than the ivy name (which can provide you with some good connections, or some future business clout), there's often not a lot of advantage towards going ivy. The best profs, the more varied course selections, the better equipment, all tend to be at the more traditionally "pure engineering" institutions. There's cross-enrollment between places like Harvard and MIT, but... do you really, really want to shuttle-hop between your classes?</p>
<p>I'd say that unless there's a specific advantage that going to an ivy (aside from, for example, Cornell, which is considered to be a prestigious engineering school <em>and</em> happens to be an ivy) presents you with (flexibility of choice, a lack of intention to stay in engineering, a preference of college "fit", something like that), then you should go with a school that has a clear-cut engineering department. Save yourself some headache and hassle.</p>
<p>There are those who disagree with me on this, and their opinions are perfectly valid. They will likely show up and express their opinions. They're not likely to change my mind.</p>
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but other than those two yea ivy sucks for engineering
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<p>That's a bit harsh, don't you think? I only have the USNews Graduate Edition handy (don't have the undergrad edition around here), but I see that even the worst-ranked engineering program in an Ivy (Brown) is ranked #53, which I still think is pretty darn good, considering that there are literally hundreds of engineering programs out there. </p>
<p>Put another way, if Brown sucks at engineering, what does that say about all the other programs (which are the vast majority) that are ranked even lower? </p>
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oh and I forgot, I think columbia has a good engineering school, but I never checked it out before
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<p>Uh, Princeton is ranked higher in engineering than is Columbia, according to the USNews Grad Edition. </p>
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FYI, I know that you can only trust US News rankings so far, but at the grad level (which I think they do better at than undergrad) they consider Harvard and Princeton engineering better than Columbia
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<p>Actually, Harvard is ranked a little bit lower than Columbia. </p>
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There's cross-enrollment between places like Harvard and MIT, but... do you really, really want to shuttle-hop between your classes?
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<p>Well, actually, I don't think it's much of a problem at all, due to the sheer convenience of the T (the subway). For example, I knew a guy at MIT who once calculated that it actually took him less time to get from his MIT dorm room to his cross-registered Harvard class than it took for him to get to some of his MIT classes. I think that just demonstrates how easy it really is to use the T. </p>
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I'd say that unless there's a specific advantage that going to an ivy (aside from, for example, Cornell, which is considered to be a prestigious engineering school <em>and</em> happens to be an ivy) presents you with (flexibility of choice, a lack of intention to stay in engineering, a preference of college "fit", something like that), then you should go with a school that has a clear-cut engineering department. Save yourself some headache and hassle.</p>
<p>There are those who disagree with me on this, and their opinions are perfectly valid. They will likely show up and express their opinions. They're not likely to change my mind.
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<p>My main issue is what I have seen, and surely what you have seen too: that the vast majority of students end up changing majors from what they thought they would be doing when they matriculated. If anything, I would suspect this is even more true of engineering, for, let's face it, most freshmen have no idea what engineering is all about. At least with the sciences and humanities, one might be able to develop some familiarity with those topics by taking the corresponding classes in high school: for example, high school graduates will have taken classes in math, English, chemistry, biology, etc., so they have some idea of what these topics are about. Very few high schools teach engineering classes. My high school certainly did not. </p>
<p>Hence, most prospective engineering students enter college with little idea of what it means to study engineering, and only in college do they find out, whereupon many will switch because they find out that engineering is not actually interesting to them, and even of those who want to stay, quite a few of them are forced to leave engineering because they can't survive the weeders. Hence, you have to think about what else are you going to do if you find out that engineering is not for you. For example, what if you turn down, say, Harvard for Georgia Tech for engineering, only to find out later that you don't want to major in engineering anymore? I'll bet you'd have wished that you could have that choice back, but you can't. </p>
<p>Heck, even many engineering students themselves don't really want to be engineers. As I have pointed out numerous times before, a significant chunk of graduating engineers from the best engineering schools (i.e. MIT, Stanford) don't take jobs as engineers but instead enter banking or consulting, or enter unrelated graduate programs (i.e. medicine, law, etc.) In other words, many of the best engineering graduates apparently and ironically don't want to work as engineers. So, again, I pose to you, what if you turn down Harvard for Georgia Tech for engineering and actually complete the engineering degree, but then decide that you actually would prefer to be an investment banker instead? Again, you probably wish you could have that choice back, but you can't.</p>
<p>That's why I place a high premium of flexibility and safety. The vast vast majority of incoming college freshmen don't really know what they want to do for a career. Hence, I disagree with the premise of the original question, for it presumes that people actually know that they want to work as engineers.</p>
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Hence, I disagree with the premise of the original question, for it presumes that people actually know that they want to work as engineers.
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<p>And yep, flexibility was one of the things I'd mentioned. Still, there are plenty of excellent schools out there that have the best of both worlds... Stanford, Cornell (true, an ivy), Rice, UT, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern... I guess I'm just not certain of why a person would choose a school that's distinctly weak in the field that they intend to major in with the intention of covering their rears in case they wanted to change their major someday, when there are so many options that would offer them strong programs in engineering <em>and</em> other things. Barring some specific cases where an ivy league school would provide a certain advantage for a student, it just seems a little bit like they'll have chosen the school for the name alone... Which I suppose is okay, if they're honest with themselves that they're choosing a school based upon generally-recognizable prestige, but I think they'd be better off choosing a place where they're happy and where they can get a quality education in whatever field or fields they determine they might be interested in.</p>
<p>Also, having been someone who spent half her senior year in high school on another campus to take courses that weren't offered at her own school, shuttling back and forth may be convenient in some cases (Harvard/MIT cross-registration, for example), but for some folks, it can give them a bit of an identity crisis. If you're taking all your classes somewhere else, what school are you really going to? Doesn't bother a lot of people, but I know it bothers a few. It bothered me a little bit. At the very least, it's something to consider.</p>
<p>sakky, many of the people I knew that went into non-engineering fields upon graduated had planned on doing it from when they entered college. They wanted the skill sets that engineers learn, because it's so highly valued, but they would never dream of actually doing engineering for the rest of their life.</p>
<p>Most of the engineers I know that changed their major due to "not knowing what engineering was" still usually stuck with engineering, but just changed their field. About half of my Materials Science friends had come into college planning on being ChemEs. The handful I know that switched out by choice went to math, physics, chemistry, or biology; typically fields tech schools are still pretty darned respectable in. The only people that completely left engineering were those that were the bottom of the class. They all switched to business. :p</p>
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There are those who disagree with me on this, and their opinions are perfectly valid. They will likely show up and express their opinions. They're not likely to change my mind.
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<p>Ok, I'll bite. I did my undergrad at the Cooper Union, and I'm finishing up my MS at Columbia, so I have experience with a purely engineering focused school as well as an Ivy.</p>
<p>For undergrad studies, I think the non-Ivy elites are generally much better than the Ivy's for engineering. The curriculum at Ivy's, from what I've seen, is much simpler than the more engineering-focused schools. The requirements were much more lax than my undergrad. There were a bunch of courses that were only electives, but I had to take them as requirements. The undergrads needed 15 fewer credits to graduate than what I needed. Based on my experiences, the student body at Columbia seems less interested in pursuing a career in engineering. </p>
<p>I'd also say that in general, graduate studies at non-Ivy's tend to be better. I decided to go with Columbia instead of CMU and UIUC mainly because I thought it was a better fit for my concentration. It had a different focus than the other programs, which I liked. The job placement at CU was also better for the field I wanted to go into (I remember being surprisingly unimpressed with what I saw at CMU, but perhaps that was due to location). Location was also key in my decision-making (though of course this has nothing to do with Ivy/non-Ivy) since being in NYC allowed me to work part-time during the academic year. I wouldn't be able to do that in Urbana. So basically my point is that as a general rule, non-Ivys are better, but there are certainly exceptions.</p>
<p>Why Cornell only Princeton is a pretty good Ivy Engy too.</p>
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And yep, flexibility was one of the things I'd mentioned. Still, there are plenty of excellent schools out there that have the best of both worlds... Stanford, Cornell (true, an ivy), Rice, UT, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern.
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<p>Well, some of those schools that you mentioned don't "really" have the best of both worlds in the sense that you can't automatically switch between majors. Let's use Berkeley as an example, since you brought it up. You can't just come into Berkeley as, say, an English major and then find out that you actually want to major in EECS and then simply switch over. EECS is an 'impacted' major at Berkeley which means that those people who try to switch in have to undergo an approval process, with a high chance that they will be denied and hence not be allowed to major in EECS. </p>
<p>Sadly, the process works the other way as well. Again, to use Berkeley as an example, some engineering students can't get out * of engineering. That's because switching out of engineering to something else requires that you switch to one of the other constituent colleges at Berkeley, and approval for such a switch is similarly far from guaranteed. That switch is dependent on one's GPA, and I think we all know that there are plenty of engineering students who have poor GPA's. The upshot is that those engineering students who are doing poorly are *precisely the ones who are forced to stay in engineering because nobody else wants to take them. </p>
<p>The upshot is that while some universities may seem to offer a flexible number of majors, for many students, the reality is that those schools are highly constrained. It doesn't matter if you go to a school that is strong in a particular major if you can't even get into that major and are hence forced to major in something that you don't want. From the student's point of view, that desired major doesn't even exist at that school. </p>
<p>Contrast that with a school like, say, Princeton, where you are free to choose whatever major you like. If you decide you want to major in EE, you just go right ahead and declare that major. Nobody is going to stop you. </p>
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I guess I'm just not certain of why a person would choose a school that's distinctly weak in the field that they intend to major in with the intention of covering their rears in case they wanted to change their major someday, when there are so many options that would offer them strong programs in engineering <em>and</em> other things.
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<p>I still disagree with the premise that the Ivies are 'distinctly weak'. Again, according to USNews Graduate Edition, the worst Ivy is still ranked #53, which is very good considering the fact that there are literally hundreds and hundreds of engineering programs out there. If the Ivies are weak in engineering, then what does that say about the vast majority of engineering programs out there that are ranked even lower? </p>
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I guess I'm just not certain of why a person would choose a school that's distinctly weak in the field that they intend to major in with the intention of covering their rears in case they wanted to change their major someday, when there are so many options that would offer them strong programs in engineering <em>and</em> other things.
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<p>I think that's precisely where we differ in our viewpoints. The way I see it is, the vast vast majority of college grads do not end working in whatever field they majored in. For example, most history majors don't become professional historians. Most poli-sci majors don't become professional political scientists. Most sociology majors don't become professional sociologists. Hence, I don't believe it should be automatically assumed that all engineering students will become, or even want to become, actual engineers. Again, I would invoke the fact that a large chunk of graduating engineers from MIT spurn engineering jobs in favor of consulting/banking. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the truth is, even if you do start off with a career that is directly related to your major, odds are, you won't stay with such a career. It has been estimated that the average American changes careers (not just jobs or employer, but entire careers) something like 3 or 4 times in a lifetime. Hence, the odds are extremely high that sometime in your life, you will have a job that has nothing to do with whatever you studied in college. </p>
<p>For example, one of my old roommates majored in EECS at Berkeley, but after working for a few years as an engineer, decided to become a real estate agent, and said that he was making far more money for less work doing that than he was as an engineer (although probably not anymore). Similarly, I know plenty of engineers who have said that they only want to work as engineers for a few years in order to compile a strong work record so that they can get into a top MBA program, and their expressed intent is to get into banking or consulting. They must have not gotten an offer as undergrads, and so they're going to try again via the MBA. Even here on CC, one of our old posters, ariesathena, worked as a chemical engineer for a few years before opting for law school. She once said that she will probably make more just in her first year as a lawyer than even the best and most experienced engineers at her old company were making. </p>
<p>My point simply is that there is tremendous uncertainty regarding the future. You don't know what sort of jobs will be available in the future, you don't know what you will want to do, you won't know what new opportunities will arise. You just don't know. </p>
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Also, having been someone who spent half her senior year in high school on another campus to take courses that weren't offered at her own school, shuttling back and forth may be convenient in some cases (Harvard/MIT cross-registration, for example), but for some folks, it can give them a bit of an identity crisis.
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<p>I'll tell you a funny story. There was a doctoral seminar on operations management run by the TOM (Technology and Operations Management) department at Harvard Business School. The class was comprised of 5 Harvard TOM doctoral students, and one other guy. This one other guy was cross-registered from MIT. But he wasn't really an MIT student either. In reality, he was a PhD candidate from a university in Spain that happens to have a cross-reg/study-abroad relationship with MIT. For some odd reason, that program doesn't actually allow such students to take classes in the MIT Sloan School, but does allow them to cross-reg at Harvard, and hence, to HBS (hence, it's a 'cross-reg of a cross-reg'). Hence, as a student from Spain, he ended up taking all his classes at HBS, which is how he ended up in this operations doctoral seminar.</p>
<p>What is ironic is that he was by far the best student in that class, far better than any of the actual HBS TOM students. The main reason for that is that he was the only person who actually cared. That's because the TOM department is in reality split into 2 subdivisions - Technology Management (TM) and Operations Management (OM), and all the HBS students were really TM students who were in that class only because it was a requirement to graduate. But they don't really care, for it had nothing to do with their research. But that guy from Spain actually was in fact interested in hard-core operations research. What that meant is that, ironically, it was the guy from Spain, who taking advantage of a double-cross-reg, who actually felt the most at home in that course, and it was the other students, who were actually taking a course * in their own home department* who were suffering from an identity crisis. </p>
<p>The moral of the story is that your level of comfort in a particular setting is really a state of mind. You can attend a very small school that is extremely strong in your chosen major, and yet feel completely isolated. My brother went to Caltech, a tiny, tight-knit tech school, and reported that some students who loved science and engineering nevertheless felt a strong sense of anomie.</p>
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sakky, many of the people I knew that went into non-engineering fields upon graduated had planned on doing it from when they entered college. They wanted the skill sets that engineers learn, because it's so highly valued, but they would never dream of actually doing engineering for the rest of their life.
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<p>This course of action strikes me as being rather unrealistic for most people simply because it presumes a level of foresight that most people just don't have. As a case in point, what if you are truly planning on entering a non-engineering field after graduation (i.e. law, medicine, consulting, banking, etc.) but, like you said, want the rigorous skillset that engineering can provide, but then just do poorly in engineering? I think all of us can immediately think of numerous engineering students who got poor grades. Those poor grades are going to severely damage your chances of pursuing that non-engineering career that they had originally planned on pursuing. For example, if you want to be a strategy consultant, you actually have to get a consulting job offer, and that's not that easy to get if your grades are poor. </p>
<p>I think what is far more likely for most people is that they just don't know what they want to do and they figure that engineering, if nothing else, will at least give them a relatively high-paying career right out of college. Hence, they figure that if they can't get the job or grad school that they really want, they can at least just take a job as an engineer. That feature is highly appealing to many people. </p>
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The only people that completely left engineering were those that were the bottom of the class. They all switched to business.
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<p>And what is ironic is that many of them will actually end up making more money than will the engineers. </p>
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For undergrad studies, I think the non-Ivy elites are generally much better than the Ivy's for engineering. The curriculum at Ivy's, from what I've seen, is much simpler than the more engineering-focused schools. The requirements were much more lax than my undergrad. There were a bunch of courses that were only electives, but I had to take them as requirements. The undergrads needed 15 fewer credits to graduate than what I needed.
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<p>I would actually say that the logic runs the other way: that the fact that the requirements are more lax and that fewer courses are needed is precisely what makes engineering at the Ivies so appealing, for several reasons. </p>
<p>Firstly and frankly, many of the top, rigorous engineering programs require that you learn topics that you just don't really need to know. For example, the vast majority of practicing chemical engineers simply don't need to know, for example, how to calculate Gibbs-Duhem or Maxwell Relations. The only people who really need to know that are researchers, and even so, only a subset of researchers (those who research thermodynamic potentials) really need to know it. </p>
<p>Secondly, those required rigorous courses at the top engineering schools may be perfectly fine for those students who can actually handle them. But what about those students who can't? For example, what about all those engineering students at a rigorous school like Berkeley who are doing poorly, especially the ones who are flunking out entirely? Those students, frankly, would have been better off if they had gone to a less rigorous Ivy, for at least they would be passing their classes and graduating. </p>
<p>The upshot is that those rigorous schools are often times unnecessarily difficult and painful which makes them outright dangerous for you as a student to choose to go to them. For example, what if you turn down Harvard for Georgia Tech for engineering and then flunk out of GTech? If you had gone to Harvard instead, while you may not be getting good grades, at least you'd be passing (as it's almost impossible to actually flunk out of Harvard). There is absolutely no glory whatsoever in choosing a rigorous school, only to flunk out. Employers aren't going to care about why you flunked out. All they will see is that you flunked out.</p>
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I would actually say that the logic runs the other way: that the fact that the requirements are more lax and that fewer courses are needed is precisely what makes engineering at the Ivies so appealing, for several reasons.
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<p>I understand your point, though I wasn't thinking the same way you were. The way I saw it, the fewer engineering requirements meant fewer opportunities to take the classes that were interesting to me. That doesn't mean those who take the extra courses are more prepared for post-academia life though. It just means that non-Ivys cater more towards those who enjoy engineering.</p>
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Actually, Harvard is ranked a little bit lower than Columbia.
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<p>Oh, hmm. I must have looked at a previous year's ranking, then.</p>
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The way I saw it, the fewer engineering requirements meant fewer opportunities to take the classes that were interesting to me.
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<p>I don't follow your logic. You could just take the interesting non-required classes as electives. In fact, with fewer requirements, a pure-engineering type will have more choice in <em>which</em> interesting upper-level engineering classes they take as electives. Or are you saying that since they aren't required, they will be offered less often (I'm not sure that's always true)?</p>
<p>From what I've seen, fewer engineering requirements meant more non-engineering requirements, or perhaps this is only specific to Columbia.</p>
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So basically my point is that as a general rule, non-Ivys are better, but there are certainly exceptions.
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<p>Definitely agree.</p>
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Let's use Berkeley as an example, since you brought it up.
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<p>I suppose that was a lousy example, and I apologize. At Rice, for a better example, you can switch in and out of majors as you see fit. I'm certain that there are other universities that are like this that have excellent engineering facilities <em>and</em> stellar non-engineering departments... I really think that one of those schools would be a better choice for undecided folks.</p>
<p>As for those of us who <em>are</em> decided...
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Furthermore, the truth is, even if you do start off with a career that is directly related to your major, odds are, you won't stay with such a career.
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<p>I look around my office here, and I see a whole boatload of engineers who decided to go into engineering and stayed in engineering. We love what we do, we do amazingly challenging and rewarding work, and for us and many like us, engineering is a rewarding and wonderful career.</p>
<p>I think that as someone in business, you see many fewer examples of engineering retention than I do, and so your opinions are shaped by that. My opinions are, of course, shaped by the idea that of the many engineers that I went to school with, only a handful of them aren't working as engineers anymore. In fact, I've got a great picture from my wedding... It's a photo of ten or so people who were all presidents of our high school engineering club, spanning nearly eight years of the club's existence. One of those people was also an officer on the debate team, and she ended up in law school, as she'd always intended, but the rest of us are all engineers (well, two of us are scientists).</p>
<p>All I see is that it's possible to know what engineering is when you start out, and it's possible to have a real passion for that kind of thinking and choose engineering from the beginning of your college career for the <em>right</em> reasons and to end up sticking with the field and succeeding in it... For those people, choosing a school that has that rigor, and those facilities, is probably a good choice. In my experience, there are a lot of those sorts of people.</p>
<p>It kind of sounds like in your experience, people chose to major in engineering not because it was their passion, but because a major in engineering had certain advantages... Being marketable, being a good foundation for doing what they really want to do, because it sounded good and they weren't really certain what they wanted to do with their lives... for those people, then yes, an ivy would afford them a certain advantage. </p>
<p>But for those of us who have discovered that engineering, particularly practical engineering, is our passion... and there <em>are</em> a lot of us, and I think there are many more than you're seeing... I just don't think it's in our best interest to choose an ivy. I just found out a couple of weeks ago that Cornell structural engineering has decided to close their lab and go fully-theoretical. No more concrete smashing, no more steel beam breaking, no more shake tables... and that's <em>Cornell</em>, the engineering ivy. Harvard and Yale didn't have those to begin with. For me, the experimental part is a <em>big</em> reason of why I'm in engineering, and why a lot of other people are in engineering. For people like me, an ivy doesn't make sense.</p>
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The upshot is that those rigorous schools are often times unnecessarily difficult and painful which makes them outright dangerous for you as a student to choose to go to them... There is absolutely no glory whatsoever in choosing a rigorous school, only to flunk out.
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<p>It kind of boggles my mind that you'd recommend choosing an ivy because it's easier to not flunk out of it...! I don't think glory is why I chose to go into engineering, or why I chose a rigorous field and rigorous programs.</p>
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And what is ironic is that many of them will actually end up making more money than will the engineers.
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<p>...and money definitely is not why I chose to go into engineering.</p>
<p>Ivy is a good choice for many people, but there <em>are</em> many students who <em>do</em> know that they want to go into engineering. Even for those of us who stay in engineering for only a few years and burn out after half a decade at a highly prestigious firm, we <em>got</em> to that highly prestigious firm because we went to a highly rigorous engineering school... I think if I went up to our HR department right now and told them that I thought we needed to recruit at Harvard and Yale, they'd look at me all funny. We don't consult US News and check out whether Harvard and Yale rank well, we just know that they don't have engineering schools and we choose to recruit elsewhere. We're not the only ones who do this.</p>
<p>OP, bottom line, there are a lot of opinions about this, and they differ a lot. I personally think that if you really, really know you want to go into engineering, a school that is highly respected as an engineering school is going to likely carry more weight with typical engineering employers than an ivy league school. If you know you want to go into engineering and you choose an ivy league school that's not known for engineering programs, you'll need to have a good reason for it, even if you're just making up a reason, which is fine. Within the field, we know what a respected engineering school is going to teach you, and we'll be much more comfortable with hiring you.</p>
<p>If you don't fit into the category of "I have a passion for engineering and want to pursue that passion," though, then you might want to look at other schools that will offer a better fit and more options. I think there are plenty of non-ivy schools that offer good reputations in several disciplines, engineering included, and that surely one of those would fit the bill (may I recommend Rice?), but if you're interested in something else entirely, go ahead and look at an ivy.</p>
<p>ken285, if you don't mind, could you say which field you were looking at? I'm a CMU alum, so it would hurt me if you turned down materials. :(</p>
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This course of action strikes me as being rather unrealistic for most people simply because it presumes a level of foresight that most people just don't have. As a case in point, what if you are truly planning on entering a non-engineering field after graduation (i.e. law, medicine, consulting, banking, etc.) but, like you said, want the rigorous skillset that engineering can provide, but then just do poorly in engineering? I think all of us can immediately think of numerous engineering students who got poor grades. Those poor grades are going to severely damage your chances of pursuing that non-engineering career that they had originally planned on pursuing. For example, if you want to be a strategy consultant, you actually have to get a consulting job offer, and that's not that easy to get if your grades are poor.
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<p>First, people that don't do well in engineering that didn't want to stick it out in the first place are usually made fun of by the rest of us. It's kinda like how chem and bio majors don't like premeds in their classes since they're just there to get as high a grade as possible and not because they have any sort of interest in the courses.</p>
<p>Everyone I knew that really had a passion for engineering was able to get through their classes without too much of a problem. While they didn't necessarily love their homework, they were able to enjoy the problems they were solving and see what was interesting and exciting about what they were doing.</p>
<p>And, really, a highly motivated person should be able to do well no matter what field they're in. And if they wind up sucking nut in engineering, they'd probably find that out freshman year and be able to switch out to some other field to keep their GPA high.</p>
<p>And it's true that those that switch to business majors might make more money, but I don't know how much more you'd have to pay me to give me the job satisfaction I get doing engineering.</p>