I have always wanted to pursue a career in the sustainability/alternative energy/environmental sector. For a set of reasons, I am currently an accounting major with 1.5 years left until graduation. I am neutral towards accounting; I don’t hate it but I feel engineering will help me directly accomplish my career goals. (For personal accomplishments, I would also feel much prouder to call myself an engineer). So should I switch into engineering now? The thing is, I have a year-long accounting internship lined up starting this fall. Would it rather be smarter to take the internship, graduate, find a job in accounting and see if I would want to pursue an engineering degree? I don’t know if I want to do that.
An accounting degree will definately have some value, even if you end up as an engineer. The issue is, would the value equal or exceed the year you give up to get it. If you switch to engineering, you’ll virtually have to start over. None of your math or science will count, because it’s very unlikely they were a high enough level, even if you did take calculus. If you are certain you want to do engineering and certain you want to finish your accounting degree, you could skip the internship.
I did exactly that so I would recommend switching. Accounting is hard and the hours are long especially during tax season and I didn’t know all that but I was not doing well as I would have liked. If you can’t see yourselves doing accounting for 30-40 years, switch right away.
Perhaps next semester, you can take in your elective space some math/physics/engineering courses to see if you like and can handle the type of course work that you need for an engineering degree, while still working toward your accounting degree. You may then be in a better position to evaluate your interest and ability.
However, it would probably take 3 to 4 years to complete an engineering degree if you switch now, unless you have already taken a lot of frosh/soph math/physics suitable for engineering majors. Even if you decide to switch, it may still be better to finish your accounting degree (with which you have the option of working to pay off debt and save money) and then consider a second bachelor’s degree in engineering.