<p>Here's what I've seen:</p>
<p>Engineering is clearly an excellent deal for the vast majority students who go to no-name schools. Most engineers went to no-name schools. In fact, I believe I was one of the first people on this board to raise this very point. This is especially true if you happen to live and work in one of the cheaper parts of the country. For example. I think some of the people who make out like bandits are the average students from, say, the Deep South of the US who get degrees in chemical engineering and then go work in oil refineries in the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast. Not only are you starting at 50k, but the cost of living there is dirt cheap, so you can afford to buy a decent house and live very comfortably on that salary. For example, you can afford to buy a quite decent 2-bedroom starter house in Houston (the "oil-technology capital of the world") for less than 150k. And if you're willing to live outside the big city, then you can buy a dirt-cheap house. </p>
<p>Engineering is also a pretty good deal for the superstar engineers. This would include people who can get admitted into places like Stanford and the Ivies (except perhaps for Cornell). The fact is, these schools are grade inflated such that you won't ever get a truly bad grade. You might get better grades by studying something other than engineering, but it's unlikely that you will ever get truly horrible grades that will expel you from school, prevent you from getting a job, or completely knock you out of contention for a top professional grad school. </p>
<p>To a lesser extent, I would say that any engineers at the top tech schools like MIT or Caltech will also never turn out truly badly (unless they flunk out, of course), at least in terms of getting jobs. MIT and Caltech engineering students might be getting shafted in terms of getting into law and medical school, but they should have little trouble finding jobs. If they got mediocre grades, then they might not get the best jobs, but the pure prestige of the school will almost guarantee that they will find a job of some kind. Furthermore, to compensate, MIT and Caltech engineering students tend to do very well in terms of getting admitted to engineering graduate school and/or business school later down the line. I've known MIT and Caltech eng students who got quite terrible grades, but nonetheless still managed to get respectable jobs (then later got admitted to highly ranked business schools), and/or got admitted to quite respectable engineering grad schools. The major danger at MIT and Caltech engineering is simply avoiding flunking out. Those people, I agree, really do get screwed and would have been far better off studying something easier. </p>
<p>Then of course there are those rare folks who go to difficult engineering schools and pull excellent grades anyway. I've known some people who have taken the most difficult stuff at Caltech or MIT and got near-straight A's anyway. These people obviously would probably not have been better off doing something else. </p>
<p>However, I agree that there seems to be a 'gap' as to who really benefits from engineering. The less-capable engineering students are getting a sweet deal. The superstars also benefit a lot, at least in the sense that they would probably be no better off if they had done something else, and arguably worse off. But the people who are in the middle don't really benefit. Those people who go to high-ranked, but not superstar schools like Stanford or MIT or Princeton are probably not getting a very good deal. The people who flunked out of Caltech or MIT are obviously getting a very bad deal. </p>
<p>Speaking specifically about other career paths, one thing I might advise is, in the caes of law, is to try to take the LSAT early, perhaps during your freshman year, or perhaps even during the summer after you graduate from high school (I believe LSAT scores are good for 5 years). The truth is, the LSAT isn't something you can really study for, beyond getting used to the format of the questions and the time constraints. 4 years of college probably aren't going to make you much better at the LSAT. So at least try out one of the practice LSAT books, or even go in and take the LSAT for real. If you get a terrible score, then you know you're probably not going to get into a top law school anyway, so there's little point in trying to protect your GPA to get into one of those top law schools. But if you get a very high score, then you will know that law may be a viable option, and so you may want to shy away from difficult coursework.</p>