Career choices: recommendations and advice (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

I've always heard that too, but can't imagine why? Is this a real fact? and if so, WHY?!?!?!?!?

 

[KurtEP]

That's an excellent recommendation, although I'd also suggest that anyone interested in pursuing that path look into it early in their schooling. It would be better to take some of the earlier exams while the material was still fresh. I took the first and second a year out of school, and it took a lot of effort to get the material back (I didn't pass, for the record, although I came close). The tests are among the most difficult I've run across.

 

[Marque D]

Im not sure how the petroleum engineering would work. Im just not familiar with that as a discipline in college. Is it a program that is chemical engineering / geology or do they really focus exclusively on oil?

If he's competitive and confident that he can keep a strong GPA (3.6+) he could major in Finance. And then chase money in Financial Services (Investment Banking). And about the Med school stuff, a lot of the times you can major in pretty much whatever you want as long as you're in the pre-med program so that you still have the sciences and math that the Medical Schools will want. That gives you more flexibility so that if Med school doesn't work out you still have a degree in something you are interested in and so that you can fall into a even more specialized discipline of Medicine once you've got done with school. You could be a Computer Engineering undergrad you may still go one to Med school and then team up with a Electrical Engineer to do who knows what as far as designing equipment or tools for the medical profession.

Im being bias but Industrial Engineering/Engineering Management/Operations Research is a great field that most people never think of. It's a very hard field to describe. They say stuff like it's the Science of Better. And what that means is the deal with making things more efficient, logistics, risk analysis and projections. You could be coming up with or using computer programs or mathematical models for coming to a decision. It's somewhat popular for engineers for other disciplines to forgo getting a MBA and doing graduate work in Engineering Management. When you think of upper management, you think of decision makers. The data, analysis, and forecast that you come up with as far as should company x go with plan a or plan b. But it can that company x's facility makes 1000 widgets in a hour and 7 defects. How do you make that process or system make 1700 widgets in a hour and only have 2 or 3 defects in that batch.

Im also a Economics major with a concentration in Financial Applications so I may want to do something in Financial Engineering later on. But all those things from Industrial Engineering can find their way into Financial Services. Patent attorney is also a good place to look and having that technical or medical background is a golden ticket. CAP gets a bad rap about being boring but it's really not and a lot of upper management have them.

Im at SMU btw

http://www.scienceofbetter.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_research
http://www.fenews.com/what-is-fe/what-is-fe.html

 

[KurtEP]

That's actually another great recommendation for someone strong in mathematics. I'd never heard of it in undergrad, but took a course in it while getting my MBA and loved it. My sister is currently employed in the field and is all but dissertation for a PhD in IE (sadly, she'll never finish). She makes a good living and has a job she really enjoys.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Designing the sewer lines, water and plumbing lines, stuff like that. He made good money at the firm he worked for doing extensive CAD work and the like. Ever sewer system in the world had a great set of engineers behind it. (Well, maybe not Paris...)