mako23

My son seems to be interested in industrial engineering, he has been accepted to Lehigh. Not knowing much about this profession, is this a good carreer path for him? any thoughts are welcomed?

uha1

I have read many articles before I picked ISE, it not indeed exactly engineering, ISe combines basic engineering courses with economics and management courses. It has the highest potential for management as an engineering major.
what were his stats btw?

schell

I'm currently in my second year in Lehigh's industrial engineering department. Lehigh offers undergraduate degrees in both Industrial Engineering, which is more manufacturing based, and Information and Systems engineering which is more computer science/operations research based. The Info systems engineering degree was just recently created and is what I opted for because I enjoy mathematics/computer science more than physics and the other sciences involved in industrial engineering. I can't speak for industrial engineering, but my information and systems engineering classes have been fairly mathematically rigorous and challenging.

As for career paths, it is hard to say what someone will end up doing as an industrial engineer but at least at Lehigh, people don't seem to have any issue finding high paying jobs. I know out of Lehigh specifically a lot of industrial/infosystems engineers end up in banking/accounting/consulting firms. Based on the 2006 placement report (http://www.lehigh.edu/~incpp/documen...06FIN_0418.pdf), information systems engineering was the highest paying engineering major and industrial engineering fell in the middle of the pack. I'm assuming the info systems number may be skewed by the 130,000 value, but the average was $57,300 last year I believe. Industrial engineering and operations research tends to be looked down upon by other engineers, but there is obviously a demand if graduates are having no problem finding work.