Need Admission Decision Counsel and Perspective

JHS
Mon, 11 Apr 2016 22:40:32 +0000

@VeryLuckyParent : I based my earlier post on the understanding that, as you said, your son – like plenty of other smart, ambitious 17- or 18-year-olds – is “eyeing a career in either Finance, Consulting, or Hi-Tech” and anticipates getting an MBA. My point was that there are many different paths through which he can do that, but that the engineering paths are radically different from the non-engineering paths, starting right away. Of course, if he starts out as an engineer, he does not necessarily have to end up as one, and of course engineering is an excellent discipline in problem-solving and critical thinking that can be applied to non-engineering tasks. All of that is a given. But if your son goes to engineering school, he is going to have to follow the path of an engineer for 6-7 years (undergraduate plus a first job) to get value out of it, and that’s a very perverse thing to do if you don’t like engineering. And if he drops out of the engineering program at either a Midwest state flagship or a local directional university, that won’t be the end of the world, but he (and you) may wish he had gone to Chicago instead.

(To be clear: When I am using “engineering” here, I mean to exclude things like “financial engineering” that do not require ABET accreditation and can be approached just fine from an applied math perspective.)

On the other hand, if he really wants the fundamental engineering experience of actually making things, as opposed to manipulating numbers or theoretical concepts . . . well, he’ll have a lot more opportunity to do that if he goes to engineering school. And if he likes “Hi-Tech” more than finance, that is a field where generally engineers rule.