I'm from the Chicago area. Everyone who was halfway decent in math decided to go to UIUC and study engineering (including me). It's what you think you're supposed to do because you're one of the smart kids and that's what the smart kids are doing.

Then...you get on campus. Some of the classes are really hard. Some aren't interesting. You wonder if that's what you really want to do. Lots of us switched to the business school.

It's insane to ask an 18 year old what they want to do for a job when they might not have ever witnessed a day in the life in that job. So, people change their minds.

People go feel compelled to go college before they know what career they are going to have. Many go into engineering because they want to build a time machine to solve this exact problem.

[quote=Anonymous]I just read something that says 1/3 of Brown engineering students go into finance or other business related things.

Why would one choose engineering as a major if the goal isn't engineering? Does someone with an engineering degree have an advantage in those fields?[/quote]

If you just look at the original source, there is nothing mysterious at all.
They mostly go into engineering adjacent roles and/or professional grad school that doesn't require a specific undergrad major.

https://engineering.brown.edu/undergraduate/internships-jobs-and-grad-school/post-graduate-career-paths

OP, please try to engage your brain and spend 2 seconds Googling before rushing to post.
Or chat with ChatGPT for an instance fix.

My DS is considering a BS in engineering and then pivoting for a masters. He wants to work in advanced manufacturing of some kind but not as the “talent” but rather in marketing, communications or sales.

Because its hard to turn down. Im certain that a lot of those 1/3 of brown students are going to Big 3 consulting firms, they recruit heavily, offer very nice salaries and honestly a more enticing job then designing weapons at Lockheed or working for Boeing who gets worse press everday.

Often as a safety net in case the other things don’t work out. This is especially true of kids who don’t come from money. You’re always aware of the downside risk and trying to reduce the severity of the worst case.

There is no "have to" in life. If someone enjoys a set of classes, or a major, or a launching pad like engineering should be, good for them. Same for an english major or psychology major.

What a lot of these fields do is really teach one how to think. Engineering is a problem-solving approach, using math and science especially. Going to law school doesn't just teach the law, it teaches a certain type of analytical thinking that a lot of people do not possess or have not trained their brain to do.

There are not a lot of things where you study and go right into a job to do that exact thing. Accounting would be one. Trade schools of course.

And remember, there are lawyers who are CEOs and engineers in private equity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to be an engineer to be a patent attorney.

If you want to understand the industry it’s good to have the background.

You want to run and engineering company not be one.

You do not have to be an engineer to be a patent attorney. Any attorney can be a patent prosecutor. To be a member of the patent bar you have to have an undergraduate degree in a hard science. Biology. Chemistry.

Don't take "have to" so literally. Engineering both trains you to think analytically and signals your ability to do high level math.

Anonymous wrote:You have to be an engineer to be a patent attorney.

If you want to understand the industry it’s good to have the background.

You want to run and engineering company not be one.

You do not have to be an engineer to be a patent attorney. Any attorney can be a patent prosecutor. To be a member of the patent bar you have to have an undergraduate degree in a hard science. Biology. Chemistry.

Anonymous wrote:I just read something that says 1/3 of Brown engineering students go into finance or other business related things.

Why would one choose engineering as a major if the goal isn't engineering? Does someone with an engineering degree have an advantage in those fields?

The result of a "regular" Engineering degree such as one from VT is a regular Engineering job. Great pay, great job. But they do not place into top phD programs with regularity, and they do not regularly place into top tech jobs where Engineering background is necessary but not sufficient.
The further up the chain you go (first to top publics GaTech and Mich, then up another big step to truly world class programs at MIT, Penn, Princeton, Stanford), the more the degree teaches whole-economy interdisciplinary Engineering: ABET accredited with math/physics /chem and the basics, yet taught with more challenging psets and faster paced, leaving room for leadership and business modeling worked into the engineering education. This produces Engineers ready to become project leaders, CEOs, launch a startup, spinoff into technical financial fields, or get a phD from an elite school and become elite professors, and on and on.
When one goes on tours and hears and sees the difference in the jobs available at these elite schools, it makes sense to do Engineering there. Once there--the proof is in the pudding. It is night and day different than how regular state schools run the ABET curriculum, never mind the on-campus research with world class faculty, and top tech recruiting.

I do not know anyone at Brown Engineering--that one is not recognized to be quite the world-class level of others, but maybe it is up and coming. They do focus on interdisciplinary education and they have the ivy brand for the connections to business/ finance, even if the phD /research pipeline is less robust.

An engineering degree gets you some technical chops clout. Shows you can do higher order math and analysis then if you were just a business major. Two friends are top finance guys in NYC making crazy money. They have masters in engineering disciplines and did that before getting MBAs and going into finance.

There's a ton of math in engineering so maybe they're using math skills and formula concepts.

A major teaches more than textbook facts, but also how to think, visualize, understand, problem solve. There's a lot of "conceptual" and "analytics " which can be applied to avast majority of other fields.

You like to understand how things work.

You have to be an engineer to be a patent attorney.

If you want to understand the industry it’s good to have the background.

You want to run and engineering company not be one.

I just read something that says 1/3 of Brown engineering students go into finance or other business related things.

Why would one choose engineering as a major if the goal isn't engineering? Does someone with an engineering degree have an advantage in those fields?