As an experienced professional in the field, I’ll appreciate any advice you can give on what I can do to launch my career

To anyone who is considering going into ANY major simply because it pays well I would caution you to be sure that the core elements of your degree fall into disciplines you like, or at least have in an interest in. Look, Thermodynamics and DiffEQ’s are gonna suck no matter what but if you have a strong interest in the major you’ll muscle through the hard courses.

I watched guys in my house who were chem eng, Electrical and Electrical-Computer (I would say those 3 majors are a dead heat for hardest undergrad majors in existence) as well as the Mech Eng and Civils (the “easy” engineering majors, haha) go through the descending circles of engineering hell and if you don’t like engineering your life will be a living breathing hell for 4 years. I had 3 good friends drop out (well, transfer actually) and they were all brilliant but hated engineering and got into it for financial reasons.

If you do like engineering I would consider going to a smaller engineering school rather than a massive university (unless you get into an Ivy or similiar caliber college of course) – I can’t imagine being an engineering major in a public university and hanging with dudes who had a double-major in Basket-weaving and BeerPong. The jealousy would have killed me. Darwin and other engineers on this blog may back me up on this. I was in a frat as well with the significant difference that 80% of the guys in the house were Engineering majors. The rest were in – still difficult – science majors. During exam weeks you could hear crickets chirping in the house.

Engineering schools are not party schools so they may seem less attractive when comparing them to universities but the reality is that you won’t be doing the same partying anyway. So go to a smaller polytechnic and join a frat where they have files of every test ever taken by every proffessor on campus. Haha. I kid but in all seriousness this was a massive asset.

I would agree with Mike Lutter on Comp Sci. If you are a CS person you already know it. I took most of the same programming courses as the CS guys and can say they are honestly a different species. This is neither good or bad. But if you’re not of a similiar breed you’ll hate it.

And Kevin is right. The post-bac high pay landscape is dominated by medical careers. If you’re already an engineering major you might consider taking the 8 core classes you need to get into med careers. (2Bios, 2 physics, 2 Chems, 2 Organic chems (No fun those orgos…no sir). You’ll have the math requirements already and you’ll leave the door open to all things medical.