I attended a panel discussion this afternoon by UT engineering alumni who had gone on to become CEO's or some other bigwigs. They really stressed the need to take risks and to be versatile. Don't lock yourself into that frame of mind where it's like, ok, I'm an aerospace engineer, I'm ONLY looking for an aerospace job. When a good opportunity arises, don't restrict yourself by telling yourself what you can or can't do- if they want you for the job, then you've got what it takes. Several of the guys on the panel were originally chemE or something and ended up in the oil business (petroleum engineering). A lot of the stuff that you need to know for any given job is learned in employee training anyways. The stuff we learn in school, the entire engineering curriculum, is just teaching a way of thinking- how to look at a problem, approach it methodically, evaluate knowns and unknowns, deciding what needs to be sacrificed in order to optimize something else, etc., etc. Out in the "real" world, chances are we'll never use stuff like integral calculus again- the problem solving techniques we're learning as a side-effect are the important stuff.

They also de-emphasized GPA. Once you get out of college, NO one is gonna ask you what your GPA was. How much does GPA really tell you about a person anyways? It can't tell that you're a great leader, or you've got great people skills, all the stuff that isn't being tested. So when you go into an interview, forget about your GPA for a minute and just sell yourself as a person- cuz if you can sell yourself, you can sell a product... and the recruiters'll be like, hmmm, this kid's got upper management written all over 'em! Haha, well, maybe not like that, but yea- we're people, not numbers, so why not try to let them see us as people, and not merely as the personification of our GPA's?

Then they touched on the subject of getting an MBA. They recommended going into the workplace for awhile to gain some perspective. See where you are and where you wanna go; if the extra degree is actually going to help you. The MBA's not for everyone, and not all CEO's or upper management people have one. And basically everyone who had gotten an MBA said that they didn't really learn a whole lot- a mile wide, an inch deep. As opposed to what we're used to in engineering- like a deep, narrow hole straight into the ground.

Yup, I think there was some other good stuff, but apparently I forgot, haha...