r/ChemicalEngineering • u/MistakeSea6886 • Sep 21 '23

Salary What’s the most profitable career path?

I’m a freshmen Engineering major that is taking gen Ed’s. I am thinking of switching to chemical engineering next year. I really like ChE but but want to pick a profitable career path, which is why I’m on the fence between it and Computer science. I did research and found that petroleum engineering is very profitable, and ChE can pick it pretty quickly. However with the way the world is going(more green energy), are renewable energy jobs such as nuclear power plants going to experience a boom in demand and become more profitable?

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u/ordosays Sep 21 '23

Graduating without any debt. Start there.

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u/MistakeSea6886 Sep 22 '23

I don’t have debt

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u/ordosays Sep 22 '23

Then you’re going to be fine in proportion to your peers

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u/69tank69 Sep 22 '23

Chemical engineers can fairly easily start at 70k a year and can reach 100k in 5 years. If you take 100k in loans and graduate in 4 years vs working and having to go slow in school so you graduate in 6 years you lose 2 years of that 70k/yr salary and since you are working while in school most of the jobs don’t contribute to a 401k so you also lose out on the money there which through the rule of 72 would double at least once. Also in the US if you don’t have your parent’s insurance you are stuck with overly expensive and probably shit insurance that you would be paying out of pocket.

Tl;dr without financial support from a parent it can be more efficient to just take loans