Advice for friend who is a depressed financial engineering premed

[bozz]

I remember my engineering days and how life got 10x easier once I dropped my engineering major.

A close friend of mine is currently a freshman and is majoring in Operations Research at a top 10 school. She is not sure whether she wants to go into finance or become a physician. As a result, she's trying to take premed classes and major in Operations Research simultaneously. The school she attends has excellent ties with Wall Street.

It's been a month of classes and she's already depressed. She's not really overachieving either. As a freshman, she's taking Physics and Gen. Chem at the same time along with 4 other difficult classes. That is apparently pretty standard for OR.

I'm honestly clueless as to what advice I can give her. Any Engineers/anyone who's tried something similar have any advice?

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[chris1264]

tell her to change her major. wall street cares as much about what you major in as medical schools

 

[txprodigal]

I remember my engineering days and how life got 10x easier once I dropped my engineering major.

A close friend of mine is currently a freshman and is majoring in Operations Research at a top 10 school. She is not sure whether she wants to go into finance or become a physician. As a result, she's trying to take premed classes and major in Operations Research simultaneously. The school she attends has excellent ties with Wall Street.

It's been a month of classes and she's already depressed. She's not really overachieving either. As a freshman, she's taking Physics and Gen. Chem at the same time along with 4 other difficult classes. That is apparently pretty standard for OR.

I'm honestly clueless as to what advice I can give her. Any Engineers/anyone who's tried something similar have any advice?

if she is dead set on wall street, tell her to forget the operations research major and just take a bunch of math classes and maybe some intro finance/accounting

they teach you everything you need to know during the training

the general rule is that the finance/accounting can be easily taught...but the analytical skills cannot so tell her if she's dead set on wall street to take a bunch of math classes

also, by the time your friend graduates, the markets will be fine. it's the '09 graduates who need to change their pants.

 

[mterp45]

I remember my engineering days and how life got 10x easier once I dropped my engineering major.

A close friend of mine is currently a freshman and is majoring in Operations Research at a top 10 school. She is not sure whether she wants to go into finance or become a physician. As a result, she's trying to take premed classes and major in Operations Research simultaneously. The school she attends has excellent ties with Wall Street.

It's been a month of classes and she's already depressed. She's not really overachieving either. As a freshman, she's taking Physics and Gen. Chem at the same time along with 4 other difficult classes. That is apparently pretty standard for OR.

I'm honestly clueless as to what advice I can give her. Any Engineers/anyone who's tried something similar have any advice?

Tell her to drop a course or two to lessen the load. A freshman should not be taking 6 courses in his/her first semester. She should get acclimated with the school and the change of pace accompanied with the highschool to college transition before piling on the credits. Getting a W or two is a lot better than starting off college with a 3.0 G.P.A IMO.