 The best double majors for engineering, that's what we're gonna be talking about today. This was a highly requested video. I get these requests all the time, talking about Shane, can you do videos on these different random double majors? And so I'm doing an entire series on these just to talk about the different double majors that go really well together. But before we get into that, gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers and opportunities that are gonna lead you success and we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. So if that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already and you're new here, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Only about 18% of you have at this point and then hit the notification bell as well so that you never miss out. So first, let's jump right into it. Let's talk about engineering degrees and technology degrees. This is one that I get all the time people ask me about different engineering degrees and whether they should double major in computer science for instance, just because I mentioned that one so much on the channel. Well, if you look into it, an electrical engineering degree plus a computer science degree, you're gonna start off around $101,000 a year and then it's gonna be $152,000 in mid-career pay. That is absolutely ridiculous. That's like one of the best on the entire list. Starting off right after four years of college, right after your bachelor degree at $101,000 a year is just nuts. A little bit more realistic one would be computer science plus engineering and that one you're gonna start off around $74,000 a year and then mid-career pay would be 124,000. Now one career path that you might go down is becoming a computer network architect and they make around $112,000 a year. There's 160,000 jobs available and it's growing at 5% which is faster than average. I remember there was one time and I've told this story before on the channel but very briefly I'll just kinda tell it again. There was one time when I was studying in college and there was always this McDonald's that I would go to in order to study because they had free wifi and cheap coffee and a lot of the time there would be this other guy who was there working on his laptop. Eventually we started talking to each other and he told me what he did for a living and he was a computer network architect. It turned out that he was kinda one of the world's foremost experts on his specific niche in computer network architecture. He worked for one of the biggest companies in the world and he only worked like maybe 10 to 20 hours a week. It kinda depended on which week it was. Yet he was getting paid in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So he was basically just semi-retired and he was kinda just consulting for the company maybe 10 hours a week. Sometimes it would be a little bit more and then there would be some weeks where you pretty much wouldn't do anything. So as you can see, these are skills that are highly, highly valued. If you can get good at this sort of thing, get your own little niche down, you're gonna be good to go. However, I will say here that a computer science degree is already pretty difficult on its own and an engineering degree is probably one of the most difficult degrees that you could do. There are many people that aren't able to finish their engineering degree or even their computer science degree in four years and they have to take an extra year, sometimes even two years. So double majoring in these would be even more difficult. So you definitely wanna know what you're getting yourself into if you try to do something like this. Realistically, the average person is probably not going to double major in computer science and engineering unless you're some kind of genius or child prodigy. But if you do, you are gonna be good to go. And one test that I always like to do is type in what degree you want to get onto monster.com. So for instance, when you type in computer science degree about 142,000 job listings pop up. That means 142,000 jobs mentioned the keyword computer science degree. You can compare that to a theater arts degree where only about 235 job listings list that keyword. And an electrical engineering degree is somewhere in the middle, still pretty good. And that's around 23,400 job listings. So even if you just got an electrical engineering degree on its own, you'd be good to go and same for computer science. Realistically, you probably wouldn't wanna get both of them together unless it was a very specific situation where you're trying to go for a very specific job that actually wants people to have both of those skills. Next on the list, we're gonna talk about something that might be even more difficult, which would be an engineering degree plus another engineering degree. So for instance, you might get a chemical engineering degree and a good combination with that would be a material science engineering degree. With that one, you would expect to make around $74,000 a year starting out and 137,000 in mid-career pay. Another great combination might be a mechanical engineering degree with an aeronautical engineering degree and with those, you would expect to make around $66,000 a year starting out and 119,000 in mid-career pay. Another one that I think would be very synergistic, it would be a good combination, would be a computer engineering degree and an electrical engineering degree where you would expect to make around $73,000 a year starting out and 123,000 in mid-career pay. So one career path that you might go down if you got that last one, for instance, would be a computer hardware engineer. They make around $117,000 a year. There's 71,000 jobs available and it's growing at 2%, which isn't that great, especially when you consider it's in the technology industry. However, with that being said, the skills that you learn as a computer hardware engineer, it wouldn't be very difficult for you to just transition into another type of technology career. And I'm just gonna mention this again. This is very subjective, of course, because everybody has their strengths, but whenever I do research on the degrees that are gonna be really hard, engineering degrees are always gonna be at the top of the list. You want to be honest with yourself here and if I'm being honest with myself, I don't know if I would have been able to do an engineering degree at 18 years old. Maybe I would have risen to the occasion, but to be honest with you, I was more interested in just enjoying college. So doing two engineering degrees at the same time would be just crazy unless you're super smart or maybe it's your passion, it's like you just can't stop thinking about it, it's the number one thing in your life. Other than that, you probably don't wanna do it. A better idea, especially when it comes to engineering, would be to get a dual degree, something like electromechanical engineering, where you're gonna be learning something about electronics, but also about mechanical engineering at the same time. Next on the list, we're gonna be talking about an engineering degree plus a science degree. So one synergistic combination that you might consider here would be materials, science, and engineering. With this combo, you'd make around $69,000 a year starting out and 111,000 in mid-career pay. Another one you might consider would be polymer science and engineering and with this one, you'd make around $69,000 starting out and 103,000 in mid-career pay. So one career path you might consider going down is becoming a chemical engineer. They make around $108,000 a year. There's 32,000 jobs available. It's going at 4%, which is around average. Now one great thing that I will say about engineering degrees is just the fact that they're so well respected. So let's say you get a chemical engineering degree and then you want to become a chemical engineer and then maybe five years down the line, you decide, hey, I don't really wanna do this anymore. It's actually relatively easy for you to go into different career paths. The reason for this is because first of all, the skills that you learn as an engineer are just extremely practical. And then second, a lot of companies have the philosophy of just hiring the smartest people. They know that if you're an engineer, you're able to get through that curriculum. You're probably a really smart person who's also an extremely hard worker. Now the big problem with science related degrees and you see this popping up over and over again and I've talked about this in quite a few videos is the fact that it's not as good as the other STEM related degrees. So for instance, with a lot of science related degrees, you'll end up having to go back to school, get a master's or a doctorate, just to be able to start your career. There's not gonna be that many jobs available, especially in that career path. If you want to go down the science route when you get a science degree. Now of course there are some exceptions there and if you do your research and you plan ahead, you can definitely avoid that trap but it does seem to be a common theme. So it might be a good idea for you to consider mixing a science related degree with an engineering degree just because it's a little more practical and it'll be easier for you to find a job. Again, science degrees are no walk in the park. They're probably not as hard as math or engineering but they're still pretty tough. And so it would probably be very difficult for you to do this and you have to take that into consideration. But let's say you became a chemical engineer for instance, they have a 1.7% chance of being automated. So the skills that you would learn there are pretty much future proof. And even if that job was automated, the skills that you would learn would be transferable to all kinds of different types of careers. Next one on the list is probably gonna be a little bit more realistic for most of the people watching this video and that's going to be a business degree mixed with an engineering degree. Business degrees in general are extremely good for double majoring in and minoring in. They tend to not be as difficult as a lot of the other types of degrees like math, science, engineering, and technology, et cetera. Yet you're going to learn skills that are going to be evergreen and the statistics show that business related degrees and business graduates do tend to do pretty well. So one combination you might consider would be an industrial engineering degree and a management degree. And they would make around $63,000 a year starting out at 106,000 in mid-career pay. Now as an industrial engineer you would make around $88,000 a year. There's 295,000 jobs available and it's growing at 10% which is much faster than average. I do think industrial engineering in general is a little bit underrated and it is one of the better engineering degrees in my opinion. It's gonna be focused on streamlining and automating different processes within businesses. And I also think this would be a really good combination if you thought that you might wanna start a business yourself in the future. After getting a few years of work experience and learning really valuable skills, you might notice that there's a huge opportunity out there for you to start a business. And when I did my research on the degrees that produced the most millionaires engineering did come up as the number one degree and then six out of the top 10 degrees were business degrees. And I think one of the main reasons for this is a lot of them do end up starting their own business down the line and of course you can make quite a bit more money starting your own business than working in a salary job. And then I think the second big reason that business degrees tend to earn more throughout a lifetime, they tend to become millionaires is because you learn the basics, the fundamentals of personal finance at a young age. If you can run the numbers for a huge company it would be very easy for you to learn how to budget for yourself because you're gonna be exposed to and learning skills that are extremely valuable like budgeting, saving and investing at a young age. Most people don't start investing until they're in their 30s and so you're gonna have a huge leg up on the competition. The next one on the list is going to be an engineering degree plus any degree that interests you. And the reason for this is again engineering is hard enough on its own so you really don't need to take another hard or difficult degree. Most types of engineering degrees are practical and you're probably not gonna have that part of the time finding a job. And engineering degrees tend to teach you hard skills, very specific and measurable things like how to design an engine if you're a mechanical engineer for instance. Whereas there's a lot of other types of degrees out there things in social science for instance that tend to teach you the soft skills. Things like how to formulate an argument, how to think critically in real life and how to communicate with other people. So for instance, three subjects that I'm really interested in and I took extra classes on were film, history and philosophy. I didn't double major in them but I voluntarily took extra classes just because I find these subjects extremely interesting. So one career path you might consider going down is becoming an environmental engineer. They make around $88,000 a year. There's 55,000 jobs available and it's growing at 3% which is around average. But the truth is if you become an engineer you can pretty much go down any different type of career path. So for instance, engineering degree graduates who go into all occupations earn around $3.5 million over a lifetime whereas all majors and all graduates earn on average around 2.4 million. Engineers that go into management are gonna earn even more at around $4.1 million over a lifetime and even engineers that go into art are gonna earn around $3 million over a lifetime which is much higher than average. So the truth is you can get an engineering degree and you'll likely make pretty good money no matter what career path you decide to go down. Now there's a lot of argument here on why exactly that is. It could be because the skills that you learn getting an engineering degree are going to be transferable to just about anything that you do out there because it's basically just practical problem solving. It could also be that engineering degree graduates are just universally respected and so companies just want to hire them in general because they know they're pretty smart and they're probably pretty hardworking or it could kind of be a chicken or the egg scenario where people who tend to go for engineering degrees and ones who are able to actually graduate get through that very difficult curriculum are also people who are probably very smart and they're good problem solvers and so they tend to do really well when it comes to finances. Nobody really knows for sure whether it's correlation or causation but I think it probably has a little bit to do with both. And the next one on the list is going to be maybe you should consider not double majoring especially when it comes to engineering related degrees they're already going to be difficult enough as it is but if you put more work on yourself if you double major instead of doing something that might be more important like getting an internship, networking, learning valuable skills you probably are going to be kind of wasting your time. I see this all the time in the comments people will ask me like Shane should I get a computer science degree and a computer engineering degree and a management information systems degree and should I triple major? And 99% of the time the answer to that is going to be no. First of all, you'd have to be a genius in order to do that and you probably still, even if you're a genius you still wouldn't be able to do it in four years. Second of all, your time would probably be much better spent doing other things like getting internships, learning skills or networking. What I always recommend doing is figure out what career path you want to go down or maybe even just choose a few different career paths and then figure out what steps you need to take in order to get there. The best way for you to do that is to contact somebody who's currently working in that career path and then ask them what you should do in order to get there. Most of the time, they're probably not going to tell you that it would be a good idea for you to double major or triple major in something. I'm sure there's a few exceptions here and there where it might be a good idea for you to get like a computer science degree and an engineering degree at the same time that would be a really cool combination. I'm not going to lie. But for most people, depending on what job you're trying to go for it's not going to be necessary. And when you reach out to these people they're probably going to tell you to just get like one degree and then spend the rest of your time networking maybe doing projects, learning extra skills. And then most importantly, getting some real life work experience by either doing an internship or getting a job. But that's just my two cents here. This was a highly requested video. So, you know, make sure you do your research on your own. This is just my opinion. Most of the time, if you're really interested in learning about another subject it would be really easy for you to just maybe take extra classes, study it on the side or just study it on your own. A lot of the top universities like Harvard for instance, offer tons of classes for free where you can get lectures from the smartest people in the world for absolutely free. You can also just buy the textbooks that they use that semester for like 20 bucks off of Amazon and then go along while you're going through the class. So if it's just the knowledge that you're after you probably don't need to spend a bunch of extra money and a bunch of extra time double majoring in it. Now I've been working on this really exciting project over the last few months. It's not yet completed. It's only in version 1.1 right now but I'm basically trying to make the best and most complete list of college degrees in the world. I'm also gonna be posting things on my Patreon that don't really make sense to put on YouTube. Like for instance, I'm gonna put my stock portfolio investments on there. So check that out. Link is down in the description below. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. Hit that subscribe button. Only about 18% of you have done it right now. What the heck's going on with that? Ring the notification bell. Comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera. 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