 What's happening guys it's Shane here so I posted a video the other week on the college degree tier list where I basically ranked different college degrees on whether they're worth it or not and I definitely made a few engineers mad when I put engineering an A tier instead of S tier definitely got a few angry comments about that and then I also got some really good arguments for why I should have put engineering an S tier and I totally respect these comments and I definitely see your side of the argument and then others told me that I should make a video ranking the engineering degrees and so that's what we're doing today and so here we are I've done a ton of research on this and studies have shown that in order to get the most out of this video you have to be engaged with it and what better way to engage with this video than to absolutely destroy the like button no but all kidding aside this does actually help defeat the evil YouTube algorithm so I truly do appreciate it if you just give the like button a little tap and after ranking all of them I'm also going to basically share with you how you can decide which engineering degree is the best for you and then I'm also going to tell you if I changed my mind and I would now put engineering an S tier instead of A tier now I also only included the top 11 most common engineering degrees there's a bunch of like really random kind of like combination ones that I didn't include on the list because again this video would just go way too long so first on the list is going to be chemical engineering and what they do in a nutshell is they basically apply the principles of chemistry of course but also physics and all sorts of other sciences in order to solve problems related to food drugs and a lot of different other types of products now this one was number three on the list in terms of pay so it came in at about a hundred and four thousand nine hundred dollars per year in terms of median salary they were also number three on the list tied for number three with a job outlook of about six percent and by job outlook I mean how much the job is expected to grow in the next 10 years and the average for all professions with job outlook is generally around four to six percent over a 10 year period so this is on the higher side of average but when it comes to engineering jobs this is actually above average it's quite good on the list it's tied for number three now pulling these stats from bls.gov the amount of jobs out there right now in the united states of america is about thirty three thousand nine hundred and that is not very good on this list unfortunately that actually comes in at about number eight and it's generally a good idea to go into a field where there's a lot of jobs just because with more jobs come more opportunities the chances that you'll have to move somewhere just to you know get a job are much lower you'll probably be able to find a job in your hometown or wherever you want to live and so overall generally it's just much better to have more jobs available but still on the other hand chemical engineering and chemistry in general is making a comeback and it is one of those careers where companies do covet the skill set that you get from a chemical engineering degree so it's still not a bad choice overall it's relatively flexible you can jump around and kind of do a bunch of different jobs that are related to chemical engineering so you know the stats that bls provides aren't necessarily completely accurate because you might get a chemical engineering degree and then you go work in something that's kind of unrelated but the skills that you learn help you a lot but because of the fact that there's not that many jobs there's a really good chance that you might have to move somewhere you know there might not be a really awesome amazing career just wrapped in a little package with a bow on it waiting for you right after you graduate in your dream city so for all of these reasons i'm going to go ahead and put chemical engineering in a tier still very solid but it's not the best on the list next on the list is going to be electrical engineering and i think most people kind of get what you do with electrical engineering so i'm not really going to go into that but the median pay is nearly six figures at about $99,000 a year and that ranks about number four on the list now there are a ton of jobs for electrical engineers in the united states almost 10 times as many as there are for chemical engineers about 330,000 the only problem is that the job outlook in terms of you know how much they expect it to grow in the next 10% isn't nearly as good it's only about 2% this ties for about six on the list so it's kind of in the middle range if not like a little worse than the middle range but electrical engineering is also one of those jobs that's very flexible and you will probably be able to get a job wherever you live or wherever you want to live if you get bored being a electrical engineer there's a lot of other job opportunities that you can move into and even though the growth is only predicted to be about 2% 2% of 330,000 is still more than 6% of 30,000 so there's still a lot of job openings that are going to come up in the next 10 years and we aren't going to stop using electrical devices anytime soon so this is just a degree that seems extremely practical this one is definitely going into a tier next on the list is going to be aerospace engineering and in a nutshell it's all about engineering and designing aircraft spacecraft rockets missiles satellites drones all sorts of things that fly through the air or fly through space now it's going to come in at number two in terms of pay at about 115,200 which is just excellent however it does have a pretty low growth rate over the next 10 years at only about 2% and that is a little bit troubling it comes in at around number five for jobs at around 67,200 available jobs in the united states right now so that's pretty good it's kind of average but better than some of the other ones and this is definitely one of those majors where in terms of the jobs you can get it's kind of feast or famine in general there tends to be more jobs in this field when we're in a wartime situation or something along those lines so right now you could kind of say that it's a little more famine than feast probably but i'm still going to go ahead and put it in a tier it's going to sneak into a tier just because the pay is extremely good next on the list is going to be mechanical engineers and this one is going to rustle some jimmies for sure mechanical engineering is one of the lowest paid on the list at about 87,300 it has an average growth of about 4% which is tied for fifth so it's kind of middle of the road in terms of growth however it does have quite a few job openings one of the best on the list at about 312,000 and honestly mechanical engineers are sort of jacks of all trades you see them working in a bunch of other different industries that are not necessarily related to mechanical engineering so for instance they're taking a lot of the biomedical engineers jobs it's also the most popular engineering major which means you see the most amount of people going into it and so therefore there's going to be a lot more competition so this one is going to have to go into high b-tier status and you know if this was a list of just general majors it would probably be a tier but on a list you know with other engineering majors it's going to have to be b-tier it's just not as good as some of the other ones next on the list is going to be industrial engineering and in a nutshell they basically help to design and improve processes within a business or an organization generally these processes include some sort of you know either hardware software machines something along those lines now in terms of pay it's actually one of the worst on the list at around number nine and it's only about 87,000 a year however it does have extremely good future growth at 8% and you know this you can see this with everything being automated and optimized you can see how valuable this sort of skill set that they teach you when you get an industrial engineering degree would be 8% is actually the second best on the entire list so that is excellent and then on top of that there's a ton of jobs out there at about 284,000 so there's a ton of jobs out there right now and they're expecting a lot more job openings in the future that is a really good combination and that sort of kind of makes the low pay a little more bearable so this one doesn't pay quite as well as a lot of the other ones but this also seems to be a relatively flexible engineering degree you know businesses across all different industries and all different you know countries need this particular skill set and so even though it doesn't pay that well all of the other things are pretty good and for that reason I'm going to go ahead and put it into b-tier next on the list is going to be civil engineering and civil engineering is all about designing and building different infrastructures as well as systems there's also a little bit of oversight in this career path which means if you're more of a hands-on person who kind of wants to be on the job where the action is this might be a better one for you to go for it's dead last in terms of pay at just over 86 thousand dollars a year but it has pretty decent future growth at about 6% so you know this one's not too bad it also has a ton of job openings at about 326,000 which I believe is actually number one on the list or maybe number two so this is a pretty good option as well especially if you're more of a hands-on person who wants to be where the action is this one is going to go into b-tier next on the list is going to be biomedical engineering and this one is one of the lower paid on the list at about 88,500 a year now biomedical engineering is probably one of the most interesting ones on the list because nobody really knows what's going to happen with its future but basically what they do is they combine the concepts of engineering with medical sciences and you know they create devices equipment software etc that could help people with their health and this is one of those fields where honestly unfortunately there's not too much work right now there's only about 19,800 job openings which is one of the lowest on the list and on top of that it only has an average growth rate of around 4% now if it was a ton of job openings like 100,000 or 200,000 with a 4% growth rate that would be a lot better but unfortunately there's only about 20,000 job openings it also doesn't pay very well at about 88,500 dollars a year median salary and then the other issue with this degree is it's not very flexible you might be stuck working for particular types of companies you know companies that create medical devices for instance and there might not be as much flexibility or maneuverability which means you aren't going to be able to hop jobs as easily and then also you know your skillset probably won't transfer as well to different industries as some of the other engineering degrees and then on top of that a lot of the other engineering degrees can actually break into the biomedical engineering industry and so you can't really break into their jobs but they can somewhat break into your job and that is a big problem if you do go into biomedical engineering you'll likely have to move to a particular place in order to get a good job but honestly this one is the dark horse on the list 5, 10, 20 years from now this one might be the hottest one on the list it might be S tier but unfortunately right now there's just not enough positive information that I could gather doing my research that was going for it and so for that reason on this list I'm going to have to go ahead and put it into F tier again if this was just all degrees you know if we're ranking all degrees this one would probably be I'd say B tier but since we're comparing different engineering degrees I'm going to have to put this one in F tier next on the list is going to be environmental engineering and they basically use engineering principles in order to develop solutions to different environmental problems now they make about 87,600 a year which is on the lower end on this list it's around number seven or so and they have an average growth of about five percent which is okay but the only issue is there's only about 55,000 job openings right now so the five percent average growth honestly isn't that good and honestly this one is great and all but compared to the other engineering degrees I'm going to have to put this one in D tier next one on the list is going to be marine engineering and if you just look purely at the stats it looks really good when you first see it I mean you got 92,500 a year which is one of the better ones on the list you've got a nine percent future growth and that sounds pretty freaking good that's actually I believe the best one on the list but the problem is the jobs are extremely limited at only 11,700 jobs that is the dead last lowest on the list and the nine percent future growth sounds great and all but when we're only talking about a nine percent future growth from 11,000 jobs it doesn't sound nearly as good now the other obvious one about this is you are not very flexible if you get this degree you know you're gonna have to be moving and working in very specific places for very specific types of companies and let's say you graduate with a degree and you decide you absolutely hate the ocean you like get seasick or something like that well you're kind of screwed because you're stuck with a degree it's not nearly as flexible as a lot of the other engineering degrees so even though it has really good stats except for you know the job openings this one is really good for you as long as you do your research you really have to make sure this is what you want to do with your life you really have to know what you're getting yourself into but overall I'm going to go ahead and put this one in c tier okay so next on the list is going to be computer engineering and I think this one is pretty self-explanatory in terms of what they do but they make about a hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred dollars a year which is number three on the list that is very very good it's just a tiny little bit behind aerospace engineering I wouldn't be surprised if maybe next year or the year after it actually catches up with aerospace so very very good also it's got a six percent growth rate which is good for engineering um it's about average on the higher end of average for normal jobs but that's actually very good for engineering and then you got about sixty four thousand four hundred total jobs available and that's pretty decent now what really sets this one apart it's got good stats but what truly sets it apart is it has an overlap with computer science which in my opinion in the next 20 to 40 years is going to absolutely blow up now I know that computer engineering is more focused on hardware but you still have to have a very good idea of how the software side of things work in order to be an effective computer engineer and so the skill set that you have that deep understanding of how computers work is something that a lot of companies really covet and I know a lot of companies like to hire computer engineers to become software engineers so it's very easy for you to transition into probably the best industry in the world which is tech and if you don't want to transition into tech there's still a lot of job opportunities out there this one in my opinion is probably one of the most flexible um it's it's really good on every single ranking and so for that reason I'm going to go ahead and put this one in s tier status and I decided for this video that I'm only going to have one in s tier and so that is the one that goes into s tier now the next one on the list is going to be petroleum engineering and again I think this one is pretty self-explanatory you're going to probably get hired by one of the big gas companies or something along those lines but again insane insane salary of 137,100 a year that is just for a four-year degree I mean that is just totally insane it might even be the very best one that you can get for a four-year degree I mean that is just crazy it's by far the number one on the list by a mile there's only about 33,500 job openings which is a little bit low for the list and then it also only has about a 3% growth rate which again this is kind of average on this list but it's definitely lower than average in terms of all jobs however there's a reason that the pay is so good they wouldn't be paying people that much if this skill set wasn't one that's extremely coveted by certain companies you know it's not going to be very flexible you'll end up having to work for particular types of companies most likely you'll probably end up having to move somewhere where these companies are you know around however the pay is extremely good natural gas isn't going to be going away in our lifetime or at least our our work span lifetime it's not going to be going away anytime soon and so for that reason I'm going to go ahead and put petroleum engineering into a tier now the reason that I put engineering as a whole as a tier instead of s tier well really there's two main reasons the first one is that the job outlook for engineering in general just isn't that good as you noticed on this list the highest one was 9% and a lot of them were around 3-4% which is average at best it's really more on the lower side of average now compare this to a degree in the health field for instance like physician's assistant where they have a 31% expected growth rate in the next 10 years with 118,000 jobs which is quite a few now that is one of the higher ones on the list in terms of health but you see when you look at health careers in general a lot of them are going to be over 10% 15% they're excellent in terms of the jobs that they expect to open in the next 10 years but it's not just the health field you can also look at technology for instance you've got you know computer scientists they're expected to grow about 16% in the next 10 years and software developers are expected to grow at about 21% in the next 10 years now if you compare this to the best on the engineering list which was 9% or the average which was around I'd say I don't know 4% or so you can see that the average you know career in technology or the average degree in health has a much higher job outlook much better job outlook than engineering does now of course there are exceptions there are health careers that have a very low job outlook but I think in general job outlook is one of the most important metrics you can look at because I really think that when you see something that has a very good job outlook that means that in the future the salary is going to be increasing because if they need a bunch of people in that job if a bunch of jobs are going to be opening up that means there's going to be more competition for you if you're going into that field and so therefore they're probably going to have to pay you better it also means that your quality of life and your job satisfaction is going to end up being quite a bit better in these sorts of fields just because of the fact that your employer knows that they have to treat you really well because there's so much competition for you if they don't treat you well if they work you like 60 hours a week when you don't want to work 60 hours a week you can just quit the job and find another job relatively easily so I guess it really just comes down to what you personally prefer you know is quality of life more important to you or is making like a ridiculous amount of money and living on an oil rig more important now the second reason the engineering in my opinion gets a tier status and this one you know patch yourself on the back if you're an engineer but engineering is incredibly difficult and you really just have to be honest with yourself whether you're an engineer whether you're not an engineer most people probably don't want to put themselves through undergrad and engineering I mean I had quite a few friends in engineering and these poor guys would just like they look like raccoons they'd be studying all the time they didn't really have as much fun they didn't go out and have fun during college like most other majors did it is incredibly difficult not only do you have to be a very hard worker but you really do have to be pretty intelligent for most of the engineering degrees probably I would say above average intelligence and so you know this channel I know there's a lot of smart people on this channel but there's probably a lot of people that watch my videos that maybe don't want to put themselves through hell and undergrad or maybe they're just average intelligence or maybe they're slightly above average and they want to go into a job that maybe isn't quite as difficult and so you really do have to admit that the average person and again we're talking about medians and averages here the average person probably isn't going to be able to do engineering and if you look at the dropout rate for engineering it's a heck of a lot higher than for a lot of the other majors other degrees that I talk about a lot like computer science for instance they're pretty difficult but you have to admit they're definitely not as difficult as an engineering degree or a physics degree and then let's just talk about the fact that a lot of 18 to 22 year olds just simply don't have the maturity or self-control to put themselves through four years of engineering school even though they might be extremely smart they might be a really hard worker they just haven't quite gotten to the point in their life yet where they can have the self-control to do all the studies and do really well during engineering school which is something they'd have to do so if you are somebody who's extremely intelligent you know and you are a very hard worker then you know you can take that second one off the list and then maybe you can say hey engineering is s tier if you can actually make it through but it really just comes down to opinion overall and as for how to go about choosing which engineering degree is right for you honestly all of them are pretty solid I'd say the worst one on the list is still b tier and honestly you could probably say that if you're willing to move somewhere you know if you're willing to move to a place where there's like a you know an oil field or something like that get hired by Saudi Aramco or something along those lines you can basically choose any one of these on the list as long as you're willing to move to where the jobs are but if you're somebody who has a specific city that you want to live in that's something you really want to keep in mind so that's really the first thing I would think of if there's a specific city that you want to live in or a specific place or maybe you want to live in a bunch of different cities you want to have that freedom of being able to say hey 10 years from now maybe I want to live in California but right now I want to live in Florida or something then I would probably go for one of the degrees that is a little bit more flexible so I talked about these during the video you know you've got industrial you've got civil you've got mechanical um electrical engineering a lot of these types of degrees there's a lot of jobs out there and then they're also pretty flexible in terms of how you know your skill set potentially could be something that people in unrelated industries want to hire you for then once you've considered that I'd really just go for where your interests and your natural talents lie so I've heard a lot of people are you know very good at mathematics like very heavily math based maybe they're good at mechanical engineering for instance but they really struggle when it comes to electrical engineering right for some reason your brain just doesn't work in that way or maybe chemical engineering or biomedical engineering all the chemistry classes that you have to take maybe you don't really like those classes very much or just your brain doesn't really work in that way so these are the sorts of things that you really want to keep in mind and as you're going through high school or or undergrad if you're deciding which one you're trying to do these are the sorts of things that you want to pay attention to where are your natural talents and generally where your natural talents lie are also going to be the places that you really enjoy as well so you want to talk about which ones you enjoy where your natural talents are and then figure out which degree matches that the best and I'd really just suggest either talking to engineers maybe talking to somebody who's a professor at an engineering school and kind of telling them what you're interested in and what you're passionate about and then they can kind of guide you in the right direction now there's quite a bit of research that you can do online by looking in forums and all that sort of thing and I definitely think that you should do that look everything up on a bureau of labor statistics look all the stats up make sure you have all the numbers right and you're doing your research you're going into something that does have jobs and you're actually able to get a job and have a good career with of course but like I say in all the videos nothing beats talking to real people so I really recommend reaching out to people on LinkedIn you know looking up people in your network maybe reaching out through your network or maybe looking up people who live in your city and then just very nicely asking them if you can either shadow them or just ask them a few questions you know something along those lines maybe ask them if you can buy them coffee or take them out to lunch that's always a really nice gesture but overall you know engineering in general is a very good choice I'm sorry I made some of you mad by putting an A tier but I hope you understand why I think that and I'm not changing my mind some of them are definitely S tier I'd say about half of them at least are S tier but some of them just are not S tier because there's not enough job openings and for all those reasons that I already went over so stay calm do your research and I think you'll be just fine but overall make sure you check out these videos right here I made them just for you go ahead smash the like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and then comment down below any ideas that you have on this video thank you so much for watching and bye for now