Lost Interest in Electrical Engineering. Still have a Math degree to complete. What to do? I just finished my 5th semester of a compact, dual degree (MS in mathematics and BE in electrical and electronics engineering) course from BITS Pilani, India. It's hitting me really hard now that I just don't want to be an engineer at all. I was really enthusiastic about this programme when I joined it, but with 5 more semesters to go, I'm near clueless about what to do once I'm out of here.

I still like mathematics though and my grades in those courses have been fairly decent, but the university grades me for the entire course and so I'd barely make it a 2.7 or something like that on a scale of 4 at the end of it. If I keep going like I am, more or less.

I like statistics, probability and operations research but even though I can tolerate the mathematics degree which is a lot of pure mathematics, that part of it isn't something I want to pursue.

I have, however, recently developed interest in financial analysis. I have taken introductory courses in economics and management, to fill up the elective credits I had to and so I have a little bit of an idea about how this stuff works, and I'm really enjoying learning more of it. But I have no clue where to go, or what to do.

I want to be certain that I can make it to a decent program, preferably MSF or MBA Finance, in the US, UK or Germany (or any other place where financial markets are really intense and interesting) with those sort of grades and maybe a few projects (which I intend to take up in the next few semesters) related to financial analysis, but mostly math.

I would really appreciate if you could help me find a path to accomplish what I am setting out to, point me to alternative programs I can get in that can get me where I want to be or advise me on what the focus should be on right now, working on a few more projects, or improving my grade; or something else.
Statistics/probability/data analysis is also a reasonable path to consider, and is a good bit more general than financial math, which you might also decide you don't like down the road.

Paul Graham (of Lisp fame) says that you should try to stay "upstream" with regard to your choices. To put it more concretely, you should not specialise too quickly, and try to keep your options open.

Statistics/probability/data analysis is a very marketable choice these days, and will still leave the door open to financial math if you still want to pursue it a bit later.

However, aside from ISI there aren't really any good places in India to learn statistics. And I don't think India has much of a statistics research community. You'll have to go somewhere else.

An autobiographical snippet: I got a PhD from a Statistics Dept in applied probability. The degree was supposed to be in financial math, as it happens. I was trying to study it, but didn't really make any headway. So my degree wound up being about something that was originally supposed to assist with the financial math. As you can see, things don't always go the way one had planned. So, bear in mind, you might like the subject now, but whether it will like you and things will work out, that is a separate question. It's a question of commitment.