They say you should pursue what you like , but realistically , you have to consider whether you have the aptitude for it , right ? Ideally , you want to pick a major and , by extension , a career that satisfies at least to some degree the following 3 conditions 1 You have some competence for it i . e . it ' s something you ' re good at 2 It ' s something that you actually like doing 3 It ' s something you can make some money out of doesn ' t have to be a lot at all but you need to be able to work because that ' s the society we live in alternatively , move to a European country and be a leech for the rest of your lifeAgain , you don ' t have to hit all 3 100 %. For instance , for # 2 , no one enjoys everything about their majorcareer . There are always annoying spots but the idea is that , overall , it ' s good enough to motivate you to make it through . I initially applied to get into engineering out of high school but I got rejected from all of the top tier schools . I like solving problems with numbers but I know that I don ' t have good critical thinking skills . I just know how to regurgitate what someone else has told me . And because of this , I feel like I won ' t be able to succeed in the field . These are valid concerns . However , I ' m going to make 2 points here . For one , what kind of schools were you considering for engineering ? You don ' t have to go to a top tier school to have a rewarding time . There are engineering students at some pretty mediocreforgettable schools that go on to have great careers . Secondly , if you ' re not good at something , it doesn ' t mean you never will be . I think a lot of people fall into this trap coming out of high school . They want to do something they know they ' re good at to avoid the growing pains of having to really learn . Of course , previously I did say that you should be good at the thing you want to do . However , I think the prerequisite there is to just have some baseline competency . You don ' t have to be a great analytical thinker at the beginning of an engineering degree . Most engineering students are not analytical when they begin . However , that ' s kind of the point of engineering school , no ? It ' s to push you and mould you into an analytical thinker . There are growing pains that come with this , but the point is that part of engineering school is to spit you out as a different person in 4 years time . Over the last 2 years , I am absolutely confident in saying that engineering here has made me more of an analytical thinker , more logical , a better worker , smarter , etc . Do I have a long way to go ? Hell yeah . But the point is that I ' m going to graduate as a completely different person who is hopefully much more prepared for a real job than I was coming out of high school . For this to work , you must be willing to suffer . I imagine you were scared to do that initially . I don ' t know what the point of my entire comment here even is . It may be too late to do engineering right now . I guess the main message is to not be afraid to try new things because then you ' ll never get a chance to grow .