[dieselteen]

Hello everyone,

First of all, let me give a brief about myself, I am a 12th grader and soon to be a UG student. I have chosen PCM with Computer Science as optional in my senior secondary education. Ever since I remember, my childhood was all eventful with all the great automobiles involved in my life from a town bus to a luxury car which made me much more mature than what I would have been if haven't known them

Now coming to the heart of this topic,
'what to do after 12th grade in 2024'. As far as what I heard and was told CSE is the most chosen option in engineering and I do agree it has some awesome placements in many institutions. But being young with little exposure I wanted to choose something out of the box.

From an early age (say 11 years) I wanted to do automobile engineering but declining placements and a syllabus of my grandfather's age did not sound promising to me, so it was not considered. But the dream is to still work in the Automobile industry

So I thought of seeking some advice and suggestions from our beloved community regarding what to choose after my schooling which will help me land in a good place in the upcoming future with great potential to grow

I am looking forward to all your valuable inputs and most welcome for all your suggestions in advance

thanks for reading this throughout

Regards,
diesel teen

[Pythonic]

My only advice is that id you want to do something out of the box or follow your passion, make sure you are damn good at it, top 1% in India tier, make sure what you like about the field you will be doing for the next 50 years of your life.
Otherwise, it just makes sense to follow the wisdom of the crowd and do CSE, more often it makes sense to have a stable career and pursue your interests as hobbies.

Always give yourself more space and don’t specialize too soon, if you are interested in Automobiles, take MechE instead of Automobile Engineering, which is broader, and as an Electrical Engineering graduate I will tell you that I had more opportunities from Ather and other automobile companies than some Mech graduates, the way the world is moving away from ICE and towards EVs.

So to conclude, make sure that something you find interesting is something you want to pursue for a lifetime, if yes, pursue the degree that gives you the best foundation and breadth. There is no shame in going to IT etc, it may not be glamorous now but it has given millions of people stable careers.

[mk600]

Originally Posted by dieselteen

But the dream is to still work in the Automobile industry

diesel teen, "follow your passion" is a fashionable thing to say these days. But do it only if you afford it and you are very good at it. If you are in 1% as a film actor, singer, engineer, and MBA, the world will be at your feet.

But there are a lot of other factors. Look at the Japanese word "Ikigai". I am sharing a link with you.

You can be the best judge to what makes most sense for you and your circumstances. I know this is not a straight answer, but is the truth. You are young, and world is opening a lot of new possibilities. All the very best!

[FueledbyFury]

Originally Posted by Pythonic

if you want to do something out of the box or follow your passion, make sure you are damn good at it, top 1% in India tier, make sure what you like about the field you will be doing for the next 50 years of your life.

Damn true. You must always have a vision and plan out where would you like to be in your future. I really liked your passion for automobile engineering. Most of the syllabus of automobile engineering is outdated by every means, until they revise the syllabus.

As our government is now focusing on hybrid and electric vehicles one thing to do is pursue electrical and electronics engineering with the specialisation in electric and hybrid vehicles. This will help you to know more about the industry and upskill yourself.

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by dieselteen

Now coming to the heart of this topic,
'what to do after 12th grade in 2024'. As far as what I heard and was told CSE is the most chosen option in engineering and I do agree it has some awesome placements in many institutions. But being young with little exposure I wanted to choose something out of the box.

From an early age (say 11 years) I wanted to do automobile engineering but declining placements and a syllabus of my grandfather's age did not sound promising to me, so it was not considered. But the dream is to still work in the Automobile industry

Following what you are passionate about is the best thing that you could do, provided you have a few things sorted:

1) No financial constraints i.e. no need to start earning ASAP.
2) Are aware of the possibilities and the limitations in the path wherever you do it from. If from India, you know the issues here. So choose the best possible institute. Take a gap year to get into the best if needed. Understand that you might be forced to do a Masters as well later from a premier institute here or abroad in order to gain a good and meaningful employment.
3) Alternatively, you can explore mixed engineering (sort of dual degree) with CSE as the 2nd option so that you have a backup at later stages of your graduation journey.
4) If you want to be part of Automobile Industry and are agnostic to field of work, there will be multiple avenues and in this case an Engineering degree
might not be needed at all. An MBA from a premier institute will allow you to get into non-technical fields of the Automobile Industry. In this case, a BCOM might server you better if doing the MBA is certain.
5) At the same time, a degree in CSE or Electrical Engineering will allow you to get into the EV industry (say for example Connect Cars).
6) Mind you, a Career in CSE is not really great option if you are not really interested in becoming one and are taking it up only for possible/available jobs. While you may get a starting job, career growth might get stagnated at later stages and it won't be a rosy world then.

So check what path is upto your risk taking capability.

[blueberry]

Originally Posted by dieselteen

Hello everyone,

First of all, let me give a brief about myself, I am a 12th grader and soon to be a UG student. I have chosen PCM with Computer Science as optional in my senior secondary education.

'what to do after 12th grade in 2024'. As far as what I heard and was told CSE is the most chosen option in engineering and I do agree it has some awesome placements in many institutions. But being young with little exposure I wanted to choose something out of the box.

Regards,
diesel teen

Congrats dieselteen, on completing your formal school education.
You're off to a good start thinking about how you want to spend your adult years. This is a step further than most high-schoolers care to think about.

A few solid pieces of advice I was given when in your shoes, which has held its test of time:

• Try to pick a career / industry which will be the rage when you've already gotten significant experience under your belt. Ideally both your career and the industry need to peak at the same time.
  If you pick a industry which is all the rage right now, by the time you become proficient / an industry expert - the allure/the need for the indsutry would start to diminish
• Try not to make the thing you are passionate about the most, as your bread and butter.
  Bread and butter work tends to get boring and frustrating - saps all the love you had for it.
  Ofcourse exceptions exist - but they're more exceptions and less the norm
• Right now, Its okay not to have razor sharp clarity on what specific niche you want to focus on.
  So try to choose a stream, which allows you to pick from a basket of multiple niches down the line
• Be open to experimentation, go see the world, leave your hometown.
  Travel opens your eyes to things you didn't know were in your blind spot.

Good luck

[SaurAswale]

Originally Posted by dieselteen

From an early age (say 11 years) I wanted to do automobile engineering but declining placements and a syllabus of my grandfather's age did not sound promising to me, so it was not considered. But the dream is to still work in the Automobile industry.

Hi, I am speaking from the little experience that I have as Mechanical Engineer,
1. First thing first, if your dream is to work in Automobile industry, you shall follow it. And there must not be any regrets afterwards.
2. There is a big misconception about syllabus being outdated and irrelevant. though the syllabus is old, it will teach you the basics which are very important and you can always build your (time relevant) skills on top of it.
3. Whatever you choose, do not rely on college curriculum, you must learn skills on your own. Participate in events, competitions. SAE student motorsport competitions are must. Not only you'll have fun and time of your lifetime, you'll also learn some important skills.
4. Do not follow the crowd, When I was getting admission, there was a lot of negativity around IT industry and anyone with average marks could get admission in top institutes, While there was cut throat competition in mechanical/civil engineering. I scored topper level marks but had to settle for 3rd tier institute (No Reservations). Students with less marks got into CS/IT and now earning almost double.
I think now the situation has reversed. And there will be limited availability of good Mechanical/ Automobile Engineers in the future. (Maybe I'm too optimistic )
5. Always be focused, do not take your eyes off your goal. Spearheaded approach is only way to achieve success ( Nahh!! Do not trust this BS, Experiment lot of things-have fun)

And as said by fellow BHPians, if you are in top 1% in the field you're working, you don't have to worry about the money.

[Petrolhead717]

Hi dieselteen (my friend,my classmate).

Myself and dieselteen had same idealogy,but in my case as my father works in IT he says to join CSE so i left those ideas.Still, I will do it as a hobby to explore the automobile industry.


Thank you so much, my fellow members, for the opinions given.

[dieselteen]

I am really grateful to all of you for sharing your expertise and experience with me.

You guys made me analyze myself thoroughly. Now I'm almost certain about What to do, Where to do, and How to do, without my erstwhile confusion.

Once again I thank all of you for the wisdom and guidance you guys have shared.

Regards,
diesel teen

[GForceEnjoyer]

I have one piece of general advice to offer as a fellow batch of 2024 high school graduate.

I picked subjects totally different from yours (economics, business, math, english and psychology), but something that immensely helped me pick my course for undergrad this year was this: I filtered out my options based on what I could do well at. This goes hand in hand with liking the chosen field, meaning that you don't have to struggle to put effort into it. This made my whole university application and major selection journey a whole lot easier by removing any sense of doubt from the equation (I will be studying Economics as a major).

Even if yon't have a lot of clarity about what exactly it is you want to do in the future yet, it's something I trust you'll figure out soon enough. All the best.

[FocusAssist]

Its a little frustrating to not know exactly what to do after 10+2 and most of us have went through it. Thing is, you have to take a decision now which will matter 4 years later during job seeking, which sounds even more serious. But if you are passionate in general, things fall in place and you will seek the right opportunity.
The risk you take now depends on your family's financial situation. If they are well off and won't need your support you can find work that interests you but doesn't pay very well as well (eg. Automotive journalism)

Coming to Automobile Engg, the closest you can get to is Mechanical Engineering. Its fun and you get to build a lot of things if your institute is supportive. Agreed the syllabus is from the stone age, but doable.
What I suggest is, regardless of which engineering you take up, check whether the institute has a club, particularly - Formula Student, Aero modelling, Robotics and the works.

Institutes like Manipal, VIT do have a lot of clubs and the institutes are supportive.

Even if you are from CSE, all these clubs will need your help to build a car, a plane, or a robot. So you are well positioned to catapult to industry if you seriously build something during college!

All the best for the future.

[sidoxic]

I'm a production engineer + MBA, now heading my own ad agency.

Life may take you many places, and engineering is a good place to start. But in engineering jobs, supply far exceeds demand - which means those hiring have a massive upper hand in negotiations than candidates. This leads to lower entry level salary, lower work life balance etc.

Well, all of this is unless you are in the top 1% like all before me have said here.
But who doesn't want to be in the top 1%? Unfortunately, you won't know till you neck deep in your UG. Some change fields (I'd originally picked telecom because it was the flavour of the season) but most have to see through the 4 yrs of engineering.

Anyway,
I'm here to suggest another related field - Product Design.
Free to explore automobile at the end of it, going against the tide (physical products vs digital products), there's a global demand and an increasing regional demand, not even a fraction of students in the job market compared to engineering. Design has one core advantage of engineering too - all the learnings picked up can be used in many unrelated fields.

Wish you the best in making the right decision and career ahead.

[scenario7]

Hello everyone,

First of all, let me give a brief about myself....

As a 2021 B.Tech Graduate in Mechanical Engineering from a Top 5 College in Karnataka (currently working in a Semi Conductor Fab designing company), a few things I would like to share:

1. What do you mean by working in the automobile industry? Engineering is not the only way to achieve your goal. I know a lot of people, who ended up taking Mechanical/Automobile Engineering, just because they liked talking about cars and seeing videos on YouTube. A lot of them regretted their decision. Being interested in cars/vehicles and actually engineering them are two completely different things. Please have a clear demarcation between your hobby and your actual goal in life.

2. Be ready to slog. While your friends from CSE/IS Background maybe enjoying their college life to the fullest, you will have to put in the hours. There is no replacement for hard work in Mechanical/Automobile engineering. Companies in CSE/IS are way more lenient towards GPA and Backlog requirements. Core companies are not. Maintain a 9+ GPA. A lot of companies have this as an eligibility criteria.

3. Engineering Graduate placements in automobile companies are usually geography driven. Automobile companies visit colleges that are near their plants/R&D Hubs. A lot of them avoid going to even IITs and NITs. Maharashtra (specifically Pune) colleges have comparatively better placements in automobile companies because of the presence of TATA, Bajaj and Mahindra, who have their R&D setups and plants there.

4. As a graduate engineer, even if you land up in an automobile company, you will most likely end up in production, where you will have to deal with production planning, inventory management, Quality Control etc which all are very unglamorous but very important tasks. Plus you may have to work in shifts. (I interned in a Japanese Auto Major and I had to do the night shift, 11:30 pm to 5 am)

5. Monetary compensation. Like it or not, as a graduate engineer in an auto major, you won't be paid much. At that point in time, you shouldn't have any regrets looking at your friends from other streams earning 3X to 5X your salary and having much more free time to enjoy their lives. Currently working as a mechanical design engineer in the semi conductor industry, I am earning much more than my friends who are working in auto majors.

After reading the above points, if you have convinced yourself to pursue Mechanical/Automobile engineering, few tips:

1. Please choose Mechanical Engineering and not Automobile. Do not restrict yourself. Automobile engineering skips a lot of important subjects/concepts that form the bedrock of any mechanical design activity whether it's cars or planes.

2. Choose your college wisely. Try to figure out which colleges auto majors frequent to for placements and reverse engineer your way.

3. Enjoy your 1st year. Subjects are a carry over from 11th/12th. Subjects from 2nd year onwards are critical to you becoming a good engineer. Maintain a good GPA throughout.

4. There a lot of competitions in India now for mechanical engineering students. Formula Bharat, Supra SAE and Baja SAE are three such events. Choose colleges that have teams performing consistently well in these competitions. Join these teams and you will learn a lot more than you will sitting in the classroom. From material selection to FEA analysis to GD&T and Manufacturing processes, you will gain a lot more exposure than any other average student. Companies like Ather, TVS, Bajaj and Mahindra are known to hire students directly from these competitions through word of mouth.

5. As a graduate engineer, do not expect to be designing the next TATA Safari on day 1. First few years of your engineering life will go into designing jigs/fixtures that will be used in production and will not even go onto the car. So, please be patient.

and a syllabus of my grandfather's age did not sound promising to me

6. Let me tell you that the stream you have chosen is centuries old. Systems and processes have been perfected all these years, which you need to study, understand and appreciate. Only then you will begin to appreciate the beauty of something as simple as a bolted joint. As an engineer, please have an open mind and be ready to learn above and beyond what your professors teach you.

7. On another note, I feel there are higher chances of you landing up as an engineer in an auto major with a CSE/EEE/ECE degree, because even the auto majors who do not have mechanical engineering design hubs in India, they do have Software development hubs.

Lastly, I would like to reiterate my first point. Liking cars and wanting to be a part of the automobile industry does not mean that you need to engineering. There are lot of ways to achieve the same goal. You can do a MBA and join the sales team. You can be a journalist and end up reviewing cars.

@dieselteen Apologies if I sounded too harsh or straightforward. I just don't want you to be as naïve as I was. I was in your position in 2017. I chose Mechanical Engineering because of my craze for cars, without even going through the syllabus. I was in utter disbelief when I actually started my engineering. Fortunately, I ended up in my college's Formula Bharat Team, where I discovered my love for mechanical engineering in general. Things worked out at the end. As a mechanical engineer, though I am not in the auto industry, I am thoroughly enjoying my work. Plus, I spend my weekends in a bike garage, where they service only 300+ CC machines. I have got the opportunity to work on some litre class machines as well in the process. As I said, please be clear as to whether cars are your hobby or something you want to make a life out of. Please be extremely ruthless and honest in this assessment.

ALL THE BEST!!!

[cefiljoseph]

Hi,

I can understand how overwhelming it would be to take a decision right now with all the noise surrounding you and every second person trying to offer you their 'gyan' into life.

In my opinion the simple answer is most people haven't figured anything out at this point or for a long time and you almost certainly will change what you want to do going forward.

The best bet you can make is to follow some general guidelines and having a sense of direction going forward.

Doing some form of CS and Math combination is definitely a great idea to prepare for the future regardless of what you are going to do. So, there is definitely some merit to what the crowd suggests. However, in my opinion it comes with some caveats.

With the introduction/growth in technologies like AI, approaching problems creatively has become more important than ever. So, I would strongly recommend and bet that it's a good idea to garner some critical thinking skills by doing courses like the likes of philosophy along with what you're doing.

Second, unfortunately or fortunately brands matter a lot. Especially with something like CS being as democratised as it is now, contrary to the popular perception brands have only become more valuable. Be it a great university or a organisation, brands shows good signalling and I can't stress how important it is to be associated with good brands. You might not even get some good opportunities simply because you aren't associated with a good brand regardless of how good you are at your craft.

Third, be open to exploring and transition into new domains because it's inevitable. Try exploring more areas and building your niche in them. For instance AI+cars+design and make yourself irreplaceable in that.

Fourth, I also want to tell you that doing automobile engineering because you are enthusiastic about cars isn't necessarily a good idea. Once your interest/ hobby forces youth earn from it, it's easy for a hobby to turn into a nightmare and for you to swear it for life.

All the best and think long term and cut our noise when choosing the decision. A great rule is that consistency > hard word > talent.

[ashivas89]

I am a mechanical engineer working in the automotive domain. While I have been fairly fortunate to have gotten my foot in the door of an OEM at the right time, working on exciting topics, the same cannot be said about hundreds if not thousands of passionate graduates out there.

Here is my advice: Steer clear of automotive/ mechanical engineering. There are very few well paying core engineering jobs in the automotive industry and all of them are currently occupied by experienced folk who are not going to retire anytime soon.

Work/ study hard, get into a reputed college, take up CSE or an equivalent course, get placed in a good company, get 3-5 years' worth of experience, do an MBA after that, get into a management role and then BUY a nice car and spend your money on experiences with it and more importantly your loved ones. In this day and age financial independence is essential to pursue things that you are otherwise passionate about.

Side note: You can even join an automotive company with an electronics/software engineering background later. Most carmakers are prioritizing software over mechanical engineering these days anyway.