Engineering only? BioTech vs CSE? NEET by parents’ pressure? Doing wrong degree? Students’ questions for their career
- career choices
- October 16, 2025
Real examples of students’ concerns for selecting college and subjectsÂ
We see a lot of discussions on Reddit where Indian students share their questions, concerns, and their fears and confusion for selecting their career and college degrees. Here are a few examples of how we advise them in specific scenarios and some of these suggestions apply in related use cases also such as when the students are comparing different career paths and degrees.
Question: Many students think that the only career options with good career scope is in software engineering, medicine, and management.
Answer: It is not true. When we see software engineerings doing well, there is a huge ratio of software students who do not get jobs, or who change careers to go into sales, finance, and other careers. In the same way, there is a huge ratio of students who are doing very well in accounts/finance, or in other branches such as in architecture, hospitality and luxury travel, and others.
Look at any hospital, university, big real estate company, or a mall—and look at the ratio of software engineers working there. There are so many people working there in operations, CRM, management, finance, business, decor and design. (See it on Reddit.)
Question: How to recover after doing the wrong degree? I did BioTech engineering whereas I wanted to do CSE. (See it on Reddit.)
Answer: Let’s look at the positive picture. There are many many students who do BTech in CSE or ECE with absolutely no interest and they just do it. Now if you compete them for a career in tech, you will not be behind them because you can learn faster, and apply those skills faster at work. As a compounded effort, you will outshine them.
So, it evens out. Think of the bigger goals—what you want to be doing when you are 35 or even 40. Nothing is lost and your bioTech degree shall be your unique advantage—these learnings will not be a waste. You never know where it proves to be useful.
So, focus on learning what you want to do *now* and commit to it.
Questions: What more do I do to show my parents that I’m not a failure? (See it in Reddit.)
Answer: It is not unusual to go through these emotions and moments of uncertainty. First, try to relax, and lets bring more structure into the career plans.
There are many many students who do BTech in CSE or ECE with absolutely no interest and they just do it. Likewise in BBA, BCA, BCom and other degrees. There is a huge ratio of students who are doing very well in accounts/finance, or in other branches such as in architecture, hospitality and luxury travel, sales, and others.
Look at any business—a hospital, university, big real estate company, or a mall, or construction company—there are so many people working there in operations, CRM, finance, sales, design, vendor management, logistics. The point is—the opportunities are endless and you do not need to lock in specific subjects, skills, or degree or college.
It is also true that many companies anywhere in the world care less about your school or college grades and are more interested to know about what skills you learn in the college and how you can apply those skills at work so that companies can see value in hiring you.Â
Think of the bigger goals first—what you want to be doing when you are 35 or even 40. Reverse the process from there to find what you should learn to be achieve those. Not simple but it is doable and not too complicated.
For your question about your dad—make a list of three possible career paths that interest do. Now, do a matrix of:
- Career scope, salary data, job trends of the future (you can get it online)
- Rate each of these how strongly you want it
- Rate these for how your family responds to it
- Find the points of convergence, and build your discussions with data.
Question: Dreaming to become a doctor, studying Psychology now after studying Humanities with Maths in grade 12. Can I still dream of becoming a doctor?
Answer: You did not mention whether and how much you are enjoying Psychology. If you think of a doctor’s specialization, many of them get into procedures, diagnosis, consultancy, and you can build a career by studying psychology for healthcare also.
Many hospitals have psychologists, or practitioners in mental health, working with patients for depression and other related conditions. To support this goal, you can do additional courses for specialization in this field, which might open more doors for you for getting work in healthcare. (See it on Reddit.)
Questions: What are the career options in PCB other than doing MBBS?
Answer: There are so many career paths after studying Biology or related fields in the college. For example when someone suggests you about *Pharmacy*, it does not mean only medicines. There are career options for specialization in research, regulatory affairs, QA, biomedical engineering, heathtech, EMR design strategy, healthcare policy, and many more.
Likewise, there are biologists, wildlife biologists, environmental scientists in healthcare domain, medical writing, ecologists, and many more.
I think it is a good idea to make a list or matrix of what interests you, your aspirations and strengths, and then reverse engineer the process to find what you should study.
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