Hey guys!
I hope you’re all having a great week! I just wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about my major: Industrial & Systems Engineering.
As you might already know, I actually came into USC as an “undeclared engineer.” I was accepted into Viterbi, but I didn’t declare a discipline until last semester. You can read about my experiences as an undeclared engineer here. I’m glad I took the time to explore various engineering options because it’s definitely led me to know with certainty that ISE is the right choice for me.
I really like Industrial and Systems Engineering because it gives me a lot of flexibility in terms of my future career. Since ISE is very focused on optimization and efficiency, I could go into a huge variety of different fields: manufacturing, systems engineering, information technology, consulting, or even something totally different like construction or archeology. I’ve always had very diverse interests, so I would love to use my technical training in an unusual way. Luckily I still have the next two years to figure out what career path I want to pursue.
I also love that the ISE: Information Systems, Operations track that I’m on allows me to take classes in a variety of engineering-related fields: economics, enterprise resource planning, and business just to name a few. I feel like I’m getting a very technical but also very well-rounded education.
So far, my favorite major class has probably been ITP 320: Enterprise Resource Planning, using SAP. I’m only in the third week of this class but I can already tell it’s going to be extremely valuable.
One last thing I love about ISE: my classmates. The program is a great size and I’m taking a lot of my major classes with the same students. All of my peers are wonderful – intelligent and driven with a huge variety of interests.
So ultimately while it took me awhile to decide on ISE, it was definitely worth the wait. I know I couldn’t have picked a major that would fit me better as a person.
Until next week!
Juliana
