r/PennStateUniversity • u/punekaryog • 1d ago

Question Energy, Business and Finance???

Hey there, im a current hs senior thinking of applying to Penn state for EBF. Ive heard there isn't many people who do it, and im wondering if its because its competitive or just really niche. I think I have a pretty good chance of getting in, but could anyone tell me a little more abt EBF and if its really worth it at penn state?

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u/HighlyEvolvedEEMH 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes it is niche, but not to an extreme. PS is one of the very few schools in the US still supporting it, internationally a few others schools are in Canada, Australia and South America.

The entire field used to be named "Mineral Economics" and still is in some parts of the world. For questions like you have you should definitely call up someone in the dept who is the point of contact for potential new students, they will be prepared to answer and and all questions. There are professional societies for this field, they can be a good source with more info, insights on what people in the field do in their jobs and careers.

An old joke used to be told in some variation of this: If (the fields/professions) Mining Engineering and Finance had a late in life love child the kid would be named Mineral Economics. Somewhere the field Geology was in weaved the joke, as in "but maybe one of the grand parents was secretly a Geologist..."

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u/CyberEd-ca 1d ago edited 1d ago

Herbert Hoover went to Stanford when it opened and got a degree in geology. But Hoover is known as "The Great Engineer".

I think mostly what he did was mine valuations in that part of his career and he became very wealthy doing so.

Yes, finance has its own lineage I guess you could say but business schools were birthed out of the engineering schools.

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u/PotentialPin8022 1d ago

It’s a great major and great college. It’s a lesser known major, but definitely in demand field

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u/Fluffy-Structure-368 9h ago

Hey, I don't go to Penn State but I saw your post and I looked up the classes. I work in this field and I can say that there is currently a lot of opportunity in this field and it's not something that is easily replaced by Ai. Also, starting salaries are extremely high. Current energy demands are at all time highs so there's opportunity in both the energy generation sectors and the data center side of things. I would see this cycle continuing for at least 15 more years. We're just at the start. There's also opportunity in more niche fields like rare earth elements. There are also opportunities on the remediation efforts for existing power plants where updated EPA laws could require extensive remediation efforts. There's also opportunity in energy markets and trading. And the Northeast is a really the epicenter for everything that's going on right now. You can DM me if you have any specific questions. Good luck.