Intro:
Femail civil engineer with 10yrs experience. Local
NUS grad with good grades. Not one of those who take engineering because no where to go.
My advice:
Study engineering by all means, but try to go into finance or banking. Don't be like me, stay in this line until too late to switch. All for the "passion" to be an engineer.
Or go into biz, law, med if you can. For practical reasons- the pay is simply better and less risk at work.
When you are young and enthu, you will want to be an engineer- you'll enjoy the challenges of working on site, building huge structures. But then, after you have a family, you start to want better things for your family.
And unfortunately, engineering really doesn't pay that well. It's enough to get by, get a car, maybe enable you to get a nice property (if you save hard enough, though this is uncertain with current property prices). But you cannot expect to be rewarded as much as bankers, etc.
So, the bottom line is- should you follow your passion or take a better paying job (which probably have better work life balance)?