High-schooler from Northwest Indiana

[rightwinger]

Really? I was a little worried of the opposite, actually, at least right after graduation.
https://www.cco.purdue.edu/Common/PostGradSummaryMay12.pdf

Actuarial science has an 11:5 ratio of people employed versus unemployed (not counting those going to grad school, which since it's not required for becoming an actuary, likely indicates difficulty obtaining a job). Compare this to industrial engineering for instance, which has a lot of similar skills/overlap with actuarial science, and its ratio is 71:11, and other engineering disciplines have even better ratios.

This is why I was thinking that getting a degree in industrial engineering might be better, while taking some actuarial classes/exams on the side, since the actuarial degree by itself is causing problems for a good chunk of students at this point (it might be due to a small sample size and I really want to see next year's results, but it seems that major might not be good. I'm not ruling out the career though, but right now I'm leaning towards an engineering degree (probably industrial) as it seems to be a safer bet, especially since Purdue has an awesome engineering program (and it has in-state tuition, and with the scholarships for GPA/SAT[I have straight A's in all Honors/AP at Munster and practice tests show I'm at ~2300 on the SAT], I could probably go there for about $10,000-$15,000 per year. It just seems hard to pass up a top-10 engineering program for that price.

I graduated as an Industrial Engineer and it is a dead end. Nobody is investing in their facilities anymore and nobody cares about the human factors bullshit.
Go into one of the more classical engineering fields (Electronic, Mechanical, Chemical) and you will be more employable

Bummer for you, I have a degree in industrial engineering and have been steadly employed since I retired from the Navy. Maybe you need to seek out different industries. I work in power generation (Nuke, Coal and Natural Gas) also I live in Texas, if you cant get a great paying job in Texas, you just dont want to work.

Just out of curiosity, what is a great paying job in Texas?