Lesson two — Why does everyone say engineering and medicine?

Because for about thirty years, they were the two roads in India that reliably moved a family from one income bracket to the next. Your parents watched it happen — to a neighbour, a cousin, someone from their own school. That memory is real, and it is why the advice is given with such confidence.

Two things have changed since.

The first is scale. Karnataka alone has more than two hundred engineering colleges. A degree that was scarce is now common, and a common degree is worth what you do with it rather than what it is called.

The second is that the number of roads has grown. Design, data, law, allied health, physiotherapy, hotel management, sports science, animation, agriculture technology, drone operation — none of these were a visible option a generation ago. They are now.

This is not an argument against engineering or medicine. They remain excellent roads for the right student, and this book documents both in full. It is an argument against choosing them by default — because a default is not a choice, and the cost of the wrong one is measured in years.

The right question is never "is engineering good?" It is "is engineering good for me, compared with the other forty-nine roads I have now seen?"