I'm at THE crossroads right now (STPM 2005, results coming out soon), and need some help deciding. Yeah, the two choices seem very far apart, I know. But I hope those of you who have taken either one of those courses can help me answer these questions, to decide which I want to do..

1. What exactly do you do for the most part of the course? Pharmacy I heard there is a lot of Organic Chemistry.. lotsa lab work too. Software Engineering.. a lot of maths and programming languages?

2. What type of jobs can you get after you graduate? And how easy is it to find a job?

3. How satisfying the job is to you -- pay, hours, degree of interest, etc?

Ty ahead for the help.

Hehe, ty so much, guys.

Yeah, they are two distinctly different courses. But frankly speaking, programming is much more interesting to me than organic chemistry and labwork... although I also do realize that pharmacists are able to be their own boss (aka open own kedai). But how many self-businesses fail? There is also a risk there..

Wow, work in IT industry sounds hard. How about the opportunities for lecturing?

Hmmm.. has anyone actually SEEN jobs for biotech grads in Malaysia? Advertised in newspaper or anything? I actually considering biotech also, but it's such a popular course... and there don't appear to be any biotech vacancies popping up!

Work ah.. Malaysia, I guess. Singapore very stressful place to work, I heard. >_> Malaysia also needs less pharmacies cuz we still dont give sole dispensing rights to pharmacies..

This post has been edited by misao: Mar 2 2006, 02:02 PM

Yeah, but doesn't change the fact that life in S'pore is stressful. >_> Plus Singaporean youths themselves are taking advantage of the opportunity and many of THEM are taking biotech/biomedical science..

Uhm, firstly, about moving to Singapore to work in the biotech industry, I have the following doubts:
1) From what I've heard from friends there, it IS more stressful than Malaysia. Not only working, but also studying. You need to be able to take very high stress to keep a job there.

2) Competition from all the kiasu S'pore grads who also took biotech. Not only is their NUS probably better than any university offering biotech in Malaysia, but (I might be wrong here) preference is probably given to them as well.

Ummm.. can anyone explain why there are more jobs for pharmacists than programmers? I actually would've thought the opposite, since for each pharmacy chain you need only 1 pharmacists and not all shops are effective... and there are far less pharmaceutical companies than IT-based companies. I would've thought SE had a wider variety of jobs available, from end-user companies to companies who actually churn out software. Of course, we do need to consider the fact that the IT industry is pretty much saturated... but from what I've heard the current generation is flocking towards medicine/pharmacy/biotech so it might be equally saturated by the time I grad?

Arghghghhh I don't know.. >_>

Chris, in my first post, I already stated that I know the two options are very far apart, in every way. However, they are my two aspirations, and hence I have to choose between them.

Anyone who has had trouble finding jobs for either profession wanna share your experiences?

Ummm just a side question here to you INTI guys, does INTI subang have Software Engineering? Their website seemed to say no, but I heard they do..