I went to the BLS website, and got some salary statistics for different careers. The really interesting thing I see from the statistics is the disparity between what people think are average salaries, and what the average salaries actually are. Most people would assume that lawyers make more than engineers, but in reality the average salary for a law school graduate isn't all that high. The thing is that law school graduates have a much higher standard deviation in their salaries, and most people only focus on the lawyers who make the most money.

I'd imagine that people do the same thing when they're thinking about going to college or grad school. They always think that they're going to be above average, even though in reality the average person is average.

The only other interesting thing to point out is that in China, all of the major leaders are engineers. Hu Jintao, Jiang Zhemin, Wen Jiabao - all engineers. In contrast, most American leaders are lawyers or businessman. Usually Republicans are the businessman, and Democrats are the lawyers, but there are exceptions. Bush Sr. was an economist, and Reagen was an actor (which, in my opinion, made them, respectively, the best and worst presidents of the later half of the 20th century).