What should I do? - What are some ways I can learn about the industry

This board is a decent resource. Read Liars Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, WSJ, Bloomberg, etc.

Take some business classes so you can understand the basics.

PS, majoring in engineering isn't too bad of an idea even if you ultimately want to do IB. Engineering is a very respected major and if you do well in it you should be on par with most finance majors when it comes to interviewing.

You might not want to use your name on here. What type of school do you go to?

As a rule, never listen to your parents when it comes to wall street. I'm willing to bet they don't even know what an investment banker does. Too many times do I hear that my industry will be non-existant in 5 years and that everyone will start investing on their own thanks to sites like motley fool (wtf?)

At the same time, there's nothing wrong with doing engineering. You just need to signal to employers that you've got a brain. Just don't major in something like broadcast news.

An engineering major is great to have because in the likely hood you can't break into finance you'll have a solid back up career. I would actually start tearing through the articles at mergers and inquisitions (dot) com. Really solid stuff & has an article for pretty much every question you may have.

I'd start with figuring out what you want to do for a living and get some long term goals. Parents should not influence your decision much, you need to figure out what u want for yourself. Then again when I was a freshman in college I thought I was going to be a career military officer, and then changed my mind about career plans every 6 months or so until I was a second semester junior and decided to go into finance.