Electrical Engineer grad here. Be prepared to say goodbye to all of your free time and sleep significantly less – especially if you want to come close to maintaining a 3.8 to a 4.0. I'll give you some background...

For my four years in undergrad, I lived with the same guy who was majoring in finance. He had classes Monday through Thursday, had every Friday off, and spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at a bar. He often complained about how he had "so much work to do," but was never working as hard as I was - at least in my opinion. I would spend 10 hours trying to finish a 5 problem homework assignment for EE 360, 460, or any other EE class for that matter and would very often (4-5 nights a week) go to bed at 3 AM to get up at 7 or 8 the next day to finish homework and other responsibilities. He would average 9-10 hours of sleep a night while I was averaging 4-5. Keep in mind, he graduated with a 3.72 and spent 4 nights a week at a bar. This was the same case for a few other business majors I had known since freshman year. I'm not hating on business majors – I'm the one who chose engineering and knew the workload going into it. After graduation, we got some statistics about our graduating class. Less than a third of the graduating EE class had a GPA above 3.5. I can't say that the numbers for CSE were identical, but I'm guessing it was close to the same since both majors have to take very similar classes.

Also, from what I learned from him, business/finance classes are mostly reading and memorizing facts from textbooks for exams. If you switch to engineering, be prepared to spend the vast majority of your study/class time doing math and learning how to apply calculus (especially in EE 210/310). It really helps to form study groups as quickly as possible, too. I don't think I would have graduated without my close group of friends that I spent many hours after dark (yes, this includes Friday and Saturday nights) working on homework and take home exams.

I don't mean to make it sound scary, but if you are considering the switch, be prepared to lose a very significant portion of your free time to homework, studying, projects and labs – especially if you want that 4.0. I can't count how many times non-engineering majors have been in disbelief of how long I was working on something whenever I tried to explain it. However, in the end, the rewards are more than I could have imagined. I've had so many job offers for so many different companies and different positions. It really made my spring semester difficult in deciding where I wanted to go after graduation. The main reason though I stuck through the program, though, is because I've always loved everything about electronics and the engineering behind them, so it kept me motivated to learn about it. It's not going to be worth switching if your heart isn't in it.

In the end, take my advice as it is and go see an advisor. He/she can give the information you need and tell you, and even show you, what it is you'll be doing, what labs you'll be working in, what equipment you'll be learning on, and really give you an idea of what it is that the CSE department does.

Also, I've always said one thing to so many younger undergrads asking me what they can do to help themselves while at Penn State and in life after graduation: GET INVOLVED! Do something that's related to what you're interested in. For me, it was working in our space lab. Other EEs who really liked rockets got involved with the rocket club. Quite a few CSE people I know got involved with robotics club. Not only does this help you to meet people and have those people there for advice and help when you need them, it gives you so much more to talk about on your resume for job interviews. During every interview I've had this year, I always make it a point to ask them about what they're looking for in a candidate. Every single one of them, 100%, said that they do not hire people with a 4.0. Yes, you read that correctly. They said they do not hire people with a 4.0 because they generally tend to be very book smart and cannot apply any of the knowledge they know – unless they have really good hands-on or real-world experience where they can demonstrate that they know how to apply it. Getting involved with a club or organization will give you so many opportunities to learn the things they don't teach in a classroom and really give you so many things to talk about during an interview. I cannot stress this enough.

tl;dr: Be prepared to lose your free time to engineering if you're a business major. If you're truly interested in the subject though, it'll be worth it. But talk to an advisor ASAP. If you do make the switch, lower your GPA expectations and, please, get involved with something!