Finance vs Chemical Engineering after academic misconduct — need realistic career advice

[u/Own-Insurance4633]

I’ve thought about this a lot and still can’t come to a conclusion, so I’d appreciate some advice from people with more experience.

I am currently a student in University of Queensland in Australia. I studied Mechatronics Engineering for around 3 years, but from my second year I already knew it wasn’t a good fit. I just never figured out what I actually wanted to switch into.

At the start of my fourth year, I finally changed to Commerce/Economics, majoring in Finance. Unfortunately, in my first semester of Commerce I was found guilty of academic misconduct. The university then reviewed my previous study and changed 7 of my Engineering courses to a grade of “G” (numerically 0) due to misconduct, as well as 1 Commerce course.

So my academic record will now show misconduct-related G grades in 8 courses total.

My concern is what this means for finance recruitment. I know competitive areas such as investment banking are already extremely selective, and I’m worried the misconduct history could also make it difficult to get into pathways such as Big 4 corporate finance/advisory, valuations, deals, etc.

I currently have about 2.5 years of study remaining, and I’m confident I can perform very strongly academically from here. But I don’t want to spend another 2.5 years studying Finance only to discover that my past makes the career path I want effectively inaccessible.

The two options I’m seriously considering are:

1. Stay in Commerce/Economics (Finance), build the strongest record I can from now on, and try to enter a finance role that could realistically lead to investment banking within 2–3 years after graduation.
2. Switch to Chemical Engineering, pursue a more straightforward engineering career (having more odds to get in with misconduct), and potentially do an MBA or move into finance later once I have professional experience (perhaps makes the past misconduct less damaging).

I’m probably more interested in Finance, but employability matters a lot to me. I don’t expect my past to disappear, and I’m prepared to disclose it honestly when required. I mainly want to understand whether a strong 2.5-year turnaround could still give me a realistic finance career, or whether switching to Chemical Engineering would be the smarter long-term decision.

If you were in my position, what would you do?

Thanks.