Don't go into science. It's a long ass haul to a Ph. D. 4 years undergrad, 5 years grad school and 3 years post doc. That's 12 years or more with minimal earnings. Median salary for a chemistry professor is 85K after all that and the positions are few and far between. You have to be in the top performers to make a decent living and at least 1/2 of the jobs are in expensive regions of the country. I do pretty well but I would consider my lifestyle pretty middle class after all that. Right around 100K in the area I live is pretty middline especially when you include the debt incurred during the training. I'm in chemisty and medicine. I have friends that work for NASA that are pretty much in the same boat as me and these guys are top 1% in physics and engineering.. some of the smartest guys here in the US. If you are super smart and have good business acumen you can do better than me.. at least as I do now. If you come up with something that is marketable the university or research institute you work for gets the majority of the profit from your idea unless you are really really resourceful. Get into science if you love it and feel called to it, not for money. If you want to make money maybe look into finance or private business. I also know people that do very well kin real estate. A sort of untold truth is a lot of guys that are wealthy made some of their original operating capital illegally. A good number of the supplement company owners for instance.