Abstract
To explore factors influencing students at their high school level to pursue engineering as a career or not, current study aimed to explore students’ perception of psychosocial factors involved in their academic satisfaction, and persistence intention to pursue career in engineering while studying at pre-engineering level. Twelve focus group discussions of students from BS engineering (n=7) and non-engineering (n=5) educational fields from different public universities of Islamabad were conducted. Thematic analysis was used. There were some major group differences among engineering and non-engineering student’s perceptions. The major themes emerged were academic and vocational interest, motivation, social support, personality characteristics, barriers etc. The result suggests the importance of these factors in pursuing career in engineering where there must be interest of the students in the field opted; they must be motivated to learn in context of social support. Beside this, there are some barriers from different sources like academia, parents, teachers, etc. that restrain the students from perusing and getting into engineering field.