The above is part of the big lie on engineering in the US. For the effort it takes to get an engineering credential, engineering is not a high-leverage career track in the United States; it's never been a ticket to heaven and generally not to major worldly success either (Lee Iacocca, a decent junior mechanical engineer who designed a working automatic transmission for his MS thesis, saw the light after 6 months at Ford and transferred to sales). A common phenomenon even during the well-paid Cold War days was the "tramp engineer" who never stayed (usually couldn't stay) in one place long enough to get vested in a pension plan and then couldn't retire. One thing you don't get in engineering is a dignified old age.
Anyone who tells a kid the old wheezes about employability, high salaries, etc. is misleading the kid. The only reason to pursue engineering of any kind is because you love it and can't imagine doing anything else. And even then you should be aware of its pitfalls. Most engineers who succeed in a worldly way do not do it as engineers - they do it on career switches such as business, finance, medicine, or patent law.
Major in chemistry. It offers more options (including chemical engineering graduate school, if you insist).