At first I thought that I might go into computer science; unfortunately, I found the introductory computer science class to be rather dry. Now I'm seriously considering chemical engineering, since I liked and did well in the introductory chemistry courses. However, after doing some research, I see that chemical engineers have a reputation of not having a life at the university, and consistently have 5 hours of homework every night. I also heard horror stories of the two part class called "Transport Processes/Phenomena." Can any engineers shine some more light on this? The curriculum doesn't look THAT bad to me.
Chemical Engineering
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United States1293 Posts
At first I thought that I might go into computer science; unfortunately, I found the introductory computer science class to be rather dry. Now I'm seriously considering chemical engineering, since I liked and did well in the introductory chemistry courses. However, after doing some research, I see that chemical engineers have a reputation of not having a life at the university, and consistently have 5 hours of homework every night. I also heard horror stories of the two part class called "Transport Processes/Phenomena." Can any engineers shine some more light on this? The curriculum doesn't look THAT bad to me. | ||
Chairman Ray
United States11903 Posts
As for specific engineering specialties, if you like physics, math, and engineering, I would recommend engineering physics, computer engineering, or software engineering. In chemical engineering, you have to do chemistry, materials, etc, where there's memorization on top of problem solving. GL in your choice. | ||
intrigue
Washington, D.C9931 Posts
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SoLaR[i.C]
United States2969 Posts
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nosliw
United States2716 Posts
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broz0rs
United States2294 Posts
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Try
United States1293 Posts
On July 17 2010 05:34 broz0rs wrote: the weeder course is physical chemistry junior year. I'm pretty sure the weeder courses are Introductory Thermodynamics, O-Chem, and Diffy Q second year. If you can get through those 3, you can do physical chemistry. On July 17 2010 05:32 nosliw wrote: As a ChE myself, I'd say usually the curriculum is hard, because we have to learn/use a lot of stuff. The advantage is that you can branch out very easily. Which university are you attending? 5 hours for a weekly homework set is not bad at all. Transport phenomena covers fluid dynamics, heat and mass transfer. You have only a handful of equations, but the difficult part is how can you simplify those equations so that you can actually solve them. I go to UVA, which is a pretty rigorous school. When I say 5 hours, I mean per night. According to ChE's, they never have time to go out during weekends or do any extracurricular activities cause of the constant 3-way gangbang from thermo, math, and chemistry classes. | ||
Pawsom
United States928 Posts
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professorjoak
318 Posts
There's a good chance that even at a strong university, a nontrivial portion of the undergraduate ChemEs will be wannabe med students who despite working hard lack core mathematical competence, thus contributing to the horror stories. Or it could very well be that the professors are too concerned with research to properly issue balance patches to their coursework. | ||
SoLaR[i.C]
United States2969 Posts
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Try
United States1293 Posts
On July 17 2010 05:43 professorjoak wrote: If you have a math/physics background, you'll be in good shape for ChemE. Just be aware that depending on what university you go to, there may not be as much chemistry in chemical engineering as you would expect, and what chemistry you do encounter will be mostly physical chemistry/thermodynamics. You will probably spend most of your time on fluid mechanics and transport processes, which are closer to subfields of mechanical engineering than chemistry. There's a good chance that even at a strong university, a nontrivial portion of the undergraduate ChemEs will be wannabe med students who despite working hard lack core mathematical competence, thus contributing to the horror stories. Or it could very well be that the professors are too concerned with research to properly issue balance patches to their coursework. I'm rather confused why anyone would go into an engineering major (or any difficult major, in that case) if they are premed; Medical schools look at GPA and MCAT scores above all else, and a 3.8 GPA from philosophy is worth more to them then a 3.4 in chemical or biomedical engineering. And that 3.4 GPA is going to be much harder to get. In any case, I hope there's alot of these people to soften up the curve . I've heard that chemical engineering is basically a mechanical engineer+chemistry+some extra thermodynamics. | ||
Xyik
Canada728 Posts
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gmsts
England61 Posts
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