Chemical engineer degree reddit. Chemical Engineering was a TON of work but worth it.

Chemical engineer degree reddit When I finished my BS, all the jobs were entry level lab jobs that paid $15/hour. At my internship there was a mechanical engineer who started a chemical engineering job (being in charge of a few processes, solving problems, reporting yields etc. The one thing that only ChemE's can do is reactor design. I’d say all of chemical engineering coursework is summed up in the first class I took as part of the degree path, which was Material and Energy Ba I finished my BS ChemE in 2014 and since then I’ve worked as a Field Engineer, an Application Engineer, and now a Quality Engineer - none of these roles require a chemical engineering degree but what these do require is an engineering thought process. I’m in more of a project management role, many go into process engineering. Chemical make less than your O&G engineers. Chemical engineers work for Intel, SpaceX, Exelon, Jacobs, Boeing, Burns and McDonnell, CB&I, Tyson, Entergy, Southern Company, DuPont, etc. Chemical Engineering is the coolest of the technologies, involving every advance made in science by humanity, but in practice, it could be very dull. If you desire a career in science, many engineering and basic science PhD programs will accept a chemical engineering graduate. fair warning, there are a lot of doomers in this sub that are going to come out of the woodwork and tell you to do computer science because chemE doesn't pay as The chemical engineering entry level job market is particularly brutal. It was an easy transition for me from one program to another. If you want a really marketable, widely applicable engineering degree, go mechanical. actually performing the cGMP synthesis of the chems. Typically the career path leads into management and that’s where the real money is. ChemE at my University has been rebranded as chemical and biological engineering due to its strong emphasis on biotechnology, biochemistry, and pharmaceutical engineering. Industries ChemEs work in include pharmaceutical, nuclear, food, specialty chemicals, gas and oil, consulting, etc. It's mainly CFD and FEA using ANSYS. It's definitely possible have things like a social life, a job, extracurricular activities, etc. Chemical engineer graduate of 2 years, currently in a process engineering role. Even then, the "studying 10 hours a day" stereotype isn't quite spot on either. 2 GPA lead to process engineering job and eventually a technical service job nationwide engineering support for a plastics company in the electronics industry with an expense account and a company, car and nationwide. Always get a kick out of telling people I have degree in chemical engineering but hate chemistry. funny enough, i do not have an ChemE degree and was able to move into an engineering position (biochemistry bs, University of illinois) HOW I DID IT: started as a lab tech doing API scale up (actually performing the chemistry), on scales of 5Litre-100gallon. The biggest impact on job search will be to intern or co-op while in undergrad. The degree is chemical engineering but there are a lot of careers that can come from it. When I was studying the degree in Singapore, the website on my uni chemical department, said that chemical engineers are in high demand in many industries like pharma, energy, oil and gas, wastewater industries. At least these are the topics I covered in my bachelors. Obviously you're mentored in the beginning and after that, he didn't really felt like a mechanical engineering degree held him back a lot. So I'm a chemist and an engineer, but not a chemical engineer. The response was to find any person with a ChemE degree and ask them what they do, and the answer is that's what chemical engineers do. Chemical engineers do make a little more on average but if you're smart enough to get a chemical engineering degree (generally considered the most difficult even among other technical degrees) then you are smart enough to outperform and make above average pay as a programmer or other engineer. What a chemical engineer does from [deleted] A more technical description from u/loafers_glory. You don’t really NEED anything other than a certain way of problem solving / finding out the problems before they happen. I have no internships and I have been trying to look for entry level jobs. It’s one of the most widely applicable engineering degrees, which gives you a lot of options. The read "Chemical engineering. chemical engineering is much less chemistry than you would think when it comes to your actual job someday. Chemical Engineers are remarkably subpar chemists. Hello everyone! I am an incoming first-year student from the Philippines, planning to pursue a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering (BSChemEng). What would be the ideal path (looking back now) for one with a BEng in Process Engineering to take to get into that sort of work. . Yes, it is possible to become a chemical engineer with just a chemistry degree, but it may require some additional steps. Employers are looking for any kind of engineer to fill these roles, and chemical engineers are highly regarded due to the difficulty of the degree. Im a ChemEng, just went to a conference on Nuclear Engineering a week ago. So if you have a decent amount of experience its not so bad, but if you are like me who has one 6 month contract role and got let go after a 6 month graduate role from covid its really difficult to get anything (even a graduate role) right now. I had one interview and was also not selected. Look up how many people graduate with chemical engineering degrees each year compared to the number of job openings. I left a career in environmental engineering last summer after 6 years and am now teaching high school chemistry (chemical engineering degree). Ended up hating chemistry in college but it worked out since cheme does not have a lot of chemistry. My "super senior" year we had shirts made. Whether I’m in Midland TX or Portland OR, my ability to breakdown a complex processes into While chemical engineering has long been associated with oil and gas, the future of chemE is in biotechnology or renewable energy. ). That was me, liked chemistry in high school so signed up for chemical engineering. And from that point you can conduct research in a broad range of topics. Pretty good course involving basics of chemical engineering. I absolutely love teaching! I teach at an economically disadvantaged school, and I have a great administration and good chemistry team, which makes a big difference. Hey there, been a while since you posted this, but I was curious regarding what exactly it is you do. How to get into R&D? : ChemicalEngineering - redditmedia. The avg chemical engineer with 10 yoe makes $~150K at most (this is extrapolated from the 2021 edition, I don’t have the 2023. There are times in engineering school where you'll be studying or doing homework for 10 hours in a day, but this is far from every day. Engineering classes tend to be curved much more than science classes. I am seeking advice on whether I should continue with this course or consider shifting after the first semester. Hi! I just recently graduated with a chemical engineering degree. Starting for me (chemical) was 80k. Mechanical Engineers - Me! I'm about 20 years out of school, but where I went, Michigan Tech, chem E was notorious for being the most challenging of engineering undergrad paths. People saying computer science makes more but they are thinking of people that work for FAANG which is few and far between. Someone asked a professor what chemical engineers do. There's such a variety of roles that a chemical We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. It is equal to the pressure of an ideal gas which has the same chemical potential as the real gas. But, all my applications have been rejected for the most part. My chemical engineering degree with 3. There are even sub fields where we intersect with chemical engineering like micro/nano fabrication. Hey all, I have compiled few online courses worth doing for chemical engineering students. Can't call yourself engineer without a degree + 4 years of experience + PE + personal development audits. Here are a few options to consider: - Get hired as a chemist first and then transition into an engineering role later within the same company. ) knowledge. 5 years. (2) If you are lucky to be offered a position and you accept, the first four months of the job is Patent Training Academy (full-time 8-9 hrs/day) where you learn patent prosecution, all pertinent laws and statutes, etc. The difference between chemists and chemical engineers from u/bubblepoint1980. It’s more so a process engineering degree as it will focus on how to design processes to upgrade and separate materials/fluids. Of course ymmv, but in my experience, a lot of biotech companies won't hire bachelor's right into "entry level" engineering jobs but instead put you in a technician or operator role for a bit before hiring you into an engineering role. Yes! Just be prepared that biotech can require more experience or education for similar roles to other industries . A lot of it overlaps with mechanical engineering, and in some industries ChemE's are basically specialized MechE's who aren't very good with forces, stress and strain. A lot of the classes counted from the chemistry degree so I only had the core chemical engineering degree courses to finish. Job Prospects: Chemists vs. Hands on introduction to engineering simulations - EdX. com We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. From personal experience I was able to work about 15-20 hours a week, while averaging around a 3. That would be like going to Medschool, online. So I was able to complete the second degree in 1. There is about nothing major/minor wise that will change having just a major in chemical engineering. I know engineers who travel once a week and others who never travels. Not only was the course work difficult, but a BS required the most credits to obtain of all engineering undergrad options. It's versitile in the sense that chemical engineers work in lots of different industries. A significantly larger number went into Pharma/Biotech but that will definitely be region dependent. That being said, it definitely is not a bad degree and opens a lot of opportunities. Didn’t need an engineering degree but it was a career catalyst. The chemical engineering discipline stands out from other degrees with courses in reaction engineering, process separations, and mass transport. ” Love my career now. My current lab uses life cycle assessment (LCA) and technoeconomic analysis (TEA) to identify environmental and economic hotspots in chemical processes for plastics recycling. For example semiconductor devices where u have to learn about quantum mechanics, tunneling, quantum dots and so on. Because there are so few openings, the step down from getting a true engineering job when you graduate to the next best option (something like process Mar 21, 2025 · Chemical Engineering is very less about Chemistry, so please don't think you should take ChemE because you like Chemistry. At least in my university they are not so different and you can jump from one to the other pretty easily. Its is a challenging degree and definitely pushed me to my limits. If they are struggling, its probably not because they chose to go to Manchester instead of a slightly higher ranked uni. I am not sure about chemical engineering but electronics can get more complicated than that. What is a typical day/week like for a chemical engineer? Hard to say. Just get a degree in chemical engineering and don’t worry about a double major or minors. You can check the aiche surveys to see this. Leaves you branded with a mechanical engineering degree, and not a chemical engineering one which I think is way better to have and need work. But if you want the title of an engineer you have to have a Bachelors of Science in Chemical Avg chemical engineer with 10 yoe makes significantly less than the average fresh MBA grad from an M7 or T15. [Advice] Chemical Engineer Majors working as Environmental Engineers-how easy was it to transition to Environmental Engineering? I'm interested in biodegradable plastics, water transport systems, the desalinization of water, making efficient fuel cells, and regulating fossil fuel industries or any company that may harm the environment. It is a very difficult degree to pursue and you will need to put in hours of work outside of classes. ) The avg M7 grad makes $190K base + ~$40K bonus. I will suggest you do what I should have done, bring all this technology to the place it really will make a difference: Medicine. There will be a lot of physics. From what I hear, the single best thing to do for securing a grad job is securing a placement during the degree. There are a lot of mid/senior level jobs for chem/process engineering right now, but very little in the way of graduate jobs. That's the way you make money. They take more chemistry classes including organic chemistry but most employers really don't care for the lab skills or the finer details of chemistry. Chemical Engineers. Engineering students are significantly less obnoxious and competitive than pre-med students (even if some of them are pre-med). That’s why we have retraining programs for migrant engineers, and stories of professionals (engineers, scientists, doctors, etc) esteemed in their home country sometimes struggling to If chemical engineering, it makes sense to apply for the "chemistry/chemical engineering" posting of the job. You can find jobs from oil/gas to green tech to biotech to food science and more. Some background, I have a bachelors in chemistry, worked for 8 years as a chemist, and then got a masters in Industrial Engineering and now work around a lot of Chem E's. I’ve seen more people become successful process engineers by becoming process operators first rather than getting masters degrees. I did a Master's Degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy with a focus on environmental engineering. Chemical Engineering was a TON of work but worth it. My school offered a traditional chemE degree and a chemical & biological engineering degree and out of both only maybe the top 10% went into oil and gas if that. School. All engineering degrees are very practical. So even if you have a degree you can't call yourself an engineer here lol. Southern Texas is a hub for chemical and O&G. Aug 13, 2024 · Chemical engineering is one of the traditional engineering degrees where most people graduate and find/get a job unrelated to their degree in contrast to civil, mechanical, and electrical. You can work on batteries, environmental engineering, polymers,etc. It's a bit more advanced compared to some engineering majors, too, imo. but if you enjoy solving problems and enjoy chemistry it can be a good choice. Take your electives based on what you are interested in. I think there are a lot of pros to chemical engineering that don’t get brought up much. A lot of chemical engineering (in school - not real life!) is just translating a problem into a differential equation and solving it. Mechanical engineering has more dynamics, machines, and design. I got a degree which are 5 years of education, don't know exactly the american equivalent. For engineering it’s simply not true and often the opposite- degrees from accredited programs (ABET for engineering) are more valuable than overseas degrees. Add to that, the curriculum is hard (maybe second hardest to electrical engineering). Any help would be appreciated and where I could start. 5 gpa for my junior and senior year courses. If you are willing to study enough, there's a lot of stuff in research. Interestingly, we had a mechanical engineer for about 4-5 years in our chemical engineering department; and it didn't work out. This degree is way more physics/fluids dynamics than it is chemistry. It was a lot of applied data analysis with a focus on pollution modeling and learning about different environmental remediation methods (applied chemical/environmental engineering) and math mathematically modeling Chemical engineering has more chemistry (orgo, chemical kinetics and physical chemistry) and has reactor designs. I'm a civil engineer and I know chemical engineers that make literally double what I make without their PE. Chemical engineers do make more on average but if you're smart enough to get a chemical engineering degree (often considered the most difficult among technical degrees) then you are smart enough to outperform and make above average pay in a different industry. absolutely yes. The moral is that there's a huge difference in the field of chemical engineering and where its degree holders actually work. If you don’t have an entry level ChemE job nailed down within a few months of graduation your chances of getting that entry level job starts to approach zero. It depends on location and industry. I’m a PhD student in ChemE and got an undergrad degree in ChemE. So now I hold two bachelors degrees, one in Chemistry and the second in Chemical Engineering. On my situation, I traveled every 3 months before covid, mainly because oil facilities are far away from the economic heart of the country. Apply for financial aid and you can get the verified certificate for 15 dollars. Theres quite a bit you can do in the nuclear industry without switching to pure Nuclear Eng. How are all the new grads doing out there? : ChemicalEngineering Chemical Engineers - Chemical engineers are really industrial engineers with strong transport phenomenon (thermo, fluids, etc. The ChemE degree won't be negative at all for pharma. Pay is not significantly better than programming or other engineering fields. Engineers that work for oil and gas or big pharma can make an absolute boatload of money. If your undergrad is in chemical engineering, usually a masters isn’t worth it. In chemical thermodynamics, the fugacity of a real gas is an effective partial pressure which replaces the mechanical partial pressure in an accurate computation of the chemical equilibrium constant. The school I attended boasts “higher average starting pay than Harvard. Chemical engineering is not the best description of the degree. The person struggled with the energy/chemical side of process design. Chemical Engineering Design ( Plant design, equipment design etc) Process Modelling, dynamics, and control Computer-aided Chemical Engineering: Process simulation softwares, CFD, CAD, whatever I think these are the compulsory topics where you need to develop skills. Itll always be competitive but I dont think chemical engineering degrees are difficult to find work with. Civil engineers never work with a lot of bessel functions, laplace transforms, or fourier transforms. Likely not designing the main reactor itself however, although, the future of design in Nuclear Eng is bleak anyway, with the rise and near completion of standardized modular reactors that is. while working on an engineering Literally can't become a chemical engineer where a live without a degree. I think you can learn allot from theory alone, but gaining knowledge and experience in chem and chemE lab is about 30% of your bachelors degree, and depending on which university, most likely 40% of your Master (thesis included). Some of my peers even went to Med. Starting for O&G engineers right out of school I’d guess is 90k+. There are a bunch of paths Chemical engineering isn’t that similar to chemistry. Dude technically you can be a chemical engineer with a welding certification and inspection certifications and experience. qyua dub abm hvxkbn kpsuw qyt vwcut krgiltod dij yotp