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After taking quite a few math and science courses, I am considering transferring to the school of engineering at my university. I find engineering, physics, and math to be alot more interesting to my ADHD brain, and I can focus far longer on this stuff than I can on business and economics (which was going to be my original major). However, I need to find a specific engineering specialty that suits me.
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.
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All engineering courses are similar in a way. The coursework itself isn't all that much, but figuring it out may take some time. Sometimes when I'm lazy I just copy solutions from the solution manual, and that takes about a 2 hour session for the entire week. The amount of work you have to do really depends on how well you know the material. If you never listen in class and read the textbook when homework comes out, then yes, 5+ hours of homework a night is reasonable. If you pay attention in class, and regularly study, then 1 hour a day seems plenty.
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.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9934 Posts
i think chemical engineering is one of the hardest majors in general. i had the same chemistry requirements as the ones at my school and i got raped at the higher levels, i just can't deal with memorizing so much. they had higher math requirements too, seems really tedious. my roommate made it through pretty unscathed though, he's just into that stuff. don't choose lightly!
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Do you enjoy/not mind doing mass balance and thermodynamic problems?
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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.
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the weeder course is physical chemistry junior year.
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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.
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Coming from a CS background I can tell you first 2 years are a joke and you shouldn't judge the program on that. Try to sit in for a lecture in an upper level class
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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.
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You won't have 5 hours a day of homework.
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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.
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Just remember, never study something just because you're good at it. If you're actually interested and passionate about chemistry you should do it. From what I hear though, bio / chem courses will have a lot of labs and extra little things other students won't have to deal with.
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I was considering Chemical Engineering for a while but switched to Mech Eng wouldn't say it was particularly hard just a lot of memorizing. This is in the UK don't know how it is in the US.
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EPT
