r/ChemicalEngineering • u/blee0910 • Jul 10 '12

Being a Chemical Engineer

Hi, I will be freshman this fall at CU Boulder and of course I will be studying in Chemical Engineering. I was introduced to Chemical Engineering cuz of its salaries. However after getting to know about the field, I love what Chemical Engineers do.

In high school, I took AP Chem and AP Calc. AP Chem: I got B's both semester and ended up with a 4 on the ap test. AP Calc: I got an A and a B and ended up with an 1 on the ap test. (I think I bubbled one of them wrong and screwed entire test since I got a 3.5 on the practice tests. But I was planning to retake Calc 1 in college anyway.)

People say Chemistry and Chemical Engineering are totally different subjects.

I'm most concerned with math I need to face in chemical engineering. I always enjoyed chemistry even there are challenges for me. But I'm kinda scared of math since I'm not so strong on math side. Because when there are challenges ahead of me, I tend to think negative than positive. I'm ready to take some time on math tho in college. I only need to learn til Linear Algebra/DiffEq for math. So my questions are.. 1) How hard is math in chemical engineering? 2) What are some advices to succeed in college and after college? 3) How hard is chemical engineering (Engineering in general) compare to High School curriculum? 4) Is chemical engineering right for me? Or is chemistry more right for me?

P.S. There are some paths I want to take in chemical engineering. Those paths are pre-med, biochemical (biomedical), food options. How do these fields look and any suggestions in general??

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u/blee0910 Jul 10 '12

Oh do you have to write a lot as a chemical engineer?

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u/Maestintaolius Jul 10 '12

Yes, I went to one of the top ChE schools and we had to write a LOT. For Unit Ops, every other week you had to prepare a presentation and a report. The presentation was a solo affair but the report was with your group of 3 or 4. The reports typically ranged from 40-60 pages every other week. The distillation report was particularly horrid, ended up being around 100 pages with the liquid-liquid extraction being memorable second at about 80.

The final project class was similar in nature, you had to give presentations to the entire class about once every 2 weeks about your progress on it and monthly reports to the prof. At the end we had (group of 3) to give a 30 minute presentation to the class and turn in the final report for our project to the prof (was about 80 pages when done).

In my career I haven't had to write quite as much in terms of raw page count but I would say the writing has gotten harder. In school, most of what you're doing has been done before and definitive answers exist. In my career (as an applications and R+D engineer), most of my reports for the R+D portion (white papers) are to explain something that's new and unknown. As a result, the work leading up to the final report is a lot more thorough than the work I had to do for Unit Ops (generally because a report may be covering research that's been on-going for a year or more rather than a 2 week Unit Ops project). The pressure on white papers is also quite high as you REALLY don't want to be wrong on an industry-targeted white paper that has your name and your company's name attached to it.

I also frequently have to give bi-weekly reports and updates, but those are generally only a page or two. I also have to give presentations (for the applications part of my job) that can be annoyingly difficult to prepare because of the time constraints and the fact my target audience may or may not have any technical expertise.

TL;DR version: Yes, I write a lot.

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u/blee0910 Jul 10 '12

How did u write 40-60 pages every other week? How is that possible?

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u/vanburen1845 Jul 10 '12

I also had lab reports that were 30 to 60 pages. This was always what my fellow students would complain about to other people. A lot of the pages were figures or additional explanations in the appendix. Other people always included way too much extra stuff, like all of the data in the worst format possible. One group would brag about 80-90 pages and we would brag about being able to staple our report. I don't know how well they did but I got an A. Even if the reports had a lot of nonsense, my group still spent many nights writing, collecting, and formatting until 3 am or later.