<p>Which do you guys feel has the more rigorous courseload? or is it all relative to the person? Biological Sciences or Chemical Engineering. I'm currently bio but i'm having doubts about whether to change to something more like engineering (where more math is involved).</p>
<p>Engr’ing has more requirements than most majors, plus you will have to go through OChem and the labs just like Bio. Beware, there are weeder courses for both, so don’t slack. Majority of UCI students come in as Bio, but many eventually change majors b/c they can’t handle the work load, same applies for Engr’ing. </p>
<p>About switching, you will do LOTS of physics, math in engineering. Bio is more conceptual, but math/physics, you’re gonna have to get the answer 100% correct most of the time to be successful whereas in Bio you can probably get away from ball parking the concepts.</p>
<p>^ Not sure about bio being more conceptual. </p>
<p>Engineering is very conceptual. A lot of engineering is also ballparking the solution with reasonable assumptions (most of the time, a 1st order approximation will suffice). Although I have taken a few engineering classes where a 100% solution was required, many profs give a lot of partial credit for the problem setup and solution procedure (i.e. if you got close, but didn’t get it you still receive some to most credit). </p>
<p>Can you do/understand higher level math and physics? By “do” of course I mean actually understand the material and perform simple to rigorous derivations as opposed to memorizing a simple recipe towards a solution. This ability will heavily influence your success in engineering. Finally, are you willing to spend 6-8 hours per homework assignment and 10-15 hours + per/on quarterly projects in addition to regular class time, possibly research, work, etc.? Think at least 2-3 engineering classes per quarter + a breadth course + labs. That is a lot of time out of your week already, and you haven’t even factored in studying or a social life yet. There are reasons why most people will agree that engineering is a lot of work. However, if you’re willing to put in the time then the benefits of the degree are fairly substantial.</p>
<p>Don’t ask yourself if you can do math; anyone can do math with enough practice. What you can’t do with enough practice is force yourself to sit down and memorize for 5 hours.</p>
<p>If you can memorize every word in the first 10 pages of the dictionary within 2 days you can do bio. If you find this more challenging than solving 30 math and physics problems per week, then you’re ready for bio.</p>
<p>One of my test questions in Bio98 was “How many water molecules are producted by glycolysis” and the answers were 1,2,4,6,8.</p>
<p>If you can do neither advanced math or sit through hours of memorization… I don’t want to be blamed again for recommending this, but: chemistry. Mostly adding and subtracting, no memorization.</p>
<p>One more thing: the weeder classes for bio are harder and you’re competing against premeds who beg for every other point and cheat like crazy; I’ve taken a few engineering classes and they are not exceptionally hard, just moderately hard. Pure memorization bio classes like Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Development, Signal Transduction and Cancer Genetics will make you want to shoot yourself.</p>
<p>The problem with chemical engr is that its heavily focused on reactor type stuff. think processing engineering. </p>
<p>And math is a little harder. At some point, your engineering classes (regardless of type of engr) will make you do some really hard math. from a conceptual standpoint, it will be fine. but then you’ll have some nastry integral or partial differential equation or something. Elliptic functions, gamma functions, bessel functions, the list goes on. a large chunk of learning “math” is building the toolbox of all these functions so you can sit and do a problem then realize “oh hey! thats a _____ function and I’ll solve it as such!” and the only way you can build this toolbox is by working a lot of problems (often late into the night…)
And in engineering, you often can’t solve problems analytically (ie exactly), so you’ll probably become very familiar with numerical analysis. </p>
<p>also, why are you considering changing? are you worried about the lack of jobs for bio majors (due to lacking all the math?)
if thats the case, you can still study biology from other fields. maybe major in physics and take some bio classes (i think the physics major has a bio physics track+phys 146 i think…). or chemistry. or BME. there’s a lot of ways to do biology without being a straight up bio major.</p>
<p>chemical has less math than EE/ME here. they only take up to 3D and 2E; EE/ME have to take “Engineering Analysis” which is pure math, and EEs have it even worse; signal processing is pure math, and they take a year. in contrast, at UCI chemical engineering is mostly chemistry; you only need to take 5 extra classes to get a Chemistry degree! (last Pchem class, inorganic, inorganic lab, analytical, analytical lab)</p>
<p>if you are comfortable with doing both organic synthesis and differential equations, ChemE is really not hard. it gets the reputation because it needs both the chemistry mindset and the engineering mindset, and most people are good at one or the other, not both.</p>
<p>and if you really want to do bio, there’s a Biochemical Engineering track.</p>
<p>Im thinking of switching from bio to biochemE under chemE with math minor. I relized i might have better job opps as an egineer over bio for not being premed. Do I need to take a physics placement?</p>
<p>Yes. If you’re not premed, Bio won’t actually teach you anything about the “technology” part of biology. Biology over here seems to be more medical related than industrial application related, guess that’s for Chem/ChemE people.</p>
<p>Take the physics placement test too you will 100% need it.</p>
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<p>there is so much wrong with all this information, it’s scary. first off, you can’t argue that because chemical engrs take less formal math classes, their major needs less math. for one, if you were a chemical engr, you “technically” wouldn’t learn partial differential equations. no way can you do fluid mechanics without doing PDEs. and a lot of the control systems stuff involves various DE. same thing with physics majors (they dont take PDEs).
This is something I alluded to in my prior post- about the toolbox. the reason is, you don’t know what “tools” you need to do various projects. not only that, there are often several methods to solve a problem (ie. build me a chair. you could build a chair using screws, but you can easily devise a method that never uses screws…).
a more relevant example: if you do statistical signal processing/networks, you’ll really need to know stochastic methods and graph theory- things absent from most undergraduate EE curriculum. by in large, science/engr departments try teach you math as you learn the physics (or whatever… it’s a common problem why people hate physics! it’s cause they’re learning math and physics at the same time!)
additionally: if you do anything in any science/engineering field, you NEED to know linear algebra. everything you want to do is probably going to be placed in a matrix of some kind at some point. but the knowledge from linear algebra that you learn in the formal, required math classes (math 2j) is so rudimentary. as is their coverage of Taylor series (important if you do engineering as you can’t solve things analytically and need to do so numerically). –> you can get your phd in mechanical engrineering doing numerical models of fluid! it’s important! and these are all things you don’t learn in formal math courses!
also, the various engr analysis classes are NOT pure math. and technically, EEs don’t have to take any signal processing classes, they take continuous and discrete systems/signals (this is splitting hairs matter is splitting hairs). and even those classes are not difficult (the material can be very difficult, but the classes, generally, are not). they take continuous and discrete systems/signals (this is splitting hairs matter is splitting hairs). and even those classes are not difficult (the material can be very difficult, but the classes, generally, are not).</p>
<p>and the reason why chem engr can work where chemist can is because the chem degree is so incredibly broad, that it loses a lot of depth. .
example: say you take inorganic chemistry. thats a course on, basically, every element not covered in organic chem. so roughly 100 elements… and you expect to become an expert in inorganic chem after just 10 week? you realize that a biochemist, a synthetic chemist, and a physical chemist are basically taking the same classes? their paths and careers are on really different tracks, yet they’re learning the same core material.</p>
<p>and chemical engineering is so heavily geared towards process engineering. lets take a look at some of the upper div chem engr classes…</p>
<p>Reaction Kinetics and Reactor Design
Momentum Transfer (aka fluid mechanics)
Separation Processes
Chemical Process Control</p>
<p>your goal as a chem engr is to build/manage chemical plants (still a VERY important job). I’m just trying to give you an idea of what to expect if you do decide to study chemical engineering. try looking at some of the senior projects in the chem engr department if you don’t believe me.
it seems like what a lot of people are actually interested in falls under mat sci though.</p>
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depends, what do you want to do?</p>
<p>Physics majors take Mathematical Physics which includes PDEs. ME/EE take Engineering Analysis which also includes PDEs. ChemE doesn’t have an equivalent requirement. For fluids, they don’t even require regular DEs for civil engineering’s fluids class, check for yourself at CEE170, 2E is enough.</p>
<p>Yes physics majors take math physics and cover PDEs in it. they also take it in the winter of their senior year, AFTER taking 112 and 113. 112 is electromagnetics, where you learn maxwell’s equations which are BY DEFINITION partial differential equations.
EE analysis don’t cover pdes-- they spend 1/3 of the class on complex analysis, 1/3 of the class on vector analysis (important for electrodynamics) and 1/3 the class on linear algebra-- no PDEs.
and the MAE analysis class spends 1/2 the time on ODE.</p>
<p>and if you knew anything about real fluid mechanics, you’d know the most famous equation of the field (navier stokes) is often a partial differ eq. yes, you can do situations where you don’t model fluids as a pde (or de for that matter), but that’s like saying you took chem 1a and you know quantum mechanics. yes, quantum mechanics was covered in chem 1a, but you REALLY don’t know the subject matter… </p>
<p>even so, it points to my original point-- YOU DON’T NEED TO TAKE A FORMAL MATH CLASS TO LEARN SOME MATH. </p>
<p>I hate to sound like an ass/start a flame war, but honestly-- you really don’t sound like you actually know any of what you’re saying. it really just sounds like you’re reading the uci catalog/skimming wikipedia.</p>