<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>Is anyone familiar with the chem engineering department at caltech? How are the classes and professors like? How are the research facilities like? How about the workload? Is the workload one of the heaviest at caltech with respect to other courses'? More importantly, how many freshmen usually select chem eng each year, and just curious to know, what is roughly the guy to girl ratio like for chem engineering? Thank you all! :D</p>
<p>ChemE has the most requirements of any major. More requirements, in fact, than are required to graduate. I have several friends in ChemE, and from what they tell me, the classes are incredibly difficult and a lot of the profs are unsympathetic jerks. Probably about 20 freshman select ChemE each year, but the number drops to about 15 or fewer after sophomore year. I don’t know the guy/girl ratio. It’s probably around 60/40.</p>
<p>One of the guys in my lab was a ChemE undergrad here and had less than stellar things to say about it. He got a concentration in Materials Science, but said it was kinda pointless.</p>
<p>I’m a junior in chemical engineering at Caltech, and also the president of the Caltech student chapter of AIChE. I’d say I’m about as knowledgeable as they come about the subject. I’ll write a full, detailed response later, but for now I’ll just say I more or less agree with IMSAgeek and RacinReaver.</p>
<p>great thanks for the responses, although so far the comments hadn’t been too positive about the course! XD </p>
<p>@IMSAgeek: in what way are the profs “unsympathetic jerks”? Aren’t caltech professors are really down-to-earth and helpful? Oh and how much more demanding is the chem eng course compared to the rest? Any specific examples? :)</p>
<p>@RacinReaver: just wondering why your friend said that having a concentration in materials science was “kinda pointless”? </p>
<p>@Dauntless9: really looking forward to your response!</p>
<p>I was a ChE at Tech. I disagree entirely with the unsympathetic jerks comment.</p>
<p>I do feel some of the classes are a bit legacy and not too applicable to what I do. In particular, the Ch21 series is pretty pointless (how many people are really going to do quantum and the class was fairly poorly taught to start with). I don’t have serious qualms with the other classes. I have never used ChE 63 material again and that class was a ton of work, but it’s hard to imagine a ChE program not forcing students to learn classical ChE thermodynamics. ChE at Caltech forces you to learn a ton of math–you will be good at solving ODE’s and PDE’s by the time you leave.</p>
<p>I think the tracks system could have been better when I took it.</p>
<p>The workload is heavy. I just looked quickly at the reqs for the new bioEng undergrad program. Knowing what I know now, I would almost certainly choose to do that major instead (classes more aligned with my interests). OTOH, when I started Caltech, I wasn’t sure that I would end up doing biology.</p>
<p>Why do you want to major in ChE?</p>
<p>Let me just butt in here to say that Electrical Engineering is by far the best major at Caltech… do that one!!!</p>
<p>@webhappy: I guess the main reason is the immense array of applications and future career options (chemical plants, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, catalysts etc). In addition, I can continue to pursue my interests in math, chem and physics through chem eng without having to forfeit one or the other.</p>
<p>@lizzardfire: I’m definitely considering taking Electrical Engineering as well! One question though, is there much difference between the workload of EE and ChemE?</p>
<p>I didn’t answer your part about research, but I don’t think your choice of major will seriously impact what labs you can participate in. EE is also heavy, but many of the courses are really different. I would advise you to choose the major that you think you will enjoy more (ie, compare the courses that are known to be the really heavy ones in each major–for ChE, it would be thermo and transport and you need to ask a EE for the EE classes).</p>
<p>ChemE at Caltech is definitely one of the most difficult majors. What makes it difficult is the large number of required and fairly difficult classes. Sophomore year has been the most brutal year recently due to some slight curriculum changes (ChE 64 was ramped up in difficulty, and ACM 95 is now taken in the sophomore year to prepare you for ChE 103), and the current trend is to see around 25-30 start off as ChemE, and this will shrink to around 20 by the end of sophomore year. ChemE actually has about an even male:female ratio, though that’ll obviously vary from year to year. </p>
<p>Some of the research facilities are a little old (well actually, they just finished building a new Chem/ChemE building, so that’s exciting), but the research being done is top notch, and our profs are among the best in their fields. I actually agree that one or two of the profs can be unsympathetic jerks at times, but they can be avoided for the most part. All the profs I’ve had were enthusiastic about teaching, and cared about their class and undergrads, though some tend to be a little clueless as just how long that “fun” problem on the problem set is actually going to take. Profs in general at Tech are very willing to have undergrads in their labs, and just about everyone I know at Tech has done research in lab. The research opportunities at Caltech are amazing.</p>
<p>It’s worth mentioning that ChemE at Caltech is theoretically oriented, and doesn’t really focus on preparing you for industry. This is great if you want to go on to grad school, but obviously less so if you just want to get a job in industry. People still do get internships and go into industry, it’s just not the focus of our program. Our courses tend to be focused on doing ODE’s and PDE’s to describe various physical systems, and I feel sometimes we sacrifice learning about engineering design to instead do complicated math for the sake of complicated math. Also, we have a track system in which you can pick biomolecular, materials, environmental, or process. You can see more about required classes at the Caltech chemical engineering website (just google it).</p>
<p>I’m majoring in ChemE because I find the material interesting (thermo, separations, heat transfer, etc.), and I’m an engineer at heart, as opposed to a chemist. I’m biomolecular track, and do research in protein engineering (mutating proteins to do cool things, like incorporate non-natural amino acids into proteins to do cool chemistry not found in nature). Even though the classes are difficult and the hours are long, I feel I’ve learned a lot of math and science that I can use to tackle just about any sort of problem in engineering. ChemE’s work together as a group most of the time at office hours, and we still find time to have fun. And of course, at Caltech you don’t have to declare a major until the end of frosh year, so you have time to decide.</p>
<p>I’ll defer to dauntless’s superior knowledge on this subject. I’d just like to add that I wouldn’t come to Caltech with your heart set on ChemE. I know that I wouldn’t be able to graduate in that major, and I didn’t know that until watching my ChemE friends in their sophomore year at Caltech. There’s really know way of knowing until you get here whether you’ll be able to do it.</p>
<p>thanks dauntless for that informative post. IMSAgeek, yeah i guess i’ll explore during freshman year, but my heart is definitely set on something chemistry-related, either chemistry or chemical engineering. One question though, how many percent of the course covers stuff related to power plants ( like heat transfer, seperation, thermodynamics) ? I hope a significant portion will be allocated to other areas like environmental engineering, materials and pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p>bump (10 char)</p>
<p>Rigorous but worth it. Go for it, I am also interested in a different field of engineering and looking into both MIT and CALTECH.</p>
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<p>I think he had four classes. Two were ok intro-level courses, one was a microscopy class that’s mediocre, and the last one was a cut-down quantum class that’s pretty much a waste of time.</p>