<p>Would this work out? Since I would like to study chemistry, but my parents aren't going to pay for college unless I study engineering. Or otherwise, what about a double major in chemE and chem during undergrad? The engineering courses do not really appeal to me. I don't want to be designing equipment for chemical reactions; I want to study the reactions themselves. (example)</p>
<p>ChemE has some chemistry aspects to it. You would still be doing courses similar to that of a chemistry major, but the majority of the ChemE courses is thermodynamics, fluid transfer, kinetics, reactor design and so on. You can try to double major, but honestly ChemE on its own from what I’ve heard is one of the more brutal fields to study in engineering. Some of the courses do overlap though, so it maybe possible. Chemistry studies reactions at the molecular level. ChemE takes that and applies it to a macro level. You can alternatively try going for Materials Science and engineering, which includes things like Metallurgy, Ceramics, polymers, which is also based on chemistry.</p>
<p>MatSciE sounds interesting, seems quite broad.</p>
<p>At the graduate level, the two can overlap a lot, depending on what subfield you get into. One of my former classmates took a lot of his classes from the chemistry department when he was doing his ChemE PhD at CalTech.</p>