Chemical Engineering at UW-Madison?

<p>I really want to major in chemical engineering and I chose Wisconsin because I just love the college. However, I haven't really heard a lot about engineering there because it's not a popular major so does anyone know anything about it?</p>

<p>I also don't know if I'm prepared for chemical engineering major or not(though you don't choose until after 2nd year). I am taking engineering physics, AP chemistry, and AP calc AB right now. I'm getting a A in engineering physics(honors class) and B's for other two. I know you can't really prepare for engineering majors, but I just don't want to fail.</p>

<p>Sorry for long thread. I'm slightly freaked out about college haha</p>

<p>This is not a joke topic, is it? ;)
Wisco's ChemE are top of the top.</p>

<p>I think it has to be a joke. In my experience, Wisconsin BSChE's are top 5 in quality.</p>

<p>Top ChemEs are from MIT, Standford, Berkeley, UWmadison, and UMinn-TC</p>

<p>go there, it is amazing. My MIT interviewer noted that I was applying as chemE and told me that I should go to UW madison if I dont get into MIT because it is that high quality. In addition, UW madison has many many women on campus and your chances of getting a date are greatly increased compared to other tech schools.</p>

<p>Those might be the US News rankings, but I wouldn't put them in that order based on the quality of graduates that I've met (and I've met a lot of ChE's from all over in my career). Wisconsin and MIT are up there, but I'd add UT Austin, Delaware, and Georgia Tech, but I've attended two of those five schools, so I could be biased.</p>

<p>I haven't been that impressed with the Minnesota interns that we've had through, and we've actually never hired one outright (after about 50 students over 10 years). Minn ME's do much better. I've interviewed at Stanford and (like Rice and Duke, and to a lesser degree, UT-Austin) I get the feeling that most of their engineers don't want to be engineers. They just want the more technical major for patent law, or for law/med/b school admissions, so I don't really consider them strong "engineering" programs (more like strong pre-law, pre-med, and pre-b-school programs). And as strange as it sounds, I've never met a Berkeley ChE, so I can't rank them.</p>

<p>Delaware puts out some excellent graduates. You don't really hear much about them, but I've been very impressed with the people I've worked with.</p>

<p>That's how I rank schools. I don't look at US News or publications. I wait until I meet 5-10 people from that school and compare their level of competency to those of people from other schools (particularly if they're a new hire or intern). It works for me.</p>

<p>When I say popular, I mean not many people are majoring in it there compare to other major such as biology.</p>

<p>All I know about U Wisconsin is that Byrd, Stewart and Lightfoot single-handedly developed the science of transport phenomena there, much to the dismay of chemical engineering students everywhere.</p>

<p>What to do if you don't want to go to a huge or large public and can't get in MIT, Cal Tech, or Harvey Mudd?</p>

<p>there are mid level tech schools like IIT, or Cal-poly.</p>

<p>Cal Poly SLO doesn't have ChemE. IIT Chicago sounds good though.</p>

<p>I'm an engineering student at Madison, and I can say it is a fairly popular major. We just got an email recently from CoE reminding us that the deadline to apply to our major is approaching, and it warned that Biomedical is very competitive, and that both Chemical and Mechanical are competitive as well and that students will be turned down if too many apply. If chemical engineering seems unpopular then it's not because not many people go into the major, it's because there are only a certain amount of spots and they completely fill up.</p>

<p>Fortunately I'm a civil engineer.</p>

<p>you cant start your major until sophomore year? does this make the time to complete an engineering major longer?</p>

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<p>Wow, this is an old thread to bump (and post a response to something that, as far as I can tell, wasn’t mentioned).</p>

<p>I’m not sure what school or program you’re discussing, but many colleges make you wait until your second year to declare an engineering field. It does not delay your graduation in most cases, since the first year is basically the same for all engineering students: Calc I, Calc II, Chem I, Physics I, Another lab science (Bio I or Chem II), CS I, English I, English II, and Social Science Elective (or something like that). There may be some variation (BME might need to take Bio I and II, a ChE might need to take Chem I and II, an EE might need to take CS I and II, etc), but in general, that schedule would work for most engineering majors.</p>