<p>Could anyone share their thoughts on WUSTL's chemical engineering? How rigorous is the program? What kind if research opportunities undergrads get? What grad schools students get into? I want to work in nanotechnology. How good is the nanoscale science and engineering minor? Would also appreciate if the questions are answered for mechanical engineering. Thank you.</p>
Depends on what kind of nanotech you’re looking for. ChE is a supremely broad field, but, unfortunately, WUSTL’s ChE program focuses predominantly on the environmental applications of the field, and less so on industrial/biological/materials, etc.
I studied Chemical Engineering at WashU. The department is the department of Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering, and yes, there is very little research or focus on anything other than the first two parts of the sentence. I worked in the only nanomaterials lab (as of 2 years ago) on campus, which was extremely small (maybe 5 people total) and located in the Mechanical Engineering department (i.e. Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science). If you’re looking for what I imagined ChemE was at WashU, you’re looking in the wrong place. The program was not particularly rigorous, but it’s fine, and there are a couple okay professors. I transferred after my sophomore year and got a nanomaterials research internship at MIT after my sophomore year, but I was one of the few people from my class who got research experience, so don’t let that fool you. That said, I knew a few upperclassmen who did research, but they were mostly in biomedical engineering, not ChemE, and the one person in ChemE I knew who did research was a real go-getter and destroyed most of the rest of the class. But if you are looking for research actively, you should be able to find it - if it’s related to energy and the environment. They try really hard to get you to do research in the department if you show interest (they tried to pull me away from MechE/MatSci (aka MEMS) for whatever reason, saying that they have a couple nano-type things going on, but they really don’t). However, WashU, like most colleges, is always trying to move up and improve itself, so things might have changed a little by the time you get there. But the engineering school and the facilities are very new and (while they have some shiny things) that means they have not had a lot of time for their research to take off.
As for the minor in nanoscale science and engineering, that was mostly cobbled together to please a crowd like you and is almost brand new; it was designed for people who are already stuck with the program, and the courses aren’t available every semester. However, if you desire a real specialization outside of environmental engineering, you should look into schools with Materials Science majors or with ChemE departments that research what you’re interested in.
People get into all kinds of grad schools from WashU. I’m a senior now, but I haven’t heard where anyone from my class has gotten into grad school yet, and I’ve (truthfully, but maybe out of ignorance) not heard of anyone from ChemE in previous graduating classes getting into a top grad school, but obviously there must be some people, and they are certainly the exceptions, and you could find them if you tried, as you can find any exception. But it seems like a lot of people go into industry from WUSTL ChemE/EECE. Industry seemed to be the main calling for most of WashU engineering, though, and it could just be that engineering everywhere is that way. Grad school is not as populous (or popular) as college, you know.
I agree with @weirdalsuperfan in that WUSTL EECE has more industry placement than the other engineering departments (whereas myself, as a EE, am a minority in that I went to industry after my BS/MS instead of a PhD program).
I also agree that if you want pure ChemE, you’ll likely be disappointed with the emphasis on the Energy/Environment side.
For examples of WashU ChemE’s going to top grad programs, off the top of my head I can name people now at Stanford, Cal, MIT, & Case Western. All from 2012-2014 classes. And that’s without actually thinking that hard (I didn’t know too many ChemEs to begin with).