Chemical Engineering Major

<p>I'm considering majoring in ChemE in college. I want to go to med school and eventually become a doctor, though chemical engineering interests me. Would this be a good major to choose if I would like to pursue a career in medicine?</p>

<p>Yes and no, Yes because it has a lot of pre-med classes already built in, no because unless you are very dedicated and smart your GPA will likely suffer. Furthermore, Chemcial Engineering isn’t really as much chemistry as you would expect it to be, ChemE has more to do with physics, math, and statistics than chemistry IMO.</p>

<p>I agree with viciouspoultry. Unless your really a genius and can get a 4.0 in Chemical Engineering, their is not slight chance you can get into med school. Your GPA will drop even if you think you are smart enough.</p>

<p>Biomedical engineering is better preparation for medical school, IMO.</p>

<p>viciouspoultry, how does Chemical Engineering have more to do with Statistics? I’m not saying you’re wrong, just really curious.</p>

<p>To answer yg7s7, in ChemE you have to perform various statistical analysis (mean, standard deviation, standard error calculations) on inputs and outputs of a reactor, etc.</p>

<p>You’re better off choosing Biochemistry or Biology as a major if you want to get into med school. ChemE is difficult and you wont get as a GPA as high as a natural science major with the same work input. As mentioned above, the degree to which ChemE and med school curricula overlap is minimal.</p>

<p>Alright. Thank you for all of the input!</p>

<p>iambored is essentially correct, chemical processes and reactions never work 100% as they are expected to, that is you if raise the temperature by 10 degrees you might expect a rate increase of 2x but in real life its 1.2x. So what a ChemE would do is run the reactor at different temperature points and get the rate results back and perform various statistical calculations (such as least mean regressions) to determine what the expected increase in value is as well as the best temperature to optimize the profits.</p>