<p>This is my senior year, and I am applying to a university. The admissions told me that I should declare my major now so that the specific college I am interested in (college of engineering etc) will give me some scholarships that are available. I want to get into medical school after undergrad. and I was wondering if Chemical Engineering is a good choice. I heard it is one of the hardest engineering majors; would it reduce my GPA? I really like physics, but it's really hard for me. May be because I'm only in Pre-calculus and Trigonometry, and not calculus. I really love math, figuring things out etc. But i want to protect my GPA. If engineering is not a good choice, then I ll do Biochemistry major, since I love chemistry as well!
Please let me know what you guys think.
Thank you.</p>
<p>If you care so much about your GPA than you shouldn’t be in Engineering. Besides, going to medical school after getting a degree in engineering would be a waste and an insult.</p>
<p>^ Pardon me. Why is that an insult?</p>
<p>Well I am sure engineering students do care about their GPA. You can lose certain scholarships / grants with low GPA. While average engineering students don’t maintain high GPA like certain majors out there, good engineering students work hard to pass their classes. </p>
<p>The average GPA of engineering students are quite lower. I heard about 3.0 or above. But it is not rare that people do well and maintain 3.5, 3.6 or above.</p>
<p>I don’t know how difficult ChemE is personally. I think it’s all about your interest, your motivation, your commitment, your ability to manage life and school work, as well as luck (every one will at least encounter one ******BAG professor / instructor). </p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering is typically regarded as one of the toughest majors you can choose, so yeah, it’ll be hard to keep a high gpa. Regardless, it’s hard to keep a medical school worthy gpa for any major. I think you need around a 3.8 or so to get into a good school. Most engineering undergrads I know who want to do medical school do biomedical engineering though, so maybe you should look into that.</p>
<p>I am a ChE major at a large state school and have a couple friends in my major that are planning on applying to medical school after undergrad. Engineering is a great way to prepare for medical school (i know bioE’s, EE’s and ChE’s that have done this) because of the thought process and problem solving skills it teaches you. You could do ChE with a bioprocess option/focus. Thing with ChE is, you will probably end up having to take classes/ learning about a bunch of crap you really won’t care about…process engineering stuff like heat exchangers, batch processes, and worst of all, chemical plant design. If the inner-workings of an industrial plant don’t interest you, I would say do BioE/BiomedE because honestly I wish someone would have told me that before I did ChE (shoulda been a MATSE major).</p>
<p>It’s good that you like math and problem solving because you will do a lot of this in Eng and as far as GPA goes, i think med schools do make allowances for eng majors as opposed to other majors because they know the difference in difficulty.</p>
<p>Just curious. When the BME says med school, are they referring to the BME program at the med school, or the medical program at med school?
I always wanted to ask the BME seniors at my school LOL</p>
<p>i assume medical program at the med school. i don’t think med schools have BME programs.</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering is one of the best majors that exist. You will learn about literally everything. Some of it may not interest you (transport phenomenon, chemical plant design) but some of it is really useful. On the other hand, going into medical school in the US is like trying to be an NBA superstar and the mindset would be completely different than engineering. It’ll be memorization of nonsense without logical connection, and if instead you went for a PhD in chemical engineering you could become the CEO of a company and make millions without going into 1 cent of debt (since PhDs are paid for getting their degree), while a doctor will go into debt and will never become a CEO.</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering degrees generally have most of the prerequisites for med school. However, most people who enter college wanting to go to med school end up changing their mind about it. Those who still try to get in… 90% of them will be rejected. A Chemical Engineering job would still make great money after college without going to grad school plus you won’t have to worry about trying to get into grad school.</p>
<p>But anyways, ChemE would be good for med school because med school’s look at hundreds of biology majors with 3.9 GPA’s and reject most of them. I’m just guessing here, but if you applied with a 3.7 GPA with a ChemE degree, that would probably more impressive than an easy bio major. Keep in mind it’s one of the hardest majors in college so study hard.</p>
<p>Over half of med school applicants are rejected by EVERY medical school they apply to. I’m not sure if choosing a hard major like Chem Eng is going to get you into med school, unless you do amazing on the MCAT.</p>
<p>You should really consult a pre-med advisor on this important of a topic instead of relying on anonymous internet psoters.</p>
<p>One advantage of doing the Chem Eng degree however is that you have something to fall back on if you don’t get into med school. If you have a Biology degree and get rejected, I have no clue what you will end up doing since science degrees (esepcially undergraduate ones) are generally useless and lead to low paying work. Even if you go the PhD route, you will be lucky to make $50k.</p>
<p>Not really sure how a bio PhD is only going to make $50k a year when the average bio BS student from my undergrad school is only earning about 10% less than that.</p>
<p>PhD students have to do years of low paying post doc work. A study (don’t have the link in front of me) once found that those who pursue a sicence PhD see their lifetime earning potential DECLINE. </p>
<p>“But today, however, few young PhDs can get started on the career for which their graduate education purportedly trained them, namely, as faculty members in academic research institutions. Instead, scores of thousands of them spend the years after they earn their doctorates toiling in low-paying, dead-end postdoctoral “training” appointments (called postdocs) in the laboratories of professors, where they ostensibly hone skills they would need to start labs of their own when they become professors. In fact, however, only about 25 percent of those earning American science PhDs will ever land a faculty job that enables them to apply for the competitive grants that support academic research. And even fewer—15 percent by some estimates—will get a post at the kind of research university where the nation’s significant scientific work takes place.”</p>
<p>[Craig</a> Barrett Takes On Vivek Wadhwa In The Tech Education Debate](<a href=“http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/craig-barrett-takes-on-vivek-wadhwa-in-the-tech-education-debate/]Craig”>Craig Barrett Takes On Vivek Wadhwa In The Tech Education Debate | TechCrunch)</p>
<p>If you go into industry you typically skip the post-doc stage. Also, life-time earnings may be lower with a PhD (I think that’s standard across pretty much all fields, and if you’re getting a PhD for the money then you’re doing it wrong.), but yearly earnings tend to be higher.</p>
<p>Doing ChemE major and pre-med is a bad idea in my opinion. Average GPA for ChemE students is around 3.0 so it’s very hard to get 3.7, let alone 3.9. Also, ChemE students have to take Organic Chem in their sophomore or junior year along with bunch of tough classes, while other pre-med students with less rigorous major can set up their schedule strategically</p>
<p>That is true yg7s7, but my main question is what do these pre-med students do with their degrees when over half of them never step foot in med school? Law school? Science teacher?</p>
<p>@Homer28: I was wondering the same thing. I know ALOT of kids that are Bio/Chemistry/Biochem/Physics/Business Pre-Med who I know will not be able to make it to med school</p>
<p>That is a good question.</p>
<p>Why do we care about them? Mind your own business, right? LOL
I think this answered your question.</p>
<p>iambored10: same here! I kind of feel sorry for them a little bit too. Some people who I know to not be very intelligent from high school want to be doctors just because it pays well. haha that’s terrible to become a doctor for that reason if you won’t like it.</p>
<p>But yeah… if you really want to go into medical school and major in ChemE, it might not be so bad of a decision since you can get a good job if med school rejects you, like someone else said.</p>