<p>Hello all, I was wondering if any chemical engineering students at UMD could talk about their opinion of the department. How are classes? Are they like regular physics and chemistry classes or something else? Are they worthwhile and interesting? I am currently in the bioengineering department and my exposure to the bioengineering major so far has not been positive. It seems like a bunch of random facts from multiple disciplines are jumbled together for each class and I am not walking away with anything really. Any comments on bioengineering would be interesting also.</p>
<p>It's just I want to get a phd in Bioengineering and work on tissue engineering or drug delivery, perhaps,but it actually seems chemical engineering is a better preparation for that and most of the professors whose works seems interesting in the bioengineering department actually have a background in chemical engineering.</p>
<p>Any thoughts would be appreciated. I need to decide before next semester between bio or chemical in order to graduate in four years easily. Thanks</p>
<p>Hey there! I just joined and saw this post. I JUSt graduated with a degree in bioengineering from UMD and had a lot of friends in chemical engineering. I agree that the courses they offer seem to not relate to one another but you have to realize that the department is still very young and is introducing a lot of changes as each graduating class provides feedback. I gave A LOT of feedback at our final capstone presentations. There are a lot of pros and cons of the department right now. Pros: the department is young, professors are young and very involved in the interest of students, research is WIDELY available, its a growing field, job oppotuninities in the area are AMAZING (I worked at NIH and Hopkins while I was a student. Friends worked at the FDA, BD, APL, so dont take that for granted.) Cons: what you take is up to you. I know they are trying to implement tracks but I have no idea to what extent they make you follow through with it. Since its new the job market is EHHHH most of my friends got jobs in consulting which I was not akin to. I actually wanted to get a phD as well but decided I should do industry first. Seeing as my friends could barely get a job in engineering companies I decided to get a masters. The job market for Bioengineers and BMEs is universal for all schools. While a lot of students from say Johns Hopkins or Georgia tech move on to research, there are a lot of students going to Consulting because honestly, they will hire anyone and pay a decent amount. </p>
<p>While the department of Chemical engineering does say “…and biomolecular engineering”, it is in no way descriptive of the major. A had quite a few friends in ChemE and while they are are wildly successful, they truly loved chemical engineering which is mostly thermodynamics, learning how to scale up products, and not what people assume. Its definitely more math than chemistry. If they wanted to they couldve taken electives in the BIOE department and the same goes vice versa. </p>
<p>I know that was a bunch of rambling but I hope it helped a little.</p>