<p>I'm a freshman majoring in chemical engineering. As I have been planning my schedule for next semester, though, I have realized that I don't really know much at all about it and I'm not even sure if it's the right major for me. Can you guys give me an idea of what sort of careers people with chemE degrees go into/what kind of stuff they actually do in their jobs/how many of them go to grad school? I had originally planned to go to grad school in bioengineering, because I really like biology, but I'm not sure that I'm an engineering type person.</p>
<p>it seems as though Chem E is one of those kind of majors that you either are passionate about before hand and do really well in, or you are in between on a couple majors and try chem e and hate it. </p>
<p>With a chem e degree, you can go into pharmacy, nuclear engineering, petroleum engineering, quality assurance, consulting for engineering firms, heck even other random things like teaching and waste management. from what Ive researched, it has alot of different areas.</p>
<p>If you think that you arent one of those sciency kind of people that’s passionate about science all the time, just try and if you dont like it, get out. since this is your freshmen year, use it to explore your interests. no need to make anything definite</p>
<p>I’m a sophomore at a UC. My freshman year I declared myself as a chemical engineering major since I thought I liked chemistry in high school and knew that they pay well. Two weeks into my first quarter, I switched out of that major to computer science. Yes, I know they’re very different. The reason I switched is because I just couldn’t imagine myself working with chemicals for the rest of my life and found out that I’m not very passionate about chemistry either. Chemistry is not chemical engineering, but both deal with chemicals. ChemE deals with a lot of physics as well as some biology. I’m loving computer science and programming so I made a good choice. I think computer science is the best suited major for me, but didn’t realize it until college.</p>
<p>Chemical engineers can work in a wide range of fields. Petroleum, pharmecudicals, food, household products, consulting, military, research laboratories, plants, automotive, electronics, fabrics, solar cells, etc.</p>
<p>Seems like you can also get bioengineering jobs with the degree (Wikipedia):
“Chemical engineering is often intertwined with biology and biomedical engineering. Many chemical engineers work on biological projects such as understanding biopolymers (proteins) and mapping the human genome.”</p>