<p>Can anybody compare these 2 branches of engineering in terms of career prospects, difficulty and what specific subjects you have to be especially good in?</p>
<p>Hmmm… Well, there isn’t really any similarities. </p>
<p>IE - No Chem, Physics - More math than ChemE - Generally considered (well, at least here) the easiest engineering major
ChemE - Lots of Chem and Physics</p>
<p>IEs get hired in lots of different industries for lots of different types of jobs. It’s a broad field. I don’t really know about ChemEs.</p>
<p>IE is an engineering that is more geared towards the business side of engineering (finance, economics, management). Another example could be studying complex processes, systems, and operations. </p>
<p>ChemE is basically engineering with chemistry (obvious I know) and physics. This is more geared towards the life sciences rather than more mechanical fields. </p>
<p>From my experience ChemE is one of the most difficult majors in engineering while IE is on the other end of difficulty and is one of the easier engineering disciplines. All of these assumptions are general, and it your school of choice can effect these ratings of difficulty.</p>
<p>“IE - No Chem, Physics - More math than ChemE - Generally considered (well, at least here) the easiest engineering major” (post #2)</p>
<p>My daughter in an industrial and systems engineering major. She took two chemistry classes and two physics classes. She did have to take more math (which is great because she loves math) than some of her friends in other engineering majors . </p>
<p>She’s taken 3 mechanical engineering classes and one or two in materials science. She took two statistics classes and an accounting & cost analysis class. In her manufacturing engineering class, she learned how to weld. </p>
<p>She will be taking an electrical circuits class. Some of the other classes she has yet to take include operations research, production systems, applying math modeling to materials processes, engineering project management, systems design, biomechanical work design and 5 technical electives classes.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like she will be more of a jack-of-all-trades–knowing a little bit about different areas. In chemical engineering you would be an expert. </p>
<p>If you really like chemistry, then go with the major that has the most chemistry involved. I know that the amount of math required for industrial and systems majors is one of the things that appealed to my daughter.</p>
<p>Qwerty, I am not sure that the IE major requires more math than the ChE major, which in some schools requires 4 to 5 semesters of math.</p>
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<p>Many of the IE classes are applied math classes like Operations Research, Inventory Theory, Simulation Modeling, Probability and Statistics…</p>
<p>“Qwerty, I am not sure that the IE major requires more math than the ChE major, which in some schools requires 4 to 5 semesters of math.”</p>
<p>At my school a typical IE probably takes in the range of about 10 math classes (not all in the math department, but fundamentally math classes).</p>
<p>SportsMama, Industrial and Systems Egr isn’t even close to Chemical Egr. ‘Materials Science and Engineering’ is even more similar than ‘Industrial and Systems Engineering’ to ‘Chemical Engineering’.</p>
<p>Engineerhead, I’m sorry you misunderstood my post. I never said that ISE was close to Chem E. I was responding to post 2 that said that ISE students take NO chemistry or physics. That’s not true, as I posted above. In addition, I said that ISE majors take a few classes from different engineering areas, a lot of math, and their major ISE classes. </p>
<p>I was trying to make the point that if you like math and you want to know a little bit about different areas of engineering, you might like ISE. If you really like chemistry and you want to be an expert in a field of engineering, you might want to study Chem E. That’s all. Just trying to be helpful with the little bit of knowledge that I have.</p>
<p>I’m sorry I took your post otherwise. Rereading more thoroughly has cleared it right up.</p>
<p>Hey, it was late when you posted. 
Thanks for taking the time to re-read.</p>
<p>To the OP: Have you been to an Engineering Open House or visited prospective colleges? My daughter thought she wanted to study Mechanical Engineering until we visited Virginia Tech and she listened to a presentation about ISE. During the presentation, she turned to me and said, “THAT is exactly what I want to do.”</p>
<p>" I was responding to post 2 that said that ISE students take NO chemistry or physics."</p>
<p>Sorry, when I said “No Chem/Physics” I meant that they don’t have to use Chem or Physics in their major classes. Your post seems to agree with this.</p>
Clearly you’ve never looked at the ChE curriculum. ChE ChE is not “life sciences” oriented and I doubt IE had more math. I think most comments here are not ChE.
ChE curriculum is mostly Fluid Mechanics, Thermo, Heat Transfer, Unit Ops and process control. My Chemistry include Gen Chem, Quantum Mechanics, Electrochemistry and Thermodynamics. Thermo from both chemistry and and ChE department. Don’t try to give IEs more credibility by claiming math bro lol.
Industrial engineering is essentially “supply chain management plus” with a few science, math, statistics, and low-level engineering courses alongside the business-oriented SCM curriculum. You go to work in operations in businesses, helping to figure out how to better run the entire business. It’s essentially one of the “good” business majors.
Chemical engineering is a much more traditional engineering major, with a decently long chemistry sequence, process engineering (controls), and the heat/mass/fluids/thermodynamics courses. Very much an “apples to oranges” comparison.
EDIT: Just noticed this was a necro. Don’t do that.
I can’t speak for IE, but most people here post ChE is Chemistry oriented with the idea of general high school Chem shit in mind. My Chemistry courses included Organic Chem, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electrochemistry; all from the Chemistry department. I guess that’s physics 
ChE courses focus on energy & mass balances, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics (Industrial Thermo from ChE department), heat transfer, unit operations, process control and reactor design all from ChE. I took multi-variable calculus in high school. In undergrad I took probability and stats, linear algebra, two semesters of differential equations, and systems of differential equations. That was our curriculum for ChE. You can’t do any industrial processes without understanding chemistry, heat transfer, physics and Thermo, so I have no idea how IEs can “engineer” any industrial processes without understanding chemistry or physics as claimed by many on this page lol.
Those courses above were mandatory at my school, UNR and we had a separate school for Mining/Petroleum and ChE because we had the most funding. After I graduated the Mackay Mine dried up and we had to move in with the other plebeians. You can tailor ChE to your liking by adding more courses in specific field, as an example, I wanted to go into pharmaceuticals and chemicals manufacturing so I took extra courses in biochem, genetics and biology
Really? It’s fairly safe to assume most of the posters in this forum are Engineers or students. We have a fairly decent Idea of what’s involved. No one here thinks ChE = AP Chemistry 
When, in reference to ISE, talk about “industrial process” is in reference to manufacturing systems, supply chain management, transportation and logistics, energy/water distribution systems…etc. ISE is rather math intensive, as is engineering in general. They typically take more statistics based classes than other engineering fields, and do a lot of modeling.Try to review an ISE curriculum, before commenting on which classes they take or don’t take.
Lets use this (entry level) job posting at Dow Chemical, as an example:
http://www.dow.com/en-us/careers/job-details?id=1506907
Edit: Ack! this is an old thread…need to look before I post!
Please compare them in terms of salaries and prospects
Personally I prefer majoring in raspberry with a minor in Oreos. YMMV though.