<p>Is it hard to transfer into the college of chemistry? I heard this is very prestigious, how is the chemical engineering program compared to the caliber of the other engineering programs at Berkeley? (I was accepted into Bioengineering in Cal's college of eng.)</p>
<p>bump????????</p>
<p>There all about the same high quality. Berkeley's engineering program is definitely top 4, wheras Berkeley's college of chemistry is consitently number 1. So it is slightly more prestigous but I doubt the difference is any more than marginal.</p>
<p>you'll have absolutely no trouble at all transferring into the college of chemistry. In fact, the college of chem isn't that selective in terms of who it admits because people who want to transfer in are almost always very studious anyway (I mean, you seriously gotta love chemistry-related stuff to want to major in the chemical sciences). Plus they know that people who can't hack it will transfer out of the college of chem on their own accord so the end result is that most people who graduate from the chem/chem bio major are headed to grad school/med school within a couple years of graduation (many graduates work for 1-3 years before they continue their education). More ChemE's are likely to work right after they graduate because the money appeal is very high (they get paid, on average, more than grads of any other major). I heard the job market for bioE is very bad, so if you can, try chemE.</p>
<p>I am in the college of chem, and was wondering which major would be better suited for premed, chemical eng. or chem bio? which would prepare me better and be easier to satisfy med school requirements? I am thinking chem bio because it has bio in the name :) but would chemical engineering on to med school be a "worthy" route too?</p>
<p>engineering and med school just sounds nasty. its hard to keep a high gpa in engineering majors. then again you may be amazingly smart :D</p>
<p>ChemEs have the lowest average major GPA at Cal, so it's definitely not a good idea to major in that if you're premed. Most premeds major in MCB, though there are quite a few in chembio.</p>
<p>how good is the chembio program? i tried looking up info on the coll of chem website, but they don't even have their own tab...</p>
<p>Chem bio is quite similar to Chemistry, with a difference of 15-20 units of classes. Cal's chemistry program is ranked #1 in the US, according to USNews.com.</p>
<p>hmm so the lowest avg gpa. well there are low gpas, and high gpas usually, so someone has to get high ones, and I think, maybe, i may be able to do it? i don't know.. :</p>
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Plus they know that people who can't hack it will transfer out of the college of chem on their own accord so the end result is that most people who graduate from the chem/chem bio major are headed to grad school/med school within a couple years of graduation (many graduates work for 1-3 years before they continue their education).
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<p>I don't know about 'most'. I would guesstimate that about half eventually do. </p>
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I heard the job market for bioE is very bad, so if you can, try chemE.
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<p>I don't think it is completely accurate to say that it is bad. Instead I would say that the market is not friendly to people who have just bachelor's degrees. The truth is, the market for BioE's is very good - but only for those people with advanced degrees, i.e. at least a master's, and preferably a doctorate. If you have a doctorate in BioE from a half-decent school, you will have a very solid career. The problem lies with those people with just the bachelor's.</p>
<p>as with most science degrees.</p>
<p>...but ChemE's have a much easier time finding high-salary jobs than most other engineering/science majors because the job market is always stable and their work involves a unique mix of two highly sought-after technical skills: engineering and chemistry. Both are very relevant to many aspects of industry. The same can't be said about BioE....how many industry jobs involve engineering life systems? I can only think of medical technology at the moment, and advancing in that field probably requires a graduate degree. My advise would be to major in ChemE and take electives in BioE if possible.</p>
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but ChemE's have a much easier time finding high-salary jobs than most other engineering/science majors because the job market is always stable
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<p>Well, no, I wouldn't say that it is always stable. Like it or not, ChemE hiring is still strongly hinged on the price of oil. It's less true than it was maybe 25 years ago, but it is still largely true. And while it may be hard to imagine now with high oil prices, it was only about 7 years ago (in 1999) when oil plunged to $10 a barrel. That was because OPEC made a mistake in opening their taps at the same time that the Asian economic crisis hit which greatly reduced the demand for oil. The upshot is that that was a bad to be a chemical engineer. The oil industry couldn't lay people off fast enough. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.oilnergy.com/1opost.htm#since78%5B/url%5D">http://www.oilnergy.com/1opost.htm#since78</a></p>
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The same can't be said about BioE....how many industry jobs involve engineering life systems? I can only think of medical technology at the moment
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<p>You forgot about biotech, which is probably the biggest employer of Bioe's. The pharmaceutical industry also to some extent hires Bioe's, particularly for their drug delivery systems. </p>
<p>However, I agree with your general point that a BS ChemE degree is far more marketable than a BS BioE degree. I therefore also agree that getting a ChemE degree (with BioE electives) is therefore a safer play.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Dude, do you HONESTLY believe that the ChemE job market is dependent on oil? Have you forgotten that industry in general relies on chemicals, and chemicals are isolated/extracted/produced by _________ engineers(fill in the blank). I could go on and on but I won't.</p></li>
<li><p>Drug delivery technology is a new field of RESEARCH, sakky, and we are not in the age where microelectronic drug delivery systems are in common use. I was talking about reality here, not sci-fi.</p></li>
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Dude, do you HONESTLY believe that the ChemE job market is dependent on oil? Have you forgotten that industry in general relies on chemicals, and chemicals are isolated/extracted/produced by _________ engineers(fill in the blank). I could go on and on but I won't.
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<p>Is this supposed to be a trick question? The fact is, ChemE employment is still highly dependent on the price of oil. Not as much as it was a generation ago, but they are still strongly linked. Let's not forget that the whole field of chemical engineering was initially built around oil refining. And even if we don't want to talk about oil refining, which is still one of the largest employers of ChemE's, to this day, the largest single subsector of the chemistry industry is the petrochemical industry. </p>
<p>"The petroleum and chemical industries are traditional spots for chemical engineers"</p>
<p>Think of it this way. Arguably the largest single revenue-generating subsector of the chemical industry is the polymer industry (plastics). Well, where do you think the precursors of polymers are? Answer - they are petrochemicals. Pharmaceuticals, being mostly organic compounds, are also mostly derived from petrocemicals. </p>
<p>Dude, trust me, you REALLY don't want to challenge me on my knowledge of chemical engineering, and especially Berkeley chemical engineering. Trust me, ChemE and the oil industry are still highly linked. Are they absolutely linked? No, I never said that they were. Indeed, plenty of ChemE's from Berkeley go to the semiconductor industry. But the fact is, whenever oil is hot, ChemE employment is hot, and vice versa. </p>
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Drug delivery technology is a new field of RESEARCH, sakky, and we are not in the age where microelectronic drug delivery systems are in common use. I was talking about reality here, not sci-fi.
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<p>Uh, drug delivery is definitely NOT a new field of research, but has been something that has been done for decades. Only the new applications of drug delivery are research based. But lots of drug discovery problems are quite old. For example, how do you create a pill or a tablet or a gelcap that will be absorbed by the digestive system so as to not create a possibly dangerous spike in dosage immediately after ingestion? Can you create a pill or tablet that will provide timed release of a medication (very important for people who want to take one pill and then go to sleep without having to wake up in the middle of the night to take another pill). </p>
<p>In fact, the whole invention of gelcaps is basically a creation of drug delivery research. Are you saying that gelcaps are sci-fi? Surely you've seen gelcaps. So are inhalable medicines. Have you not seen asthma sufferers puffing on their inhalers? That's drug delivery. Any way to get dosages into a patient is a matter of drug delivery, and they all had to be invented somehow. I'm sure that some time in the past, the syringe and the hypodermic needle were considered to be sci-fi, but now they are just standard methods of drug delivery.</p>
<p>If the job market for ChemE's is heavily tied with the price of oil, why is it that the job market for ChemE's is presently still good:
<a href="http://www.diversitycareers.com/articles/college/05-winspr/jm_ChEs.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.diversitycareers.com/articles/college/05-winspr/jm_ChEs.htm</a></p>
<p>So you're telling me that BioE's spend 4 years learning engineering so they can design tablets and pills? i don't think so. I think that's a job for biochemists.</p>
<p>...and all these "drug delivery systems" you've mentioned have been around for several decades, long before the age of bioengineering. When you put "BioE" and "drug delivery" together, I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were talking about sophisticated, electronically controlled devices. You're talking about pills and syringes? No wonder the job market for BioE's is bad...the jobs you're talking about are done by biochemists and traditional biomedical researchers who don't need engineering knowledge to get the job done.</p>
<p>lol, the price of oil is sky high.</p>
<p>Regional factors are important. In CA, the pharmaceutical industry is big and industry in general is more diverse. You have oil cos like Chevron and Arco, but many others like Clorox.</p>
<p>sakky, what''s your current, and undergraduate major?</p>