I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to double major in ChemE and Math. Right now, I’m still attending a community college and I recently changed majors to ChemE from Biochem. It added 2 more years of being in a community college but I’m not tripping about it. The main reason I want to double major is because math is very easy to me. I’m in my Calc 2 class and I don’t study, I only do homework, and I have a 92% in the class. I’m not completely basing my math skills of my grade, I really do get math easily. I’m either planning to transfer to UCLA or UCSB. I just want to know if the workload for that will take me more than 2 years in a university.
Read some of the other double major threads. In general, this group thinks they are not all that useful and can get tricky for course scheduling. An alternative is to take a few extra classes in the area of interest to fill elective slots.
It sounds like you are a natural for Calc (I was not - had to work hard) - that’s great. But be aware that math majors do more theoretical / proof kind of work. My engineering son is rather “mathy” and likes that, but many engineering students do not…
The work you’re going to do for a math major isn’t the same as the work you’ll do for engineering. Plug-and-chug equations make up the backbone of undergrad engineering, whereas math classes are going to be heavy on proofs (eg proving theorems about calculus), and dealing with numbers in much more abstract ways. Calc 2 falls much closer to the former than the latter.
If that kind of theoretical work is what you want to do, go for it. Personally, a linear algebra course was plenty for me.
Also, I can’t see a way you could graduate with those two degrees in two years. Just getting the requirements for the chemical engineering degree would be pry 15 hours a semester. I am not sure what additional credits you would need for a math major, but that would leave you with pretty much no time to get them.
The bottom line about double majoring (unless the combined degrees are a field unto themselves) is that you have to choose one or the other to pursue a career in. Why not choose now and just have the other field as a “hobby” and save time and money while in college.
Potential employers will look at those with dual majors and figure that you are undecided (no matter how much you tell them you have now decided, your track record is otherwise) and decide not to use their valuable time and money to invest in you.
Yes, highly probable. It is unlikely that community college classes will cover more than the first 2 years of an undergraduate chemical engineering degree or a math degree so those last 2 years at the university are going to be very prescribed with the required ChemE classes and maybe a couple technical electives. Some places will let you do math for a technical elective but there won’t be near enough room in those two years for classes to fill out a math major or probably even a minor. You should be able to verify this by looking at the courses available at your CC and the required courses/recommended degree plans for the universities you are considering.
And I agree with @HPuck35 that employers of BS level ChemE’s are going to prefer those technical electives be advanced classes in ChemE rather than math.