I really need your help regarding Chemical Engineering, chemistry and math majors

<p>Hi everyone.
So I basically want to go to a graduate school after I finish my Bachelor's degree
"Med school" or "Law school" I know I should decide fast ....</p>

<p>Meanwhile, I want to be realistic about my choice in undergrad major, let's call it a plan B
I love math, I love chemistry.. I don't particularly hate physic, but I don't like it that much either.
when it come to math I am good at calculus algebra etc, when it comes to chemistry I love the world problems and stuff, but I hate the lab work, and I hate anything where I have to memorize like Biology still got A's in those courses regardless
.
They say chemical engineering is pretty hard, but if I am good at math and chemistry?
How hard can it be? I really need to know what is it about?</p>

<p>is it word problems like the ones we see in math or more similar to ones we see in chemistry or more like the ones we see in physics?</p>

<p>Right now my GPA is pretty good and I plan to transfer to VCU on the spring semester
Like I mention before I plan to go to a graduate school so I need to keep my GPA high
my options are
Chemical engineering
Chemistry
and math!</p>

<p>I know the pretty obvious answer would be that chemical engineering is the hardest, but I heard that chemistry is hard as well and contains a lot of work for the lab..
and I know nothing about math major!
I really need your help</p>

<p>Thank you in advance!</p>

<p>Everyone whom I know whom is a Chemical Engineering major says its tough. I would think that Chemistry is not particularly easier, but the Chemistry B.S. usually has less curriculum requirements than ChE, at most universities. In fact, many colleges offer a B.A. in Chemistry, which has even less mandated coursework. You need to think about what major you would enjoy and be successful at in college. Law school admissions offices are not particularly interested in specific majors, and medical schools are moving in a similar direction (as long as you have basic science and math in your college preparation).</p>

<p>Engineering is difficult no matter how good you are at the technical subjects. The truth is, they are all extremely tedious majors, and that requires work that no amount of talent can solve. The chemistry in ChemE is generally rather elementary, and the math does not come up that often. There’s a bit of physics too, but after a while you don’t really use that all that much either. The core of a ChemE major is generally the transport series, which has more formulas (“empirical equations” i.e. estimations that aren’t really explained to you) than conceptual knowledge, and design classes, which are pretty much by definition tedious attention to detail. If you are naturally good at the basics (chemistry, physics, and math), then you will be able to manage, but not easily. If you are truly talented (as in, just about the best mathematician you know and very good with physics), then perhaps you will be able to get away with what one might call a light workload (10-15 hours a week on homework, which is pretty much nothing since there’s much less school time than in high school), but then you would be wasting your talent if you gave yourself a light workload. However, engineering is good because it gives you a solid base in chemistry and physics that you can definitely build on depending on how you design your major, and on top of that you learn engineering. Knowing engineering would be a very useful skill for law school. For med school, it might be a problem in that it will hurt your GPA, but I’d caution away from med school if you don’t like biology, because the entire field is about memorizing facts (because you definitely can’t derive medicine from first principles in a physics-like manner).</p>

<p>Chemistry is a lot more about understanding why matter behaves the way it does, and most of the classes go into details on what you cover rather than, as in engineering, giving you endless equations and expecting you to just accept hand-waving explanations. You can take a more math-heavy route if you like physical chemistry, and you can definitely take a few more programming classes than an engineering curriculum would allow for. Lots and lots of labs though, because you just straight up have to do chemistry if you want to understand it. Also not a bad major for law school or med school. I will also note that chemical engineering puts more emphasis on the “engineering” than on the “chemical” side, so by taking a chemistry major, that part is basically lost on you. If you don’t like engineering, then chemistry definitely allows you to take a lot of other useful classes that will come in handy.</p>

<p>Math, as a major, is definitely different than math as a minor or as a part of another degree. As it is used in other majors, it is a lot of number crunching and equation solving. Math the major itself is about proofs, or more generally, about finding new ways to think about problems. The cornerstone class is advanced calculus, a class that basically derives the theory of calculus from a theoretical mathematical perspective; it’s really hard because the “most correct” way of thinking about calculus is far from intuitive (it is nothing like what a first year course in calculus is taught). Proofs have to be exactly correct, or else they really aren’t proofs, and that becomes difficult when you start proving something that is actually useful. Pure math is what the stereotypical mathematician does, as in doing a thesis on “finding ______ Numbers in ___ - space under ______ conditions” etc. Applied math can go a lot of ways - scientific computing, statistics, probability, computer science, finance, and many other paths that I don’t recall off the top of my head. Personally, I think that math makes for an excellent double major, but on its own you somewhat lose perspective on why it is actually important. The key skill you will learn is how to take problems and think about them in a new and useful way, but if you don’t have any perspective on significant other problems, then your skills are really quite wasted, and you quality to either be a math teacher or a pure math researcher.</p>

<p>Well, that was pretty long. Hope it helps.</p>

<p>Law school has no specific course or major requirements. However, math majors tend to do well on the LSAT, probably because they do well on the logic puzzle section.</p>

<p>Medical school has no specific major requirements, but does have course requirements. Some of them overlap with your proposed majors (e.g. all of them cover calculus for those medical schools that require it, and chemistry and chemical engineering cover general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics). Chemical engineering tends to have the least space for free electives and non-overlapping pre-med requirements (typically biology).</p>

<p>Math does not require time consuming labs (like chemistry, engineering, or pre-med courses have), but many students find mathematical proofs to be intellectually difficult.</p>

<p>Both law and medical school can be very expensive.</p>

<p>Wow, I am really thankful for your replies. Thank you Lakewashington, Neodemium wow that’s a lot good information thank you very much … It’s nice to know that math will help with the LSAT, thanx a lot ucbalumnus</p>

<p>What about Actuarial math? is it easier than general math?</p>

<p>You are essentially spoon-fed a whole lot of formulas and are taught to use them fast enough to pass the actuarial exams.
It’s a finance degree more than a math degree. It’s not conceptually difficult, but from my personal experience (I took a few classes on that subject) I’d say that it’s not really worth it.</p>

<p>If you are considering Med school, you probably want to get a higher GPA. In general, it would be harder to maintain a high GPA in engineering school disregarding the major.</p>