<p>Hi! I'm going to be an undergrad freshman this year at UW-Madison. To be honest, I was pretty set on chemical engineering until I started reading the posts here then I was "eh" about it lol. I looked at Madison's website and I thought industrial engineering looks pretty interesting sooo I need you guys to help me make sure I'm making the right decision because I really don't want my parents to waste money on something I don't like.</p>
<p>Anyway, here are some factors:</p>
<p>1) to start, I don't really care about the income. I know ChemE gets more money, but that's not important.
2) I'm up for a challenge and difficult work, but I don't want it to be TOO difficult that I will spend all of my time in college studying. I really don't mind staying in to study, but I would like to go out with people sometimes!
3) I'm pretty sociable so I would like something that will require me to interact with other people as opposed to do-your-own-thing deal. </p>
<p>I don't have to decide until the end of sophomore year, but I'd like to get a head start!</p>
<p>Industrial is probably easier. I think of it as more of a “business” type engineering. Many will head into consulting, etc. ChemE is more “pure” engineering.</p>
<p>no. calling industry business type engineering is also a huge misrepresentation. It’s a lot more quantitative than qualitative, especially when it comes to operations modelling stuff and stochastics… business is only one application</p>
<p>I would give ChemE a shot. You can always switch if you don’t like it. UW-Madison has an excellent program and produces great engineers, not all of who go into engineering.</p>
<p>Agreed. It also varies greatly from college to college. Some colleges focus entirely on things like ergonomics and just briefly cover things like linear programming, while some colleges are almost entirely linear / stochastic / non-linear / integer programming with no mention whatsoever of ergonomics. </p>
<p>I think of fields based on their relationship to other fields. For example, engineering is applied math/science and math/science is the parent of engineering. With that terminology, many people think of IE as business because the Supply Chain and Logistics arm of IE is the parent of Operations/Supply Chain Management in the business school. Similarly, the Economic Decision Analysis are of IE is really applied Economics. The connection is so strong, that the major professional organization of both Operations Research (an IE field) and Management Science (a business field) is the same (INFORMS: INstitute For Operations Research and Management Science). </p>
<p>But you also get IE programs that aren’t really connected to business. Stochastic Optimization is applied probability. Linear / Integer / Non-Linear programming is applied mathematics that affects many fields from business to electrical engineering to sociology. Ergonomics is… well… something completely unrelated to anything that some engineering department had to pick up, and for some strange reason that I have yet to understand, that department was industrial engineering.</p>
<p>Hey, Does it affect whether or not you take Chem Eng major in undergrad level. I mean can you major with a chemistry in liberal arts and then graduate in a Chem Eng school??? HElp</p>
<p>Gurung, I don’t really understand your question.</p>
<p>People with Chemistry degrees will most likely need additional courses to get into a graduate ChemE program. The prereqs for the Masters programs will have to be met.</p>
<p>That’s generally called a “leveling” course. There are two types: a school can conditionally admit you (you’re in, but you’re not really in) with the condition that you complete the leveling courses in your first semester (or year) with a certain GPA. Alternatively, a school can unconditionally admit you and add the leveling courses to your degree requirements.</p>
<p>Either way, I wouldn’t plan on using leveling courses. Top programs don’t bother with them because they have enough highly qualified applicants to ignore those that aren’t engineering undergrads (unless there’s a major hook, like the person highly successful in an industry and/or is well known). Usually, it’s the lower tiered schools that go after candidates with leveling programs - it allows them to bring in people with high GRE scores and GPAs that otherwise would have gone to a higher ranked program.</p>
<p>^again, not necessarily. a girl from swarthmore took a chemE class with us when i was an undergrad at northwestern. at stanford’s environmental engg or chemE programs, some of the master students didn’t have bs in engineering. that said, a BA/BS in related fields like physics or chemistry is the min requirement.</p>