<p>Is this a good field to enter if you don't particularly like chem labs? How much chemistry is required in chemE?</p>
<p>I saw that the starting salary for chemE grads are the highest. Is this one of the best engineering fields to enter to make a really high salary?</p>
<p>i am wondering this too. high paying jobs may not be the most enjoyful so i would rather do something that i like for lesser pay. i heard that the traditional ChemEs design plants and work for oil companies. is this true?</p>
<p>btw I saw on Federal Labor Statistics that the outlook for ChemEs have little or no growth. so also take the opportunity on the job market into consideration.</p>
<p>Likewise, this is a great question. There is a certain appeal to this field due to the rigorous academic training challenge. But big picture, as chemical engineers are involved mostly with industrial processes, one should look at the demand for any career in the chemical industry over the term of one's career.</p>
<p>An important viewpoint that age provides is that all fields experience cycles, and that upward career mobility is enhanced in a growing field, rather than a flat or shrinking field. This may seem obvious, but I believe many don't think this point thru during their early field-selection process...I certainly didn't credit the importance of this inevitability when I was young.</p>
<p>Manufacturing and chem e intensive industries are certainly not on the upswing as a whole from my view in the US. We have been moving to s service economy, and except for consulting, chem e's don't play as big of a role in that evolution. I would be very reluctant to advise my own kids to pursue this field, unless they had a very clear foresight & passion into what they wanted to do with their chem e degree.</p>
<p>However, there may be some elements of the chem e field that are growing. This is where you need to do some research & figure out if those elements are right for your forseeable future. Some chem e programs have adapted to the changing conditions (i.e., old industry to new industry), and for instance, Penn's chem e program is focussed on some "bio" aspects of the field, to support the growing marketplace of pharmas and bioengineering in general. If you go chem e, I'd advise that you pinpoint programs like this one where your studies will place you in a growing field as best as a crystal ball can tell.</p>
<p>Being in a growing field is most important IMO during the earlier stages of one's career, where one's other career skills can develop without worries of shrinking workforces, cut budgets, etc. When a company or industry is not doing well, there is less room for individual career growth or for working in an environment where one will learn other important career skills (e.g., how to manage). Once those other career skills are developed after several years, them you become more adaptable to the inevitable changes that few can predict.</p>
<p>But chemE has the highest starting salary.</p>
<p>im not so much worried about salary than job opportunity.</p>
<p>what im wondering is if u can do graduate studies on something biorelated with ur ChemE degree? such as Biomedical Engineering?</p>
<p>probably could if you take alot of biology classes but biomedical salary is lower than chemE salary. do most chemE have office jobs?</p>
<p>H3arT-- to address your original questions, although I'm not a chem e, I know plenty who are in the workplace now & do very little real chemistry. Sure, they deal with chemicals & there may be an ocassional chemistry-intensive question to answer, but once you've got it figured out for the business your in, you're not going to be experiencing new chemistry-intensive challenges very often. Just my observations.</p>
<p>On how much chemistry is required, I'm guessing you are referring to the academics to get the degree. A chemist would probably argue that there's not as much chemistry to a chem e degree as it might sound. Other than that though, I can't help you, but I do know that every chem e I know always tells some kind of story about their Thermo course, the %#@*-buster guaranteed in every program. Mech e's even talk about making sure they take the Mech-E version of Thermo rather than the Chem-E version. Beware!</p>
<p>Chem e's do both field & office work. Like many fields, the field work is typically more intensive in your younger days, grading to more office & management work. Can be very industry & company specific, but there should be a variety of choices.</p>
<p>And one more thing.......chem e programs are very rigorous as you are probably aware....not for the faint of heart. Therefore, the selection process of getting into & succeeding in a chem e program produces a crop of sharp graduates. As a manager of technical people, chem e's provide a good source of smart employees in general, so as long as they are not subsumed by their technical interests (& therefore want to stay exclusively in the technical world), they make good candidates for taking on management & marketing roles, which can further bolster their career salary potential.</p>