<p>I'm currently in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, and I'm trying to decide what type of major I should take in college. I have good grades, I'm in the top 10% of my class and will have taken 3 APs by the time I graduate. I love science, especially chemistry. I'm also good at math, I just find it much less interesting than chem. However, from what I've seen, it'll be very hard to find a job with a degree in chemistry. So now I'm looking for more useful majors which are still related to chemistry. So far I've been considering Pharmacy and Chemical Engineering. Any other ideas/advice?</p>
<p>Material Science, Petroleum Engineering, and some areas of Civil Engineering also make considerable use of chemistry.</p>
<p>I’d say Pharmacy School is your best bet. Many fields of medicine are also heavy on chemistry so consider an MD as well.</p>
<p>Let me say that a Chemical Engineer degree will take you 8-10 years. A Chemistry degree has 1,000’s of jobs. There’s a huge benefit too. Majority of MA and PHD programs will pay for your tuition with 20-30k stipend to you each year. Typically after a B.S./B.A. Chemistry you go to grad school to specialize. There is medicinal, toxicology, physical, green, materials, and many other sections of chemistry. If you are looking for less time in school, but a considerable pay you may want to look in to the Forensic Science sector. They use tons of chemistry with great pay and you can get employed with your bachelors degree. The last piece of advice I can give you if when looking to go to a college if you major in Chemistry or the sciences look for a considerable size university with no graduate program. This will increase your odds of being able to do research. Large Universities with grad programs have very little room for undergrads to do research.</p>
<p>ChemE does not take 8-10 years, nowhere near that. It takes the usual 4-5 years. Where did you get 8-10 years from? You are right about Chemistry jobs having thousands of jobs, but most of them are mundane grunt work that a College freshman can do. At least with a ChemE degree, you can work for a MNC, like ExxonMobil.</p>
<p>Biochemistry? I heard that’s a good field with a lot of opportunities.</p>
<p>You heard wrong or are listening to people that are ignorant or ammoral. Biochemistry is one of the worst sciences for jobs especially with the collapse of big pharma.</p>
<p><a href=“http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/[/url]”>http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/</a></p>
<p>I disagree with the above study. The real unemployment for chemistry/Biology/Biochemistry is much higher (at least 20% and probably over 50%) as most are categorized as in further studies or something like that and I believe doctors and other professional who happen to have a science degree are taken in to account and probably perma-temps which represent a large portion of science jobs now a days. However it does show that the average unemployment for a BS is 5% where as biochemistry majors are 7.1% (well above average).</p>
<p>Ok thanks for the input. I think I’ll probably go engineering, probably chemE, but I’ll have to look into the various types more. However I still really like Pharmacy, and I’ve heard pharm schools don’t care about your major as long as you take the pre-reqs.</p>
<p>So my next question is: will it be easy to get those pre-reqs as a ChemE or other engineering major? I feel like many classes from the two should overlap. Basically, is ChemE a good major to get into Pharmacy School?</p>
<p>At my school, ChemE has two tracks, Chemical and Biochemical. Chemical, on top pf the engineering courses has the chemistry courses as well. The Biochemical, includes engineering courses, biology, and chemistry courses. Either way, you might have to take some additional bio courses, but it shouldn’t be too much more. Biomedical Engineering may have closer pre-reqs to Pharmacy School. Other Engineering majors will not fulfill the requirements of pharm. school, at least not on the biology courses side.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do you really want to work as a pharmacist? Spend a few days behind the counter at Walgreen to make sure you’d be happy do that work for twenty years - it seems very monotonous.</p>
<p>What is worse monotony or unemployment and poverty? Pick a profession you can tolerate and is well paying and have fun during off hours.</p>
<p>While agree with 99% of sschoe’s posts, I can not agree about going to Pharm school. Many of the biggest retailers are trying to cut back on the amount of PharmDs they need and are centralizing operations and utilizing call centers in order to cut down on the amount of labor that they need. Pharm school is like law school now, no one regulates the number of degrees that can be awarded each year or the amount of schools that are allowed to open. The number of PharmD granting schools has skyrocketed over the past 20 years and the numbers of PharmDs they are churning out are completely oversaturating labor markets. PharmD has gone the way of the JD, huge amounts of student loan debt for increasingly terrible job prospects due to oversaturation. I completely dominated the PCAT and was very close to applying to Pharm school, but once I started digging up the facts on where pharmacy was headed I simply couldn’t stomach having to take out $150k in loans in order to pay for pharm school.</p>
<p>I agree that many PharmD’s are going to have to consider relocating to the shticks to get a job as many desirable areas are saturated. But the field is still high paying and their are jobs in all locations not just in biotech hubs.</p>
<p>If you truly want pharmacy you may want to consider 0-6 programs.</p>