I applied to Georgia Tech last week and I put chemical engineering as my major beccause I’ve wanted to do that for a while. I have reservations, however, about doing Chemical engineering because I don’t really know what it entails. Another major I’m interested in is Materials Science and Engineering. Can someone give me an idea of what sort of things I’d be learning in each major? The course descriptions on most college websites don’t really help me. I’d like to know what type of physics I’d be dealing with in each major, like what concepts. I would do a biomaterials concentration for MSE and I would do the biotechnology option for ChBe. Thank you!
Hi! I study MSE at Georgia Tech! I’m the structural and functional materials concentration, not biomaterials, but there isn’t a huge difference between the concentrations until your senior year. I never considered chemical engineering because I wanted a major that focused on both mechanical and chemical properties. MSE at Tech is a pretty good mix of ME and ChBE, I’d say. We learn about materials (so that’s the chemistry of them, the mechanics of them, electrical properties, etc) but our curriculum has more chem than ME does and has more mechanics/electronics than ChBE. In my opinion, MSE is one of the most well-rounded engineering majors since it allows you to enter essentially any industry and choose a more physics or chemistry based role. We have a lot of similar classes, but the ChBE is a little more focused on process engineering and we’re more focused on materials research. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any more questions! Changing majors at GT is really easy if you decide to come here and switch to MSE!
:-bd @gogeorgiatech Super helpful response!
@gogeorgiatech that is helpful! thank you! what exactly is process engineering though?
@wanderlust9871 - To quote wikipedia, process engineering is “the branch of engineering that is concerned with industrial processes, especially continuous ones such as the production of petrochemicals.” It’s quite a big, important field in industry - don’t get me wrong, materials engineers are totally qualified to be process engineers, but it just doesn’t seem like our program at Georgia Tech’s focus. I’ve interned in a process engineering group within a manufacturing plant’s operations team and it was very much working within the plant to optimize production, be it changing the percent water used in the process, the exact molds/dies used in a certain production run, etc. However, process engineering can also be more development-based, i.e. developing new processes that either work better for existing products or that work for new products. Let me know if you have any more questions!