The University of Chicago is the first university to offer a major dedicated wholly to the field of molecular engineering. I’m not sure if this question has been asked before, but what exactly is it. What can you do with an bachelor’s degree in molecular engineering exactly?
So is this like a funnel into grad school? There doesn’t seem to be much you can do with an S.B. in this stuff.
The goal of the undergraduate course of study in MolE is to teach students the fundamentals of engineering in the context of a field that is currently at the forefront of science and discovery. The University combined their strengths in physics, biology, chemistry, and math to create an engineering major that is both interdisciplinary and has broad applications. You can literally do whatever you want (within reason) with a bachelor’s degree in molecular engineering from uchicago.
^ Really? Even though it’s an engineering degree that’s not ABET accredited? (Not arguing, actually curious.)
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I think I understand the thought here, but I disagree with it to some extent and urge students to think a bit differently. There really is no “within reason” limitation. Think bigger; think forward; and think beyond what others are doing.
By this I mean that these quotes only apply if you see yourself as an employee doing someone else’s bidding. However, the concept (and type of degree) is irrelevant to the forward thinker. The one thing to make sure you learn in college is how to think analytically and logically, and not to shut your brain down to a different/new/possibly even a seemingly weird idea - those two skills are your ticket.
For example, the Chairman of American Express went to Harvard Law School - no business school product he. Several of my colleagues also went to law school and now run multi-billion dollar companies - nothing to do with their three years in law school. My other law school colleague is a seriously accomplished author who writes best-selling novels - again, nothing to do with law school. Also, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, one of the brightest people in economics, never graduated college; do not think he even went to college.
My background is in the sciences (studied science because I enjoyed it), but soon realized how limiting it could be, so I decided to do other things after grad school. None of my companies had anything to do with the sciences, as that it was not in that area where the opportunities I saw existed.
My point - study molecular engineering if you like it - do not study it thinking that someone else is going to give you a job because you have that degree - they might; they might not. Worse, the market, like with some fields now may be totally glutted. For example, software coders are a dime dozen. Remember when that was all the rage only 10 years ago.
Go to college and study what you enjoy and have a good time as well. If you enjoy it, you will do well. Doing well after that will fall right into place if you keep your eyes open and look at the horizon, not at the jobs which already exist today, as they may not exist when you get there.
Full disclosure my dream majors are a double major in molecular engineering and philosophy. Then law school depending solely on my GPA because frankly I know I can get a 170 or above on an LSAT. My concerns are very common amongst the generation of college goers who have witnessed the worst economic collapse since the great depression. I need to know what I can do with a non ABET molecular engineering degree because though it sounds like a delightful major and I love the idea of doing research in my spare time, I can’t leave college and not be able to get a job. And I know this is the Uchicago forum and many will claim that you can’t graduate with a degree and not get some job but this is an entirely new major unprecedented at the undergraduate level. I’d love to imagine that I could be one of the trail blazers in the field but that’s not practical. As to software coders, they are still all the rage in terms of high paying jobs. I’m a URM with low capital and not many connections. I need to be realistic about my degree. The double major idea sounds fun but neither philosophy nor molecular engineering are “hot” fields as it were. Sorry for the disjoint thoughts and grammar. This is a tough call for me and I’m on my phone.
I agree with most of what @awcntdb is saying.
Greenspan graduated from NYU with a BA in economics in 1948 and an MA in 1950. He attended Columbia for further grad study but dropped out. He eventually obtained his PhD in economics at NYU in 1977. He also studied at Julliard during his undergraduate years. Wikipedia, folks.
@Trickster2212, It is important to study a subject that interests and engages you and this is especially crucial at the undergraduate level. If you follow your dream and study molecular engineering and philosophy at UChicago you will most likely graduate with a LOT of great options! Both will be challenging majors requiring lots of brainpower and thinking/reasoning skills. And how cool is that - something truly “scienc-y” with a practical side to it, along with something that trains you in how to think deeply and logically. How can you possibly go wrong with that plan?
The truth is that many employers are looking to hire SMART graduates and if you get into UChicago and major in something intellectually challenging, you kinda signal that you are smart. And you already know you are smart, due to your confidence about the LSAT. Law school might be expensive down the road but you just might find that your your undergrad training and your URM status result in some scholarship money (that money is definitely out there!). And you can always work for a few years prior to attending - that will make you a wiser and more experienced grad student compared to the fresh-scrubbed kids who come in there just out of undergrad.
Keep in mind, too, that those undergrad years are great for exploring what you truly love and want to pursue over the long-term. For instance, you might find that your interests eventually point you toward graduate work at the master’s or PhD level, rather than a professional track like law school. Or - you might end up doing both. It’s really hard to pin down what you should be doing the rest of your life when you are still in high school. Follow your dreams, but keep your mind open to other opportunities or pathways and don’t be afraid to change gears. Four years is a LOT of time to think about your future.
Finally, it’s true that learning a specific skill like coding or traditional engineering can lead to a high-paying job right out of college but those kids might also end up facing layoffs down the road. I’ve seen it many times over the past few decades and the H1-B visa layoffs only underscore that no job is safe. Don’t go to college to get a job. Go to college to improve your mind. The jobs will follow.
Good luck to you!
Thanks for the correction. I confused him with someone else - need to think who that high ranking person was.
@Trickster2212 , if you are a URM who is legitimately confident you can score a 170 or higher on the LSAT, you really shouldn’t be worrying about whether you can get a job when you graduate from college, much less whether you can get a job if you graduate from the University of Chicago with a double degree in molecular engineering and philosophy. People will throw jobs at you. Maybe not the best jobs, maybe not the exact jobs you want, but with even a modicum of effort you will have plenty of job opportunities. The challenge for you will be career management – deciding what you really want to do, and how to get there, deciding which opportunities to pursue and which to pass up – not survival.
If you decide to go to an elite-type college like Chicago or any of its peers, part of the deal is that you use your time there to make connections and to build your network and your human capital, and that you take advantage of the extra value the brand-name degree provides in terms of certifying your intelligence and your capacity for hard work to do things that you couldn’t necessarily have done if you had gone to the University of Northern Illinois.
In 1970, there were only a handful of “computer science” programs offering undergraduate degrees in the whole world. Think of what your career could have looked like if you had graduated from a college like Chicago in 1975 with a degree in computer science! (I think Stanford started the first stand-alone undergraduate degree program in Computer Science in the late 60s. That has a lot to do with Stanford evolving from being a pretty good university but very much in Berkeley’s shadow to arguably the greatest university in the world.)
Actually, the double major you’re envisioning would be very interesting to law schools and firms. Basically, good writers with tech backgrounds are valued in corporate law practices, especially in situations/industries where there are intellectual property issues or where litigation involves expert witnesses. The tech part is less about specific prior knowledge of a field than about having the ability/confidence to dig in and figure it out. In general, I’m skeptical of double majors (I think focus/mastery/depth matters more and is harder to achieve if you have to spend lots of time checking off boxes), but this is a case where the pieces arguably fit together and make sense.
But that assumes law school and sometimes it sounds as if your goal is employability with an undergrad degree alone. Also, law school ain’t what it used to be. It’s really a “go to a top school or don’t bother” scenario these days Which is why it helps to have an interesting undergrad profile like the one you’re proposing.
All that said, you’ll have time to figure this out and more experience will help you make more informed decisions. The challenge is to start with something that interests you and that makes sense – it’s usually a process of trial and error before you figure out what you want to do and how to get there from here. But there’s nothing foolhardy or impractical about starting out by exploring this particular combo of dream majors.
Not to rain on anybody’s parade here, but here is my view on this entire Molecular Engineering degree.
Chicago missed the boat on having an engineering school. I think it was a major strategic mistake the school made. It should have added an engineering school when it opened its business school or at least right after world war II. The University is paying a huge price in terms of of its endowment size and name recognition in some countries for its past disdain toward “Trade related degrees and education”. Not being able to count Engineers and Engineer turned entrepreneurs among its alumni is not helping the School’s financial standing (Yeah, I know Chicago has a $7.5 Billion endowment, but in the endowment arms race, it is losing ground, not gaining).
Given the reputation of the school in other areas and the amount of capital and effort it takes to stand up a credible and highly ranked engineering program, unless somebody like Larry Ellison donates several hundred million dollars for an engineering school, it is unlikely that Chicago is going to be a credible school for engineering anytime soon.
But not to have an engineering program is particularly limiting if you are trying to expand your brand to Asia, where engineering is one of the most sought after and prestigious majors. You are basically writing off a major section of future customers.
So Chicago did what was practical. They created an engineering degree that would leverage their strengths, knowing fully well that it is not a traditional engineering degree, with a traditional engineering job market. This degree is aimed primarily at folks who want the rigor of an engineering major and the title, but don’t plan on being practicing engineers. So basically it is aimed at folks who will go to professional school after becoming engineers.
It is in some ways similar to the “Biomedical engineering” degrees that a lot of the universities are offering. You can do very little with a Bachelors in Biomedical engineering in today’s job market except go into sales in some pharmaceutical and device manufacturing companies, but it is a safety major in case you don’t want to or can’t get into medical school. At least you will get some kind of a job, instead of just being a biology major where the job market is pretty challenging. You can also choose to pursue grad school and obtain a Phd, in which case your engineering related opportunities increase quite a bit. Molecular engineering is something like that.
The only issue with Molecular Engineering at Chicago is that, Chicago is not like Brown or Yale or other schools that have rampant grade inflation. So if you are going to target getting into Medical school, not sure if you want to risk trying to get a Molecular Engineering degree from Chicago. Also unlike Biomedical engineering (which itself is a pretty nascent field, Molecular engineering jobs are practically non-existent, so it may not be a good backup if you don’t land in a professional school from a jobs perspective. Clearly since it is not ABET accredited, it is not really a practicing engineer’s major.
But maybe in 20 years, it will be a hot ticket, given its interdisciplinary nature and the kinds of problems you can solve with it. Just not ready for prime time practical use yet, specially with just the Bachelors degree, but it atleast put UChicago on the “Engineering map”
How would UChicago even be able to fit a 4 year engineering program into it’s current structure? Those kids would have to sacrifice the 1st year core. That’s not going to happen. The college, despite the recent growth, has remained a liberal arts college. I can’t see that direction changing as much as I see them offering new majors that continue to fit within that framework (even if they include “engineering” in the name). UChicago does not offer any undergraduate professional degrees that I know of - not even the BFA. It didn’t even expand the business school to the bachelor’s level (though I’m sure undergrads do have access to Booth courses assuming they meet the pre-reqs).
Anyone applying to UChicago should understand its particular philosophy for educating undergraduates. Everyone - even those obtaining the BS - undergoes four years of a rigorous liberal arts education. No exceptions.
@Mamelot the molE major is one of the longest (if not the longest, biochem is the only other contender I can think of) majors in the college. I’m wondering if you know much of how the core works if you’re arguing that students have to “sacrifice the 1st year core” because there is no such think as a first year core. You can complete your core requirements at your leisure at UChicago and make a number of your core classes count towards the molE major (in particular: math, physical sciences, and biological sciences). Not to mention that you can place out of your foreign language requirement before you set foot on campus (thanks, AP). The only component of the core that has to be done in the first year is the Humanities sequence which is only 2-3 quarters and very manageable.
The college posts a proposed course of 4 year study for the molecular engineering major (and a number of other majors) in their course catalogs and if you had a look at those before posting you would see that it is entirely doable with the core.
The university can maintain their liberal arts status and offer this major for students who are interested.
@tawsch no argument regarding the current molecular engineering major! It seems entirely in keeping with what the college is about. I was referring to an eventual school of engineering which was posited earlier which, to me, would be a real departure from the college’s education philosophy. I may be mistaken in thinking that a lot of the core is taken the first year - I was going off plans of study in the UChicago course catalog pertaining to my D3’s prospective major as well as what our friends’ kids did (which was to take a lot of the core as freshmen and, indeed, this is what my hubby likes about Uchicago). We know kids who have attended Uchicago and we know kids who have attended colleges of engineering - very different curriculums! But different philosophies as well. And yes, it’s perfectly appropriate to have the FL requirement. Whether one AP’s out of it - or anything else - is another issue.
My point was that UChicago wouldn’t choose to offer professional degrees to the undergrad. class because those tracks are not in keeping with it’s undergraduate education philosophy. You’ll note that the molecular engineering major does NOT result in a professional degree but rather is offered in the context of the College’s liberal arts curriculum. Certainly there are applied components to it which I thought was pretty cool for UChicago. (A BA-Econ can also take classes at Booth, by the way).
Not sure what you mean by “longest” major. It’s one of the newer ones, isn’t it? (at least at the undergrad level. Not sure what’s gone on at the graduate level).
I was a grad students at UChicago once upon a time. The college was liberal arts back then with only a couple thousand kids, and it’s liberal arts today. That won’t change.