<p>I am really stuck between these two career choices. I need major help!</p>
<p>I love Chemistry, but I'm not the greatest at Physics. I am intrigued by both Oil and gas and pharmaceutical industry. How much physics is in Petro Engineering?</p>
<p>What would offer more jobs in the future?</p>
<p>Please give me some advice...</p>
<p>Job prospects are pretty good for Petroleum Engineers…especially if the shale oil and gas fraking boom continues. Pharmacy I think is still good except there is some uncertainty with Obamacare and how that affects things. </p>
<p>Pharmacy you’ll need to go to pharmacy school for your PharmD before you can practice so it’s more of an investment in time and money before you see a return. </p>
<p>Petroleum engineering doesn’t require an advanced degree but helps a bit more to have one vs. a more universal chemical engineering degree. </p>
<p>The big difference will be employment environments. Pharmacy will be localized at a pharmacy helping patients. Petroleum engineering will require you to often be in remote locations working with some roughnecks. So that’s something to consider as well. </p>
<p>What about chemical engineering? You can work in a bigger variety of employment opportunities as it’s a more universal degree. You can work in pharmacietical and oil and gas jobs without limiting yourself early on.</p>
<p>UCB is right. I say your choices should be either Pharmacy or Chemical Engineering. Why not do a chemical engineering bachelors and take all the electives for pharmacy. It would be a solid degree to have if you decide you don’t want to go to pharmacy school. I have a friend of mine that got his Chem E bachelors then went to Med School. </p>
<p>Engineering is applied physics. If you aren’t good in physics then my best suggestion would be to take physics and your calculus electives your first semester of college and see how well you can do in them. If you do well, you should do well in the engineering courses.</p>
<p>Here’s University of Oklahoma’s petroleum engineering degree sheet: <a href=“Checksheets”>Checksheets; Note the huge number of physics classes you’re required to take. You should also gauge if you’d be comfortable with living in some of the worst locations known to man. There’s a reason that most schools that offer PetE are in relatively undesirable locations, but even the college towns they’re located in make your eventual place of employment look like NYC by comparison. </p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad is right. You can do far more with a chemical engineering degree than a pure petroleum engineering one, but if you can’t handle the physics classes, you’re not going to make it. </p>
<p>I’d imagine petroleum engineering offers more jobs than a pre-pharm degree because there are more jobs in the resource extraction field. However, I haven’t compared career outlook. If you want a job in the extraction industry without much physics, you might want to combine a geology degree with a minor in computer science. I know the heads of the largest coal fired powered plant in North America mentioned a shortage of geology grads with excellent programming skills.</p>
<p>I’m a PETE student up at UAF and my best friend is a pharmacist in Arizona. I spoke with him a few weeks ago about what’s going on with pharmacy graduates (he’s close to his professors). He told me that roughly 30% of this years graduates did not have job offers. When he graduated six years ago, there was 100% placement, with every graduate receiving a signing bonus of $15k plus. And this is from the University of Arizona, which I believe is still ranked as the number four school in the country for phamrD.</p>