Questions About Chemistry

College Majors
1

<p>Hey, I am a going to be a freshman next year in college and I am leaning towards possibly declaring a chemistry major. I have a few questions though and anyone with some insight to a chem major please try to give me some answers.</p>

<p>-Is a chemistry major not a good choice if your not that strong at math? (competent but not very good with advanced math)
-What is the average workload like for a chemistry major?
-Which of the upper level classses are the most challenging? least challenging?
-what are the job prospects like for a person with a B.S. in chemistry (not teaching)</p>

<p>All answers will be greatly appreciated, thank you</p>

2

<p>-At my college, we have two tracks of calculus. Chem majors have to take 4 quarters of the more advanced track (as opposed to our bio majors who take 3 quarters of the less advanced track). In the end, it’s helpful to take advanced calculus if you wanna switch to another science or engineering major.

  • It’s generally less stressful than an engineering major, but it’s still a science degree. Most colleges will require its chem majors to take calculus, chemistry, chemistry lab, and whatever GEs you have to fulfill.
  • Organic chemistry is generally thought to be the hardest, but I don’t know about others since I’m still just a freshman chem major.
    -Lab technician.</p>
3

<p>I hear physical chemistry is a killer class.</p>

<p>Organic chem has that reputation too.</p>

4

<p>PChem is more math, whereas OChem is more memorization.</p>

5

<p>I’m in biochemistry and I despise math…which is OK as long as you aren’t shooting to be a p chemist. There’s lots of labs, but if you’re a chemistry major you should like lab. Classes are usually pretty easy to moderate, with the exception of pchem, biophysical chemistry, and analytical chemistry. As far as the BS in chemistry…go for a PhD.</p>

6

<p>If you were to do everything on time and perfectly, how long would it take to get a Ph.D in Chemistry?</p>

7

<p>Q1: Is a chemistry major not a good choice if your not that strong at math? (competent but not very good with advanced math)</p>

<p>A1: Being “good” at math should not be a major factor in choosing your major. Whether you really enjoy the area of concentration, I think, would be a much better gauge. However, many B.S. science degrees, especially Physics and Chemistry branches, require upper division math. That is, it requires course(s) above calculus level math.</p>

<p>Q2: What is the average workload like for a chemistry major?</p>

<p>A2: Everyone is different, but I would say a B.S. in any science major is intense. B.S. focusing ALOT more on the raw science and laboratory aspects. </p>

<p>I would say the first 2-3 years is pretty easy-going with intro course lectures or memorization based chem courses (intro chem and organic, biochem). Once you’ve completed those the level of difficulty seems to spike drastically - especially the upper-division courses where you may be competing on a curve with graduate level students (inorganic, ploymer, quantum, theory-based etc). </p>

<p>Despite “easy-going” lectures expect labs to be work intense. You will spend many many long hours in the lab (3-8 hrs/week), performing “experiments”, recording data, researching topics related to the experiment, analyzing your data, interpreting/understanding your data and theories behind it culminating into a lab report. “A-material” lab reports took me anywhere from 6-15 hours to write dependent on the lab, experiment etc. Note, this does NOT include going to lab.</p>

<p>Q3: Which of the upper level classses are the most challenging? least challenging?</p>

<p>A3: This is hard one. Some courses were extremely challenging/difficult but had a generous curve. Others were not very challenging but was work intense with hws, quizzes etc. Keep in mind that many universities are different and even within those institutions, many professors are different!</p>

<p>For me, I think overall, pchem lecture and lab were the most challenging. Pchem had massive massive amounts of calculus based equations/calculations. Pchem lab was most challenging mostly because of the failure of equipment, abstract theories and all the extra research time to understand and connect them.</p>

<p>The easiest were the intro chem courses and biochemistry. Intro chem was probably easy for me since I had taken in during HS but wanted to refresh to make sure. Biochem was mostly memorization. It felt almost like a biology course where you just memorized a bunch of things.</p>

<p>Q4: what are the job prospects like for a person with a B.S. in chemistry (not teaching)?</p>

<p>A4: Pretty grim lol. Especially with this economy, I’d say you’d be lucky to find a position that didn’t involve teaching/TA-ing. There’s always lab tech spots but those, to me, are pretty dead end jobs. If you’re going for a B.S., go for the curiosity, pleasure or w/e and plan to continue your education toward a masters or doctorate. Maybe pursue pharm, med or other related professional school. Otherwise, a B.S. sounds just as it does - B.S. since you really have just hit the tip of the iceberg and know relatively little in the concentration.</p>

<p>Q5: If you were to do everything on time and perfectly, how long would it take to get a Ph.D in Chemistry? </p>

<p>A5: There is no perfect. This depends on your committee, area of research and multitudes of other factors. I have known profs complete it in 2-3 yrs while at the same time, I have seen graduate students ■■■■■ the libraries years upon years with seemingly little progress to completing. And of course you got all those fools with honorary ones. </p>

<p>Background: I am currently a graduate student working on my masters in the health field. I am also working on another degree in psychology just out of pure interest. I have B.S. in Biochem.</p>

8

<p>

Ditto. Know this if you go into chem. You simply cannot rush the cooking process and you will spend many evenings and nights babysitting your experiments. (although, many people leave them to do other things and then come back to the lab intermittantly to check on them).</p>

9

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<p>Waiting for reactions to proceed takes up the majority of your lab time. You might be scheduled for a 5 hour organic lab, but like lkf725 said…you are probably gonna have to come back to lab in your free time to finish experiments or do work-up. Lab reports aren’t cakewalks either and take a good amount of time.</p>

10

<p>Math:<br>
You need to know and love your mathematics. You need to get warm fuzzy feelings in your stomach when you think about matrices, differential equations, triple integrals, and the properties of ln functions.</p>

<p>You think I’m kidding, but you won’t survive P-Chem or I-Chem if you don’t know your math. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know math before you get into the program. If you can handle the pre-requisite freshman level calculus classes, you’ll do fine.</p>

<p>And this isn’t high school. You need to learn and keep the information you acquire in every class. Everything builds on everything else.</p>

<p>Workload:
Freshman Year: Not difficult, basic maths, general chemistry (which is scheduled at 8am no matter what school you choose for some obscene reason)
Sophmore Year: Memorization based O-chem… Classical Mechanics, pay attention in this class as your Pchem is going to be like this, but more abstract and way more challenging.
Junior Year: I took 16-20 units of chemistry every quarter. This included P chem (year), Analytical Chemistry labs (1, 2), Physical Chemistry Lab, undergraduate research, inorganic chemistry 1 and 2, and some other courses.
Senior Year: More relaxed, unless your school as Post p-chem I chem… that class is a *****.</p>

<p>Challenging classes:</p>

<p>All of the classes are challenging, especially if you are enrolled in a large program. A’s aren’t handed out like candy. You have to thoroughly tromp your competition. Treat every class as if it is the hardest, most-important class and you’ll do fine.</p>

<p>That said, at my school: Analytical Chemistry lecture was the easiest course, followed by Inorganic Chemistry I. (You’ll find that major-required courses, besides the CORE corses, are the easiest)</p>

<p>My most difficult courses were Physical Chemistry (note, I got A’s in my Pchem series - by difficult, I mean most work intensive) and the advanced Inorganic chemistry which built upon p-chem foundations and mathematics.</p>

<p>Jobs:</p>

<p>Unlike these other schmucks, I have work experience in the chemical industry, so I can tell you that you have a ton of job prospects with a B.S. in chemistry.</p>

<p>You can work hazardous materials clean-up (the guys who tear down methlabs after busts and get paid big bucks)</p>

<p>You can work as a chemist in a pharmaceutical laboratory or quality control laboratory (Max out at about $80K after 15 years or so)</p>

<p>You can supervise processes at manufacturing facilities, work at a biotech company as an operator, pharmaceutical sales rep, etc. etc. etc.</p>

<p>If you go for an M.S. (only two more years) you can open up even more opportunities at research laboratories, pharmaceutical drug development laboratories, chemical supply companies…</p>

<p>Go for the PhD (and beyond) and the world is your oyster. Catalyst design (figure out how to save a penny for every ton of acetic acid produced and you’ll be an instant $100M richer) is attractive. Run your own lab, design instruments. (One guy I know designed an instrument for his PhD thesis, now he runs a company making optics for that instrument, selling to other labs… he’s loaded).</p>

<p>So really, even in this economy… even with just a B.S., you can still open a business… the chemistry degree will imbue you with analytical prowess beyond that of the normal everyman (though math and physics majors will still own on you in that dept). But really, the chem degree applies to everything you see (rayleigh scattering, mie scattering, rainbows) and do (name a physical property of a substance) and interact with (plastics, nylons,… I mean what is materials science?)… </p>

<p>So really, pick a science- it doesn’t have to be chemistry… But don’t wuss out and go business or IR.</p>

11

<p>How much of a deal would it be to place out of gen chem and 1st semester calc with AP scores? is it really worth it?</p>

<p>And would it be a complete joke to get a BA in chem?</p>