<p>2 other engineering areas where you can realy leverage your chem e undergrad:
1. Bio/biomedical eng
2. environmental eng</p>
<p>I work in the latter field with many chem e's turned environmental. Lets just say its not the most lucrative career, but its fun with a highly varied set of technical challenges everyday.</p>
<p>I'd suggest checking out the biomedical eng field. Here's Penn's bioeng department web page:
<a href="http://www.seas.upenn.edu/be/message.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.seas.upenn.edu/be/message.html</a></p>
<p>Its a great department with research into drug discovery, tissue engineering & orthopedics......interesting stuff with nice labs.</p>
<p>Plenty of other strong programs in biomedical eng like JHU. Suggest you read up on professor's bio's & go visit a few labs & departments.</p>
<p>ps......I wouldn't let your interpretation of your averageness stop you from visiting top-rated programs like Penn & JHU. You shouldn't count yourself out until they tell you to forget it. Acceptance to eng grad school on the research side of life can he closely tied to research funding & lab needs, making prediction of acceptance/rejection tough due to variable demands.</p>