What is Chemical Engineering Really?
In theory what is it?
In theory, Chem Es (as we are affectionately known) deal with manipulating the chemistries that chemists come up with to a much larger scale. Example - a chemsit figures out how to make plastic in a beaker at his work bench, a chemical engineer figures out how to make 100billion tons of it cheaply a year!What is it used for?
Traditionally oil refinaries used us to figure out the best ways to seperate crude oils but now we do a lot of process engineering in many other industries like semiconductors, engineering consulting, anything that makes stuff on a large scale. We figure out how to make things on a large economy of scale.What does the major actually entail - work-wise?
Well depends on the industry. In oil, probably going out on some big oil rigs in the ocean for 7 days at a time to make sure things are running smoothly. But in general any process engineering job you end up in a lab doing reasearch and development on different processes.What kind of jobs do you get with it?
Process Engineer is most common. But from my class (~80) a lot went into research and development, financial consulting, eBanking, and of course back to school!What are the fellow students like (personalitywise) in it?
Most are very bright and very fun but it depends on where you go to school more than the major.Common Misconceptions
That there is nothing out there for Chem Es. With a bad economy, it is tough but normally you can get a job with an oil company (bare minimum) really quickly out of college.
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