chem engineer majors

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khemikal3001

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any fellow chemical engineering majors here? I want to see how popular this major is amongst pre-meds.
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I was a chemical engineering major. I didn't originally plan on using this degree to get into medical school though, it just worked itself out like that.
 
Ditto. I didn't originally plan to use Chem E either... It isn't the easiest major to juggle pre-med classes with but if you like it a lot or are not certain you want to do med then maybe it's an okay idea. I also think some of the concepts (e.g. mass transport) can be used to understand medical concepts (e.g. diffusion in kidney or something) but probably a different major (e.g. biochem) would prepare you more. Just my thoughts. PM me if you have any questions
 
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i was chemE as well. looked on favorably by admissions
 
Hi there,

I am also a ChemE major. I think it helped me a lot during the admissions cycle. It was always a discussion point in my interviews.
 
me, too. a chemE, a software engineer and now i will be in school for the next 8 yrs!! what a transition. go chemE's :D
 
Originally posted by fuzzylogic
me, too. a chemE, a software engineer and now i will be in school for the next 8 yrs!! what a transition. go chemE's :D
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Same here!
 
ChemE's dominate!

My favorite repsonse from interviewers when i say im chemE: "I'm sorry"
 
Good to see some more ChemE's on this board!! :clap:
 
I'm a chemE, I don't regret it, but I think I could of had an easier undergrad experience if I chose something different.
 
Originally posted by toomuch
I'm a chemE, I don't regret it, but I think I could had an easier undergrad experience if I chose something different.
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I know exactly what you mean. I think we may have chose one of the hardest routes to medicine.
 
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Ok guys, I will be applying to UF as a chemical engineer major and plan to go to med school too...its nice to see others have done it as well. Right now I applied as a food science and nutrition major, only because thats what most of the kids at University of Florida do for "pre med". Screw that though, Im majoring in chem engineering, it looks neat-o!
 
I had a room mate who was a chem e once, poor guy had no life at all. Just him and his books. One of the hardest majors out there from what I saw, if not the hardest.
 
Originally posted by khemikal3001
Ok guys, I will be applying to UF as a chemical engineer major and plan to go to med school too...its nice to see others have done it as well. Right now I applied as a food science and nutrition major, only because thats what most of the kids at University of Florida do for "pre med". Screw that though, Im majoring in chem engineering, it looks neat-o!
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Neat-o? I don't think I'd major in chemical engineering because it looks neat. It will look good to ADCOMS, but if only if you do decent (GPA>3.0). It is very difficult and alot of work. When I originally majored in chemical engineering, I did so because I thought that's what I wanted to do. I bet many of the other people who posted on here felt the same way. If I knew I was going to go to med school, I would NOT have chosen this route. It is alot of pain and suffering and in the end you really won't use any of the knowledge you obtain. I mean, what doctor needs to know how to calculate the height of packing required to obtain a desired separation??? They don't, but you will learn how to do this as a chemical engineer, along with a whole bunch of other crap you'll never use. My advice is to major in something you love. If I had done it over i would have been a music major, but thats just me. If you love chemical engineering, then go for it. I suspect you don't, or maybe you just don't know exactly what a chemical engineer does, but if I were you I'd major in something fun. Ok, I'm spent...good luck with whatever you choose.
 
I was a MechE, is that ok =)
 
zekemd, didn't you miss your navier-stokes equation, mass balance and heat transfer? :D

i agree that chemE is a hard major. if i knew i was going to apply to med schools, i would have done something easier and more interesting. well, i am here now and will be spending more time in school....
 
my friend is a bioengineering major. She has no life, and attracts the strangest, weirdest guys. :confused:
 
I'm also going to have to agree with Zeke here and say that chem. engineering is probably the worst 'pre-med' major you can pick. I originally came in planning on being a chemical engineer and soon found out I didn't like industry, at that point it would have cost me a lot of time (and money) to switch majors so now I'm going to go the med school route. There are some benefits to Chem-E (this is going to sound conceited but...) and that is you have actually accomplished something in your undergrad. Most other majors don't prepare you to have a successful career in whatever area you're studying, they merely prepare you to go to grad. school to have that career. As far as the major being 'neat-o', try pulling my schedule last week, diff eq test, p-chem test, o-chem 2 test, fluid's test, and bio test, all in one week, suddenly you might be reevaluating just how 'neat-o' the major seems.
 
Originally posted by fuzzylogic
zekemd, didn't you miss your navier-stokes equation, mass balance and heat transfer? :D

i agree that chemE is a hard major. if i knew i was going to apply to med schools, i would have done something easier and more interesting. well, i am here now and will be spending more time in school....
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I don't miss any of those things!!! I've long since burned my notebooks containing all those things, and been trying ever since to remove them from my memory. Mass/energy balances, pressure drops, laplace transforms, transfer functions, catalysts, heat exchangers....they're evil I tell ya!
 
Originally posted by musiclink213
my friend is a bioengineering major. She has no life, and attracts the strangest, weirdest guys. :confused:
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hehe, ouch......where does your friend go....I may be one of those weird BME guys.....

(hangs head in shame) :)
 
Ya know, i'm doing Bioengineering now, and i have to say, there are some strange people out there. No offense intended to all you other engineers, since this could be just some isolated thing at my school.

Maybe its because i came from a Biochem background, but its just strange:)
 
I majored in ChemE because I had to declare something. I had changed my major 7 times and my advisor was putting the guns to me. The night before I had to give a final decision, I went to a party, got drunk, and asked everyone there what I should do. A close friend told me to do engineering becuase I could get a job when I graduated. Even though I've never worked as a ChemE, I thought it was a great education.
 
It's nice to hear that there are plenty more like me out there; people who have worked their butts off during their undergrad finishing a degree in ChE. It's funny though, unlike some, I knew I wanted to be a doctor and picked ChE because it sounded interesting and I knew it would challenge me more than Biology or MMBB (or English...). I absolutely love it and will miss it when I go to medical school, but I'd rather be a doctor and help people on a personal level than model and run a packed column stripper (although that was a fun lab!). It's been awesome when I wasn't so exhausted that I wanted to die (or push a professor down a stairwell so that life would be easier and I could get some sleep). It's good to be able to commiserate with others that have been there...

Oh, our AICHE student chapter shirts just came back from the printer and here's what they say on the back:

TOP TEN REASONS I BECAME A CHEMICAL ENGINEER:
1. To take an open-book, open notes exam...and still fail
2. It's the only major where taking an exam drunk does not adversely affect your grade
3. I thought fugacity was an Irish liquor...and still do
4. To learn that the best catalyst for packed-beds is ethanol
5. I consider getting more than 4 hours sleep and inefficent use of time
6. The world does not revolve around us...we get to chose the coordinate system
7. We specialize in experimentation
8. To control the stripper
9. Pre-med was too easy
10. Hell was full
 
This thread has been most helpful and informative. I too am a chemE grad and I've been working in industry for the past year and a bit. I would also like to pursue medical studies but I don't have all the prereq's (English, Bio..). I thought maybe doing a post-bacc would be the way to go. Does anybody have any experience /info on this? Also, my GPA was brutal (2.82) so I don't even know if it's worth the effort. I was considering Columbia's Premed postbacc program but I think they require a minimum GPA of 3.0. Any thoughts?

thanks for any help:)
 
Originally posted by happylimt
This thread has been most helpful and informative. I too am a chemE grad and I've been working in industry for the past year and a bit. I would also like to pursue medical studies but I don't have all the prereq's (English, Bio..). I thought maybe doing a post-bacc would be the way to go. Does anybody have any experience /info on this? Also, my GPA was brutal (2.82) so I don't even know if it's worth the effort. I was considering Columbia's Premed postbacc program but I think they require a minimum GPA of 3.0. Any thoughts?

thanks for any help:)
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Check out Harvard's program.
http://www.extension.harvard.edu/hcp/

If you have a 2.8ish then you need to take 28 credit hours worth of classes for "Sponsorship."

Cheers
Captjack
 
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