relative is studying this at a major public university. doing very well up to this point -- has an internship lined up for this upcoming summer.

what kind of positions / career tracks are common for graduates with this degree?

i am not an engineer of any kind so all this is unknown to me. educate me if you can -- thanks --

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If you come from a decent program and are at the top of your class opportunites are plentiful. A friend of mine's son had his pick of jobs from Dupont,BASF and the like.

quote:

what kind of positions / career tracks are common for graduates with this degree?

Oil industry has historically been the main thing
but semiconductor and biotech companies too now.

My opinion is there will always be more jobs for good chemical engineers then there are good people to fill those jobs.

My wife is a chemical engineer. She spent most of her career in the electric power industry, but any kind of large manufacturing operation will need ChemE's. Don't think of chemistry as much as process engineering.

It's a difficult degree, but the pay is towards the top for engineering.

oddly enough if you have a good background in RO technologies, you can likely find a job in the beer industry, or in the hard spirits industry

Industries: Petrochem, chemical, pharma, food & beverage, minerals processing, biochem, semiconductor, Engineering construction.
Positions: Research, process engineering, project management, production/operations

Earned my BSChE in 1984 - a career in process engineering/plant design and project management!

Copper/mineral mining

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
oddly enough if you have a good background in RO technologies, you can likely find a job in the beer industry, or in the hard spirits industry

BS Chem E followed by Masters in brewing or wine making is classic path to success…

Daughter is a cem-e graduate ( Okla state) went to work for Honeywell straight out of college and has been with them for 20 plus years.

Health, Beauty Care, cosmetics, hygiene, are all big ones as well.
Proctor & Gamble employs loads of Chemical Engineers.
My brother has been there doing the Chemical Engineer thing for them for 20 years.

I know a chemical engineer who had a very good career in a steel mill.

Chemical plants and refineries hire oodles of them. Houston has plenty of jobs for them, it’s pretty common for them to bounce around company to company to get better pay/better positions.

My stepdaughter has her BS in Chemical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. She decided to get a fellowship and PhD from Wake Forest in Computational Genetics and Genomics. She is happily employed as a data scientist at a major gaming company.

The possibilities and potential are numerous and varied.

Although I have a B. S. in Chemical Engineering, I've never worked in it. However, I can say that the education afforded in that discipline is such that it is an excellent foundation for almost any technical or scientific job. The training in stoichiometry alone is priceless.

flashguy

It's one of the most highly paid engineering disciplines right out of school. Petroleum engineering is better but I think the numbers are skewed by people who work on oil platforms which pays lots of overtime but is very demanding and unpleasant.

Anyway, I think the reason is just about every other engineering discipline does the chemistry they need to for the degree but almost no one really likes it. I can't imagine an entire degree in Chem E myself. I was done with P-Chem after my first year and only really had to do a little more (sort of) in Materials class. Degree is Mechanical Engineering.

So the lack of people who want to get the degree means low supply but demand is pretty high, therefore relative high salary.

As for the jobs, any company that does any kind of chemical processing. Pretty open in that sense.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Health, Beauty Care, cosmetics, hygiene, are all big ones as well.
Proctor & Gamble employs loads of Chemical Engineers.
My brother has been there doing the Chemical Engineer thing for them for 20 years.

So your brother is into cosmetics ehhhh?

My father was a chemical engineer, My older brother was a CE from TU and another was a PE from Texas. They all seem to have plenty of work and $$$.My youngest brother was in one of the first computer science degrees from Oklahoma state,which looks like it pays well also.

In my experience these guys or gals start off in a basic intro position. The ones that want quickly rise up. Almost all supervisor/management positions are filled from the engineering pool. I’ve seen people spend their entire career as process engineers and others that have risen to very high management positions. The opportunities are there for the taking.

As noted above, it's a field that trains you for a wide range of high paying opportunities in a bunch of industries.

Great degree to have on the resume - good grades from a good school and the sky's the limit.

If you would like a rough sense of the economics to be expected from a given degree program at a given college, you can search here: US DoE College Scorecard and here: "Is College Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis"

Much like other degrees with no marketable skills, they make good baristas

In all seriousness, lots of opportunities in oil & gas. Obviously, they're integral to Downstream portion of business at refineries and chemical plants, but less obvious that they're integral to the Upstream side of the business in gas treatment plants, liquification plants to make LNG, high pressure oil & gas separation, etc. Upstream side of the business pays better and offers more opportunity to travel. Should be lots of future opportunities with carbon sequestration, hydrogen, etc.

BTW, I'm a ME and all of the engineering disciplines poke fun at each other.