r/ChemicalEngineering • u/Ashamed_Resolution76 • Feb 21 '25

Student Is Chem-e really tough?

So right know I am a highschooler and I was very confused what to major in but I found out about Chem-e and really liked it. I wanna know if it's easy to get a job after you graduate on the East Coast, do I need to be good at physic is my main concern???

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '25

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u/bananananana96 Feb 21 '25

The math in ChemE core classes isn’t terrible, but god the math you have to take to get there is brutal

1

u/[deleted] Feb 21 '25

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u/bananananana96 Feb 21 '25

Fuck diff lol calc 2 is the weed out. Calc 3 wasn’t so bad and diff was a breath of air

1

u/Glacialedge Feb 21 '25

100%! Calc 2 is where they filter them out. Org chem 2 also was a filter.

3

u/ahugeminecrafter Feb 21 '25

I think differential equations and linear algebra were definitely where it started getting hard for me to understand topics beyond just the standpoint of just knowing how to solve problems because I learned the solution in the class.

Like, for me to intuitively explain what an eigenvector represented or how a Laplace transform worked? No chance lol. As soon as it was past dot products/cross products and inverse matrices it all start getting black boxey. Differential equations I got the idea that I was learning tools to solve equations where one of the terms was a derivative but there were so many exponential equations/conversions to trig flying around it started all blending together.

Multivariable calc was comparatively much easier to visualize for me which meant I had a shot at solving novel problems myself and being creative.

1

u/Pridestalked Feb 21 '25

I still don’t know how to construct a linear mapping matrix from a basis and some vectors lol