Chem vs Chem Eng.

[u/Commercial_Effect_25]

I’m currently a Junior in highschool, and I have a college counselor. He told me he doesn’t think I’m ready for chemical engineering in college bc I don’t have AP Physcisc or AP Calc BC (I currently have Calc AB And Chem this year, AP Stats 4 and AP Precalc 5 last yr). I will take AP Physics C and BC in senior year, but he said that is a bad idea bc I will be under pressure when uni gives me conditional offer. Anyway, he is basically telling me that teenagers like me hoping to apply for Chem E are taking much much more harder classes than me and I shouldn’t apply or else I won’t get in. He suggested me to apply for Chemistry instead… He also told me I should stay away from math related majors ( prob bc he saw that I got a C+ in AP Stats but got a 4) and prob thinks I’m rly dumb and just delusional for wanting to apply for chem Eng. But I can think of any reason WHY I want to apply for Chemistry? I like chemistry, but just chemistry as a Uni major … I don’t rly want to. I know Chem E is mostly thermo and physics, and I’m willing to learn. What should I do?

Update: thanks for everyone’s advice. It rly gave me confidence. I’ll try my best to get into Chem E programs.

[u/kinnunenenenen]

I agree with everyone that you should do ChemE. Your counselor sounds a little bit misguided.

That being said, is your counselor saying you shouldn't study chemE, or that you shouldn't apply to chemE? In some cases it can be pragmatic to apply to one major and switch to a different one once you've been accepted. I didn't do this so I don't have any direct experience, but I know people would try to transfer into CS instead of applying directly because it was so saturated. It is possible this is what they are referring to - it could be the case that admissions to ChemE are super competitive, so you should apply to chem and then switch. This doesn't sound realistic in my experience but that might be what they mean.

[u/Commercial_Effect_25 → u/kinnunenenenen]

Yes, they have offered this path and I’ve asked my school teachers about this. My biology teacher studied at UCLA and she said many students who try to transfer from one college to another (like school of science to school of engineering) fail, bc it is two very different colleges. You can go from a hard major to a slightly more easy one, but it is more challenging to do the opposite…

[u/kinnunenenenen → u/Commercial_Effect_25]

Okay so again I'm speculating a little bit, since this isn't personal experience, but I think the issue might be more going between colleges than going from "hard" to "easy". So, you could also consider applying to a less popular engineering major like materials science engineering or biomed, so you're still in the engineering school.