5 replies to this topic

[mbeychok]

Hi,

I am thinking of doin chemical engineering, but I want to have as much info on the subject before I actually apply, and for that it woulf be great if you could answer my questions:

1. What qualities do you need to be successful in chemical engineering?
2. What part of chemical engineering excites you the most?
3. Which universities in England you would class has a high standard for chemical engineering? (exlud. oxford and cambridge)
4. Any advice ucan give to a budding student????!!!
I wld be so grateful if u guys cld answer one of my qs.

Thank u so very much

xxx

Hyacinth, one of the qualities needed to be successful in chemical engineering or any other career is the abilty to communicate well, in writing and orally. That means that you must learn to correctly spell out all of your words ... without using abbreviations and without refusing to use capitalization. Please notice that I have highlighted (in the above quote of your posting) ten places where you did not spell out your words and two places where you failed to use capitalization (Oxford and Cambridge).

As an American who lived and worked in England for 7 years, I was very impressed with how well the British used the English language and with the fact that the average British person had a vocabulary that was very much larger than the vocabulary of the average American. It is shameful that a British woman about to become a university student should have posted such a sloppy message in this forum.

[mbeychok]

Hyacinth:

I was not criticizing your "Britishness" ... I was criticizing your lack of "Britishness" in terms of using the English language. As you will learn, the business world does not consider poor spelling, poor grammar, and lack of letters in words to be "fashionable".

But be that as it may, I will try to answer some of your questions:

(1) Some of the qualities and/or skills required for an enjoyable and rewarding career in chemical engineering as well as many other engineering disciplines:

--- A strong desire to know how things work
--- A love of mathematics
--- Ability to read design drawings and plans and visualize them in their final three-dimensional form
--- Ability to organize your thinking and your documentation
--- Good people skills (i.e., working with other engineers as well as plant operators and technicians)
--- Good oral and written communication skills

(2) What excites me the most about chemical engineering is to see the final process or plant that I designed up and running well.

(3) Which of the British universities do I consider to have excellent chemical engineering curricula? I don't consider myself to be very knowledgeable of British universities. However, from what I have heard, Imperial College in London has a excellent reputation for science and technological education. Also, from my time spent in England (about 40 years ago), what were then called the "red brick universities" such as the Universities of Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham or Sheffield seemed to turn out many good chemical engineers.

(4) As for giving you advice, I think it would be quite useful for you to contact the Institution of Chemical Engineers and see what help they can be to you.

[chemsep05]

If you like Chemistry and Physics, you will most likely like ChE

with a ChE degree you can do just about anything you want,

it does take a great deal of time and effort to graduate, but it is well worth it

you should look at what you'll be doing when you finish your ChE education,

there are many possibilities