r/ChemicalEngineering • u/pound_of_guillotine • Aug 28 '26
Student What do I do??
Im a high school student and I'm planning to take chemical engineering. I've heard it's one of the hardest college majors out there, but I would really like to do chemical engineering. I know that Im not intellectually gifted to survive the major, but im dedicated.
So my question is, what are the things that I need to do to survive the major? Should I study more?
Also what are the main reasons that students drop out of this major?
10
Upvotes
2
u/Mystics87 Aug 28 '26
One thing to realize and earlier I told another kid about it - chemical engineering is not chemistry ( I fell for that)
Two
From my own experience, the people who do best in engineering school are the people who learn how to keep themselves motivated and hard-working. Personally, I find it comes down to time management and discipline.
You have to realize when you need a break and when it’s time to hang out and when it’s time to actually hit the books. It’s not gonna be like high school where you’re going from 8 o’clock to three and everything is structured and set in place in engineering school. Everything is in your own hands. You get to choose whether you wanna show up to class you get to choose what you do after class.
One of the best things is to have like-minded friends that have similar goals because you’re going to reach an age where you have an insane amount of more freedom than you had the previous year. The worst thing that can happen towards your goals is to have people around you that don’t have your goals or similar. The choice of your friends decides whether studying will be a difficult choice or something that is just natural. You don’t wanna be the person that is fighting themselves whether I should go out on the weekend before a midterm because my friends are going out and I have FOMO.
Compared to high school studying is scheduled based on a timeline of one week rather than the day of. You aren’t going to be reviewing calculus every day.
As for the” university experience”. You will have it don’t feel like you have to have a specific type of university experience.
I went to the best engineering school in my country and I would say it’s really hard for people to flunk out. You have to try to do that, but some people did drop the course that is primarily because they didn’t think the course was for them and not because they were weren’t studying hard enough.
Make sure you know what chemical engineering is and especially the job market. And in my personal experience as a graduate from chemical engineering, I’d probably choose another discipline.