Chemical engineering Questions

I'd imagine this varies greatly from uni to uni, but i'm mainly thinking about Nottingham, loughborough and Birmingham.

First of all, what sort of stuff do chemical engineers do, i've read all the 'oversee processes' stuff but still have no idea what chemical engineers actually do xD

How practical are the courses? I can do basic experiments and such although more demanding practical work such as actually building small systems is a challenge for me :P Are the courses mainly theoretical?

Thanks

Currently at Nottingham uni doing chemical engineering in my first year; my first year has been part theory part practicals. However, the theory part (i.e. the kinda stuff you do in A-Level maths/science) is by far the larger and more significant part, and the practicals only serve to subsidise understanding. To be honest they're very simplistic and don't involve you building anything, just following instructions and taking readings from machines. If you can do a basic practical then you'll be able to do these ones.

This is from the uni of Nottingham however, all courses are different in some way (although with chem eng you obviously have standards set by iCheme so all courses teach roughly the same material). They may do different kinds of practicals in different unis, so take my words with a grain of salt.

As for what actual chemical engineers do... all sorts of things I guess! There are a ton of different paths you can go down after you get a chem eng degree. Just... 'science' really. Chemical engineers are useful for their ability to handle processes, and to design chemical plants/mass transfer thingies on a large scale. So you'll probably be doing something like that I guess, although it obviously varies depending on which out of the vast number of fields you go into.