Possible Imperial Chemical Engineer Applicant

I'm welfare officer for the engineers this year, and I come into contact with a lot of the Chem Eng lot (it's an interestingly tough course xD) Here's some insight based on what I know...

You really shouldn't fixate too much on what modules to pick. First year engineering Maths at Imperial - whatever engineering stream you're in - is designed to bring everyone up to speed, chiefly because not everyone has the same standards (we DO have people will all sorts of qualifications anyway, and some don't have the luxury of picking stuff like Mechanics or Further Pure.) If you notice, FM isn't exactly a mandatory entry requirement (I didn't do it, and neither did a LOT of people.) Whichever modules you choose to pick, you'll be okay - you just have to work harder on the ones you don't know...you win some and lose some :P

Anyway there's a pure Maths module, and then you have a couple o' other modules which will need more of the applied stuff. Pure maths courses on the whole for engineering students are actually taught by the Maths department (some are special and do it in-house for certain years in certain departments, you'll have to see) - so I would say FP covers this more, though some of it seems a bit pointless (for instance people seem to do a lot of matrix decomposition in FP and we touch it in first year, then seemingly never again o.O) In fact in second year there's a good chunk of Statistics as well in the pure module - you wouldn't think that's *as* crucial in engineering, but hey, it's assessed!

Then you have stuff like Heat and Mass Transfer, Fluid Mech, Thermodynamics etc - where a good working knowledge of mechanics and immense familiarity with solving ODEs + PDEs will serve you very well. There's a lot of general crossover though, so anything needed for applied maths modules which you don't already know will be covered by the pure maths modules in some form or another at some point (in other departments, Fourier and Laplace comes to mind a LOT. Ask the EEE/BME/Aero people.)

Long story short both pure and applied come up a lot and are about as important as each other. Personally I like the applied/mech stuff more and would be more keen to go for that, but it's not a massive deal. Don't obsess too much, pick what you think you'll enjoy/be good at and you'll make up whatever you're lacking as you go.

PS// If you're still after some solid ideas: https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/chemicalengineering/Public/ug/1styearsection12-13.pdf

PPS// Just clarified something with my friend. All the mechanics modules in the world won't help a lot in Fluid Mech - you need to get used to a lot of totally new concepts, all the modules even up to M5 only cover solids!

Thanks, this was really helpful and great!

What you're saying about maths is right, I hadn't thought of it like that, the first year is definitely for bringing everyone up to scratch, so I might as well choose modules which I personally have an interest for and can think I can achieve the best grades for.

The reason I was asking for how much mechanics there is or how A-Level mechanics it's focused is because I personally prefer pure maths and statistics over to mechanics. I think it's mainly to do with the way it's taught, I do like mechanics but this is just my preferance and I was worried what kind of wannabe engineer am I if I don't even have mechanics up there in my top options, but what you said about getting everyone up to scratch and your friend saying it doesn't cover it, is reassuring!

Also I was wondering what is studying (chemical) engineering at university like? I know it's probably very maths focused, but how much maths focused? I don't have a problem with the maths, I love maths but just something I wondered. What's like the average day like for a chemical engineer? Workload? Assessments? Just any insight into being an actual student at Imperial would be fantastic.

Thanks so much, can't explain how much I appreciate your help.

Also, just reading the link you sent, what is mastery exam? The pass/fail thing they're talking about
And how practical based is engineering at Imperial?

Ariane pretty much sums it all up. I wanted to be a chemical engineer, till I thought long and hard about it. Eventually I settled for civil eng at Imperial. If it's engineering you want to get into, make sure you read about all the options available to you as you may enjoy the course structures for another area of engineering. Needless to say the engineering courses offered at Imperial can vary greatly compared to other uni's. Peace!

And then you have my course (Biomedical Engineering), where you pretty much do some of what everyone else does - not that we skimp on depth either xD Some of us are here because we couldn't pick a specific field to go into, and Biomed Eng is probably the most interdisciplinary :P You do pick a specialization later on though, I'm more Mech Eng than Elec Eng so I'll specialize in Mech next year.

Let's see...in two years I've done pure (engineering) maths, solid/fluid mechanics, heat/mass transport + chemistry, medical science, programming, logics, signals + control engineering, electrical engineering, electromagnetics, and materials (to name some.) Oh and I did a year-long design project for sports technology (my group did a posture monitoring system for wheelchair paralympians, and we got to talk to Jimmy Goddard for the consultation/development phase, who showed us how to race on wheelchairs. Best moment ever.)

But yeah, I would do a bit more research over the summer (you still have a bit of time) - if you can get also a little bit of work experience so you know what you're letting yourself in for, that helps majorly too.