is it possible i get a chemistry degree and then a chemical engineering degree after

I wanna become a chemical engineer but with more in the chemistry aspects of it eg cosmetics and agriculture part of it

Hi interlanken-fall,

There are certainly postgraduate chemical engineering MSc degrees out there that you may be able to complete after a chemistry BSc degree. Some will ask for a BEng degree in chemical engineering but may also accept people who have similar degrees such as pure chemistry. So it will depend on the university and their course requirements I imagine. There may also be requirements on grade, for example 2:1 minimum in your bachelors degree. During a chemistry degree you will often be given the choice of some optional modules (this is certainly the case at the University of Southampton in my experience!). So you could choose optional modules that are related to chemical engineering to further ensure you will be suitable for an MSc in Chemical engineering.

During a chemical engineering degree, there are some pure chemistry modules so it might be worth looking into what aspects of chemistry are covered in the chemical engineering degree. This is the chemical engineering course page from the Uni of Southampton that talks about Chemical engineering BEng courses as well as the postgraduate MSc Course, https://www.southampton.ac.uk/chemistry/chemical-engineering.page. Hopefully this will provide more info on what to expect from a chemical engineering degree and help inform your decision.

Please let me know if you have any further questions!

Mollymy
UoS Chemistry Graduate and current PhD student

you could certainly do the two degrees but it would cost a lot - have you checked out the finances?

i think both combined would be like 9/10 ish years so £90,000 give it or take and i might wanna do a PHD but idk

I had wondered about your motivation - accept when one is early in the investigation of options priorities and preferences about routes may change. I take it you have the cash to pay? Any preference between CS and EE (or is ECE an interest?) and which universities would interest you?

There is at least one person on this forum who was looking into something similar as a career change. If I can recall his name I'll copy him onto the thread. I looked into doing a second degree in engineering a lot of years ago but from a different starting point and at a time when the finances were easier.

I had wondered about your motivation - accept when one is early in the investigation of options priorities and preferences about routes may change. I take it you have the cash to pay? Any preference between CS and EE (or is ECE an interest?) and which universities would interest you?

There is at least one person on this forum who was looking into something similar as a career change. If I can recall his name I'll copy him onto the thread. I looked into doing a second degree in engineering a lot of years ago but from a different starting point and at a time when the finances were easier.

and what is CS EE and ECE ?

my original plan was to do chemistry degree and then do a chem E degree after both undergraduate, my worry is that if I do a chem degree and then a post graduate chemical engineering MSc degrees I will miss out by not doing a chem E degree at the undergraduate level and so will be disadvantaged,
and another question what are the similiaritys of a chem degeee and chem E degree like are the math modules similar, and Ive seen some chem degrees teaching thermodynamics that is taught in chem E undergraduates degrees.

lol no no I dont have the money, planning to take a loan or hopefully scholarships for at least 1 of the degrees, I'm not really worried about the huge debt because if I hopefully get a good job, the government will take small portions of it not all in 1 go,
my motivation is the fact that I am really interested in what chemical engineers do, and I also love chemistry, so if I become a chemical engineer I hope I can work in the more chemistry heavy part of it.

Hi interlanken-fall,

Sorry, I hadn't realised you meant both the degrees were undergrad! It is quite uncommon to do two undergrad degrees unless the second degree is medicine lol. Off the top of my head I'm not sure what the similarities are between chem eng and chemistry but I'm doing some research so will get back to you on that! In my experience there isn't any chem eng covered during chemistry degrees. Certain universities might offer optional chem eng modules during your chemistry degree however.

I was wondering if you'd be able to clarify a few things for me so I can better help you out! Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you want to become a chemical engineer after uni? So I was wondering why you wanted to do a chemistry degree as well? I wouldn't imagine just doing a chemical engineering degree would disadvantage you at all if you wanted a future career in that industry but I'm not an expert! Many different chemical industries need chemical engineers so I don't think you'd have trouble finding chem eng work in chemical industries.

Onto the finance side of things, as far as I'm aware Student Finance England (SFE, the government funding body for university students) will only fund your first degree so you will need to pay the £9000/year tuition fees and also living costs by yourself for the second undergrad degree. I have a friend who is doing that at the moment (chemistry undergrad to medicine undergrad) and is really struggling financially so I wouldn't recommend doing two degrees unless you had the money secured. Scholarships are great but, as far as I'm aware, there are not many of them and they are very competitive! I don't think most of them cover the entire cost of the courses either.

As I said, I'm going to do a bit more research about similarities between chem eng and chemistry and I will get back to you!

I hope this info helps for now

Molly

thank you, My favourite subject is chemistry, and i was hoping that i could become a chemical engineer but lead towards the chemistry side, as in the chem E industry they deal with eg pharmaceuticals area to which I think has chemistry in it

I wanna become a chemical engineer but with more in the chemistry aspects of it eg cosmetics and agriculture part of it

Hi again!

I've been in contact with the chemical engineering tutor at the University of Southampton (Dr Nuno Bimbo) and I have asked him about the differences between chemical engineering and chemistry degrees. This is what he said...

"I think some of the main differences are related to the fact that chemistry is more focused on fundamentals and theory regarding chemical principles, and chemical engineering is more interested in applying those principles towards practical solutions, as you would expect from an engineering degree. Chemical engineering typically looks at applying physical sciences principles at a large scale, for instance, in industrial plants, whereas chemistry is more focused on a laboratory scale.

In practice what this means is that in a chemistry degree you will study the various aspects of chemistry (inorganic, organic, physical), looking into reactions and laboratory experiments, and in chemical engineering you will spend more time looking at how, given what we know of a reaction at a laboratory scale, we can design a large scale reactor that can carry out that reaction, or given what we know about certain chemicals, we can design a separation method that can purify them (maybe a distillation process or an absorption column). You will still study the chemistry fundamentals in the first couple of years in a chem eng degree, but obviously not to the detail of a chemistry course.

I should also say that our chemical engineering degree at Southampton will have a greater emphasis in chemistry and in its fundamentals, which is something a bit different than how other universities in the UK currently do.

Regarding careers and based on an IChemE (the Institute of Chemical Engineers) survey (IChemE salary survey 2017), chemical engineering is one of the most lucrative employment careers and one of the courses with the highest starting graduate salaries (£30k/year in 2017), so you can also point to this when answering questions about chemical engineering careers.

Hope this answers it, any more questions please let me know."


I also found this link to and IChemE website about chemical engineer careers, https://www.icheme.org/education/whynotchemeng/what-do-chemical-engineers-do/. It talks about all the different chemical industries you can go into with a chemical engineering degree (including pharmaceutical engineering)! From the information I've found, I really don't think you'll be disadvantaged at all if you do a chemical engineering degree and not a chemistry degree. I think because it is a chemical engineering degree, you will specialise in chem eng for chemistry focused industries so you really won't have any trouble finding work as a chemical engineer in chemical industries without a chemistry degree!

But if you were keen on doing more chemistry during a chemical engineering degree, it sounds like Southampton will be providing more chemistry content during their chem eng degree as Nuno said!

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have any other questions

Molly

Unless you find a part-time chemical engineering degree (which I'm not sure exists - maybe there is a professional placement connected one at Dundee or Aberdeen) you won't be eligible for funding for an undergraduate degree. You might be able to go on to a masters in chemical engineering (e.g. at UCL I think they consider those with a chemistry degree) but this will generally not qualify you as a chemical engineering professionally as it won't have the requisite accreditation.

There is however one degree in the UK I know of which offers both sides in the same course - Strathclyde's Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry degree. You cover most of the content of their chemistry degree and the rest is the chemical engineering content to meet accreditation requirements. It's uniquely accredited by both the RSC (@Royal Society of Chemistry if their rep is active still) and IChemE. So that sounds like an ideal course for you. Strathclyde is also extremely well regarded for engineering by employers in the engineering sector (it's pretty heavily targeted by recruiters from that sector). I don't know what connections it has to the various connected industries specifically though.

I'd recommend looking into that course as it sounds right up your street though!

What is it about pharmaceuticals specifically that interests you? I work in pharmaceuticals and I have a chemistry degree (and PhD) which is more suited to understanding the in-depth behaviour of molecules and reactions and being able to work in a lab on R&D etc. I don’t imagine a chemical engineer in the industry is going to know about or be exposed to anywhere near as much chemistry as the actual chemists working on the APIs.

What is it about pharmaceuticals specifically that interests you? I work in pharmaceuticals and I have a chemistry degree (and PhD) which is more suited to understanding the in-depth behaviour of molecules and reactions and being able to work in a lab on R&D etc. I don’t imagine a chemical engineer in the industry is going to know about or be exposed to anywhere near as much chemistry as the actual chemists working on the APIs.