what to do for chemical engineering personal statement

i tried to find chem eng related work experience since the past few month and i was unable to find any. Other than online mooc courses and work shadowing at a pharmacy - i havent really done much. What else can i do to add into my personal statement ??

You could include any wider-reading to show you have an interest in the subject outside of school. There are also other online courses, more like lectures on a range of things hosted by universities. I attended one from Oxford on chirality and the implications of that in drug production. Also, this course was in covid times and there were parts about covid drugs which I wrote a bit about in my personal statement and it turned out great because in my interview I was asked a long estimation question about vaccination centres. I would not stress about finding any courses that are specifically linked to chemeng, as chemeng is such a diverse subject so lots of courses can link to it. You can always mention something you learnt from the course that you believe is most directly linked to chemeng, but anything STEM related will be satisfactory as you’ve shown the interest in attending courses.

I’m 1st year (going 2nd) chemeng at Imperial, so lmk if you have any more questions about personal statement or interview or whatever.

i tried to find chem eng related work experience since the past few month and i was unable to find any. Other than online mooc courses and work shadowing at a pharmacy - i havent really done much. What else can i do to add into my personal statement ??

hello thank you so much - i will look into some lectures !! btw did you do any work experience ??

Work experience isn't necessary. Wider reading is more than sufficient.

Well worth doing also just to understand what chemical engineering is (and what it isn't). It's not a course in applied chemistry - it's an engineering degree applied to manufacturing involving chemical processes. There's relatively little chemistry in a chemical engineering degree which often seems to surprise applicants!

You could include any wider-reading to show you have an interest in the subject outside of school. There are also other online courses, more like lectures on a range of things hosted by universities. I attended one from Oxford on chirality and the implications of that in drug production. Also, this course was in covid times and there were parts about covid drugs which I wrote a bit about in my personal statement and it turned out great because in my interview I was asked a long estimation question about vaccination centres. I would not stress about finding any courses that are specifically linked to chemeng, as chemeng is such a diverse subject so lots of courses can link to it. You can always mention something you learnt from the course that you believe is most directly linked to chemeng, but anything STEM related will be satisfactory as you’ve shown the interest in attending courses.

I’m 1st year (going 2nd) chemeng at Imperial, so lmk if you have any more questions about personal statement or interview or whatever.

Hello, I also have a similar question regarding a personal statement for chem eng. All I have at the moment to include in my personal statement is a book I've read which was all about the Haber Process and the significance of it and synthetic fertilisers, some work experience I had which was in a food manufacturing company whereby I was able to work in the sustainability department and a group scientific competition which Imperial held that me and my friends entered. I really don't know if this is enough or if I need more as I want to try and get my personal statement done soon so I don't have to stress about it later. Just on a side note, I'm also looking to apply to Imperial (its the university I really hope to get into), so please let me know if there's anything more I need to do like a MOOC or more wider reading

It looks like you already have some wider reading there, I wouldn’t have thought any more is necessary. I started off my personal statement mentioning the Haber process. In terms of other things you’ve definitely done a lot more than me, I just did some online courses. Keep your ps pretty academic, before going on to say a bit about yourself but only later on. Anyone reading hundreds of personal statements has more interest and attention when reading the start of it.

Also, entering a competition held by the uni themselves will really help, definitely mention that. You’ll seem more familiar to anyone reading your statement and interviewer.

hey this is completely unrelated but if you couldn't go to imperial where would u have gone excluding oxbridge? and do you have any friends at different unis doing chemeng and know of their experience?

It looks like you already have some wider reading there, I wouldn’t have thought any more is necessary. I started off my personal statement mentioning the Haber process. In terms of other things you’ve definitely done a lot more than me, I just did some online courses. Keep your ps pretty academic, before going on to say a bit about yourself but only later on. Anyone reading hundreds of personal statements has more interest and attention when reading the start of it.

Also, entering a competition held by the uni themselves will really help, definitely mention that. You’ll seem more familiar to anyone reading your statement and interviewer.

Thank you so much, this was really helpful. If you don't mind me asking, how was the whole interview process like? Did it involve problems and case studies which you are asked questions around or was it a bit more simpler with just more personal questions?

For Imperial, it started off by the interviewer having ur ps in front of them and then they pick out parts from that and they just want you to say more about that or answer any questions they have. Also, they’ll probably ask you what chemical engineering is. Or what a chemical engineer does. It can be pretty easily prepared the answer to these but you could easily fumble it if you weren’t expecting it. It’s a subject that isn’t that easy to actually explain so they want to make sure you have an understanding of the degree you’re applying for. After looking at my ps, it went straight into problem questions where you have to figure something out. Different interviewers have different questions but I think the general structure is a GCSE type maths question. Mine was what are the interior angles of a regular n-sided polygon. It’s to test how well you can reproduce something that should be easy but you haven’t learnt for years. But if you forget you’ll get guided through it. Then I had an Alevel chemistry one about reaction kinetics, where it was A + B -> C, sketch the reaction rates with time I think, so was 3 exponential curves but negative and positive ones accordingly. And then there’s some maths graphs questions. Asking you to sketch e^-x or tan(sinx) or somet like this. Then there was an estimation question, mine was how many covid vaccination centres would you need to vaccinate the whole country in 20 days or something. You don’t get any more info so they care about how you go about estimating, so starting off with how many rooms in one vaccination centre, how long to vaccinate one person, how many hours a day will they run etcetc. That was the whole interview and it took about 20mins. Your interviewer should be ur personal tutor if you get accepted, and you become much closer with them once you’re here.