Chemical Engineering Essay

1145 Words3 Pages

The main purpose of chemical engineers are to aid in the processes of turning raw materials into useful products such as plastics, chemicals, or even medicine. Since chemical processes are involved in a plethora of fields, chemical engineers have a wide range of industries that employ their services. Some of these industries are energy, food, oil and gas, medicine, plastics, consumer goods, or even civil jobs such as water treatment. This wide range of industries means that every chemical engineer may have a vastly different job from another that may work just down the road at a different job site. However, chemical engineering duties have many similarities no matter what career they are pursuing. The average chemical engineer normally …show more content…

The average median salary for a chemical engineer across the board is about $104,500 a year. However in petroleum and coal industries, the highest paying, the average salary is $112,670. This is followed by chemical manufacturing, $100,530, research and development in physical, environmental, and life sciences, $98,860, and lastly basic engineering services at $96,950 a year. Whenever you start at an entry level job you may expect a salary of about $68,000 on average, but late career engineers can expect salaries of …show more content…

The range of skills for engineers is quite wide and includes: management skills, problem solving, IT skills, work in or lead a team, attention to detail, and many others. Job experience also aids in landing a good engineering job. Many companies will hire directly from a pool of workers that have already worked with them in the past. Many times these workers get involved in temporary programs ranging from a month to a year and are often through the school the engineer is studying at. The first step on the road to becoming an engineer is enrolling to get a bachelors degree in chemical engineering. Prior to this the person should take chemistry, physics, advanced math, and potentially programming courses in high school. While working for their degree the student should actively seek internships and hone down their degree into a certain area of study. Some exams such as the fundamentals of engineering and professional engineering exam should be taken in order to progress into an entry level job. Many entry level jobs have many advancement opportunities which will dictate the rest of their career. Workers may undertake getting a masters degree in order to hold most managerial positions or even a PhD for very specialized positions such as maintaining a nuclear reactor. The top five best schools in the world for chemical engineering are MIT, University of California Berkeley,

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