How tough are grad level courses in chemical engineering?

Question

I know its sorta subjective, but i mean in relative terms to undergrad.

I'm working and plan to take some as a part-time student, but not sure if I should start out with just 1, or go ahead and take 2.

I don't plan to get my masters at the school im' taking them at.....but do sorta need to do well and hope the profs of these courses will give me a letter of recommendation.

Answer 1

You've actually seen most of the material you'll be covering while you were an undergrad, you just saw a simplified version.  The core courses that I've seen at ALL ChE departments for graduate work are:

Transport phenomena - This class is tough.  Really tough.  If you're working full time make this class the only one you take for a semester.  The math is intense, and some of the concepts are difficult to wrap your head around.  If you haven't been solving differential equations on a regular basis, don't remember all your matrix notation, and have forgotten the difference between dot products and cross products it's going to be a long semester.  This is probably the toughest course you'll take.

Reaction Engineering - Not terribly different from undergrad, the only difference is that when you take kinetics at the graduate level all of the constants that simplified the governing equations for CSTR's, Batch Reactors, and PFRs aren't constant anymore.  And nothing is at steady state.  You'll spend a lot of time modeling and solving ODE's for a variable like conversion at a specific time.  But it's not terribly tough.

Thermodynamics - Same stuff you saw in chemical thermodynamics as an undergrad but there's a lot more attention paid to the derivation of the equations and variables.  What IS fugacity?  What IS an activity coefficient?  Challenging but not a killer.

Numerical Analysis - The difficulty of this class depends on how good you are at computer programming and your math skills.  We had it split into two sections, the calculus of differences and MatLab programming.  All the mechanical engineers thought it was easy, all the ChE's thought it was brutal (none of us had taken programming classes).  The concepts aren't terribly difficult, but getting the analytical methods to work can be.

Undergrad courses are all about getting the right answer.  Graduate courses teach you how and why the right answer is right.  It's much more in depth with a lot fewer simplifying assumptions.  They don't just give you numbers and tell you to calculate something, they want you to be able to take a very complex system of results and find the patterns.  Because that's what you'll be doing when you start research.  The material is harder but the grading is easier.  You have to THINK a lot more in grad school.  The best approach to finding the answer isn't always clear.  The courses are tough but they really develop your ability to look beyond the surface.  Just be sure to review your differential equations text book.  The math can get hairy.