BA in Chemistry

sschoe2
Mon, 27 May 2013 19:45:25 +0000

If gen chem was easy then it was very watered down at CC as I often saw when students transfered over to the university I taught at. It is a lot of difficult and new concepts in a short amount of time and a struggle at most four year colleges.

Pchem is notoriously difficult. It is a lot of high level math combined with physics applied to chemistry. Biochem and organic are more memorization. Analytical is more learning good lab technique and use of instruments and calculations associated with chemical testing. Analytical, gen chem, and organic are probably the most relevant to jobs. And believe me it is important. I just fixed a broken method that gave my company over a decade of wrong results because the chemist who threw it together doesn’t understand dilution calculations.

Stopping with just a BS/BA in chemistry is a huge mistake considering the poor pay and awful career prospects available to chemistry majors. If you are not using it as a stepping stone for professional school (not science grad school btw) then you are best advised to swich to nursing, engineering, computers, business or some other major that translates into a decent job. Otherwise you could literally be setting yourself up for a lifetime of high unemployment and poverty skipping from low paying temp lab job to temp low paying lab job averaging $15-20 an hour with no raises and no benefits.