Is there a downside to studying Chemistry?

Is there a downside to studying Chemistry?

>inb4 studying chemistry

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Lets ignore your topic. Could you please explain your image? I cannot comprehend the complexity of that autism.

Some weird forced dialogue with fucking BL autism anime characters on the sides.

This autism is way beyond anything I can measure. Please explain.

yes, if you're stupid you probably shouldn't study chemistry. chemistry is hard.

Chemistry is easy, why else are there so many chemists? The pay is awful, and topics trivial. OP, just do business or medicine.

The downside is in your first response and the picture you posted, OP.

Every chemist I have met has social issues and I have met a few since I am befriended to three.

>don't study X if you are stupid, X is hard
applies to any science 2bh

Chemist here
is right
Plus when you study chemistry you kinda start forgetting that humans are more than meatbags filled with chemicals reacting.

There are a few with respect to the field as a whole - pointedly, you should be prepared to leave the cream of scientific endeavour and discovery to the more fundamental sciences - physics and mathematics.

I don't subscribe to the meme-tier philosophy of "purity of field" - chemistry and biology and absolutely necessary fields of science and are not reducible to physics and math. However, it is absolutely not a stretch of anyone's reality to say that, ultimately, the intrinsic nature of the material universe is a treasure left mostly for physicists and mathematicians to plunder.

I admit this as a physical chemist myself; having worked in both R&D and industry for several years.

*tip*
another chemist here, I agree to some extent

>Chemist here
>another chemist here

and people wonder why chemists are jobless

>*tip*
Nah I am no fedora, I am just saying that when you study what happens at the level chemists do you lose the "magic". At least physics and mathematicians go deep enough that most of them come out as believers in some form of deism, chemists believe only when they need to explain why something didn't work.

You will end up gettingna PhD and then selling real estate like the chink we bought our house from.

This. Someone explain the picture.

here
I'm not jobless fyi

It seems to come from ensemble-stars.wikia.com/wiki/The_English_Ensemble_Stars_Wiki

giving you the straight shit here

Chemistry is hard. dont listen to as he is just shitposting anonymously. mixing two chemicals together is both the most complex and simple thing ever. There are an assload of ideas that go into every reaction. the major difficulty comes from identifying what the important parts are relative to what you are working on. That being said, its a lot of fun to work through problems and talk about them with fellow chemists. you get to make molecules and manipulate matter to get a desired result. its fun.

where it really matters though, like getting a job, it is not. A bachelors degree (which im assuming everyone ITT is working towards) is pretty much useless if you want to be a scientist. No one will trust you in the field without an M.S. thesis or a PhD in the eyes of getting hired by a company. Sure there are more jobs for bachelors degrees than PhDs, but they are like literal slave labor, minimum wage, drone tasks which will cause you to hate your life. Many of the grad students I work with right now are grauating in their early 30s because they went to industry, realized how shitty it was, and came back to school.

Even coming back to school is iffy. The job market is constantly changing for us and your PhD in X may be completely useless by the time you finish your thesis. Everyone wants to do organic chemistry and get on a total synthesis project to make drugs, but thats the thing. everyone does it. pharmaceutical industry is big, but not that big guys. They cant hire everyone, and if you arent spectacular then they will choose the guy from berkeley or UCLA who actually knows what they are talking about. I've ranted on here before about pharma companies having the luxury of laying off their scientists on the regular and rehiring newbies to cut costs, but thats for another time. Its fucking brutal being an organic chemist.

(cont.)

So thats the most frustrating part. Finishing a chem degree, a difficult degree with many lab hours, and finding no one gives a shit about you. The next step is either to use your bachelors to go into patent law or grad school or a lab tech position. Whatever the case, its not a degree that is going to yield the same success as an engineering degree with a bachelors.

I mentioned that everyone wants to go into organic chemistry. this is a big big point. you need to choose a niche field to enter into, be the best fucking chemist you can be in it, and then you will be successful. the number of people you are competing against in organic is astronomical compared to other fields. unless you are completely sold on it, i would stay far away. Not to mention organic labs are known for driving slave labor labs. the total synthesis lab in my department brags about how they work 12 hours mon-saturday and have a half day on sunday. for what? to maybe get a pharma job? they are working themselves into the ground over false promises as far as I'm concerned.

It follows that if you plan to go into industry rather than academia you DO NOT do a theoretical project. There is no place for it in the job market unless you are doing computational work which I hear is getting better. No one gives a shit about how you shot x rays at carbon nanotubes. whats the point? its ok if you thought it was interesting, but an employer doesnt care.

Analytical has consistently ben a good field for jobs for the past 10 years while jobs in other fields (cough* organic) have tanked. They make pretty good bank too. The caveat is, personally, I think analytical is boring as fuck. there is synthesis involved in PhD level work, but i really really dont care about measuring or detecting shit. if you have taken analytical lab in undergrad, it basically ruins the field for you as well because its so grueling.

(cont.)

I'm not going to tell you what field to go into, but heed my warning. There are subfields in chemistry which are a complete waste of your time if you ever think you are going to be a chemist working for a company. It took me a lot of research and soul-searching for me to find my niche. you should do the same. Go on indeed or some other job searching website and look for positions as if you already have a PhD. compare them to the labs you want to work in. "Are the skills I learn in this lab for the next 5 years going to help me get a job once im a PhD?". Think guys, its a tragedy to pour your hard work into something through your twenties that wont do shit for you in the end.

Honestly im a little paranoid about people eventually oversaturating my field, so im not going to mention it. You need to find a balance of what you are interested in studying and what is practical as far as grad school goes, and if you are graduating with a B.Sc and you dont have time to switch to engineering, you should at least think about grad school. its not for everyone.

the chemistry reddit is pretty good to read for jobs news and stuff too. There's been threads that ive read where people complain about the shittiness of the field, then others where people claim they went from a shitty lab tech position to a scientist position making $90k after 5 years out of a B.Sc.

It's all very confusing, but utimately I hope all this made you a little more wary of what you are getting into with chemistry.

sorry for the autism

no we need a little autism sometimes, thanks.

The downside is that it will be hard to find employment with only a BSc.

Chemistry student here. The downside to studying chemistry is that everybody thinks you were too retarded for physics, all the jobs are better suited for chem engs, job market for even a lab monkey job at minimum wage is super competitive, and just about 90% of job listings want a PhD with 100+ years experience. If you get a masters degree, enjoy being able to only teach HS and go nowhere.

>thinks
knows.

Talk shit once you deal with systems that deal with more than one particle, k thx.

This part really resonated with me, I interned at a chemical product company this summer. I spent my time in analysis and I felt so bad for the synthesis techs. Like you said, they worked tirelessly from 7-4 Monday-Saturday. I'm glad I did this before my junior year so I can focus on getting into grad school since industry looks awful

good, then if you know grad school is the path for you then I have more advice.

apply to ~10 schools. fall back schools, schools you think are right in your range of acceptance, and reach schools. concentrate your applications on the middle ground. It will be surprising, but more than likely your safety schools will reject you along with your reach schools. grad schools are very selective about getting the candidates that fall right within their range. no more or less.

If you dont have to take the chem GRE:
DO. NOT. TAKE. IT.

It is incredibly difficult, $150 a test, takes time away from your undergrad to study for, and you will most likely be disappointed in your score. I hear its mainly used to assess foreign applicants ability anyway. I applied to 8 schools and only sent my chem GRE to 4 of them. of the 4 that got my scores, none of them accepted me. of the 4 that did not, 2 did. both of them large research universities, right within the range I predicted to be my "middle ground".

applying to 10 grad schools will cost around $1500 after you send off your general gre scores, chem GRE scores (if you chose to ignore my advice), application fees, and testing fees.

start writing your statement of purpose and personal history statement the summer before you apply. you wont know the specifics of what they want in your essays until the application opens, but you can write a draft. These are very important and time consuming when you try to do them during the school year. you must edit and tailor them specifically for each school to make it seem like you will be the perfect fit. An example of this is I went to each schools website, read a little about their history/mission statement, then put a small blurb about how I fit that description somewhere in my essay. You will also have to name specific professors (about 3) that you are interested in working with. you must make these edits on every paper you submit. if that is 10 schools, you will be editing 20.

Dude shut the fuck up

t. Chemist

(cont.)
apply to places you have never been before, but think you would enjoy living there. I moved from the midwest to the west coast and I have been having a blast. Even if i dont get that sweet job at the end of grad school I mentioned earlier, my experience in my first 3 months here has been more than worth it. new friends, new sites, interesting chemistry, money, etc. etc. etc. it's a lot of fun being in a new place and is one less reason for me to write this off as a waste of 5 years if I dont see anything from becoming a PhD.

ask professors at least 4 months in advance if they will be willing to write you a recommendation letter. choose professors from the field you intend to work + your undergrad research professor which you really really should have. applying to 10 schools? you need 30 letters total. this takes time and you will more than likely need to constantly bother professors to get their shit together and finish submitting your letters.

Once you finish these massive applications, all your letters are in, all your essays are written, and everything has been verified as received by the grad schools you can finally stop thinking about all this shit, but you wont. its will be stressful up until you get that first acceptance letter which will feel so good. Nothing feels better than getting letters that say "we're going to pay you ~$29k while you go to school for free and become a PhD scientist".

Lastly, go on as many visitation weekends as you can. you will be treated like a king/queen. At the university I ended up going to, they payed for all my flights and cab fees, housed us in a hotel/spa where we all got our own rooms, king size beds, free alcohol and food from the barbeque they hosted at the school, and all around good times. I found a spa robe in my room on the last night and I just layed on the bed in it eating chocolate (provided by the school) and watching tv after having a few beers.

(cont.)

more little things I forgot.

1) dont get drunk at the barbeques/dinners. Ive seen other prospective students do this and it looks bad. you are trying to get professors interested into taking you into their lab, not being fucked up.
2) talk to grad students about the professors. they will say whatever they want. they seriously dont care. to be honest, I wouldnt even talk to the professors outside of your interviews if you can avoid it. They can be manipulative and will overexaggerate and lie to get students. They are looking for cheap labor to keep their lab running, especially if they are not tenured yet. beware of this.
3) look for professors that care about their students. I know this is thinking really far ahead for you at this point, but a professor that isnt involved with their students is not good at all. When it comes to the times in grad school that matter (like your presentations to advance to PhD candidacy) the difference between you becoming a PhD and walking away with an MSc could be the support from your PI. There are professors who are so absent that they dont even show up to their student's oral examinations. If people hate your work and you dont have any support, you're out.
4) have fun. seriously i need to say this again. keep all this shit in the back of your mind, but focus on having fun. They are trying their hardest to recruit you at these visitation weekends while you are simultaneously trying to make a good impression. They will bend over backwards to accommodate you.
5) wear some nice clothes and a tie. The same retards I saw getting drunk were the ones that were dressed in "my chemical romance" t shirts and shit. seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?

PhD in Organic Chemistry here, disagree.

The number of jobs in Organic compared to any field in Chemistry is staggering. Plus if you're good, you'll get a job in process chemistry... Making drugs is slave labor making hundreds/thousands of the same scaffold looking for a needle in a haystack. Process Chemists work with different chemistries every day, much more intellectually stimulating. Last I checked there were several jobs in every major region for process Chemists.

I live in a more rural area and make equivalent to $150k in bigger cities, so it's also pretty cushy with money. The only field even close in terms of jobs/pay is polymer chemistry, and that shit is boring as hell. Anyways people should choose what interests them, Chemistry is not oversaturated in the US, hence why almost every grad school will be filled with Indian/Chinese students - they'll NEVER get hired before a US citizen unless they have a green card. Usually getting a green card takes them 3-5 years of a postdoc or more...

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. I should have mentioned I'm a bio major and chem minor, although I'm leaning towards biochem or genetics. Nonetheless I think that's solid advice for what I've been wondering about applying to grad school

That's very surprising to me considering the anecdotes I hear from everyone else, including people who work in the industry currently. granted I do hear of people like you that land really sweet jobs, however I do not think that should be considered normal. For every person I have heard from like yourself, there have been 5 to tell me otherwise.

Saying "chemistry is not over saturated" is quite the statement to make. There are lots of people with PhDs who do not have stable jobs. Post docs do not count. Furthermore, even if I am completely wrong and your first hand experience with organic + the industry is as bountiful as you say, I think its much more beneficial to critically consider what skills you are going to gain from working in a particular lab so you can make yourself more marketable.

Lastly, I dont think indian and chiness students come here because there's more jobs, but because US universities dont suck major ass.

I'm curious to hear what you think about the recent mergers between the large chemical chemicals like Dow/dupont and the outsourcing for organic chem to china. Its very interesting when in a sea of people saying the job market is awful, you are saying the exact opposite. I'd like to add that there may be a staggering number of jobs, but there are also a staggering number of newly minted organic PhDs graduating every year. That;s not even considering the ones that have already graduated and havent been able to find a job.

Yeah I mean it's not like there are jobs for every PhD chemist that graduates in the US, just saying that if you're a natural US citizen you're almost guaranteed a job - even without a postdoc. And if you want a postdoc position, you pretty much can go anywhere you want. If you know natural citizens who can't find work, they're just not looking hard enough.

I haven't even defended my thesis yet and I was headhunted by a company... Yes I have a job that requires a PhD and I still don't have a PhD in writing. Right now there are 4 natural US citizens out of 14 PhD chemists, the director of R&D is a natural citizen so 5 total in our department. This is common in many Chemistry R&D departments, and they're actively looking for natural citizens because it's a pain in the ass when Zhang Xiong or Reddy Ramachandran decide to go back to their home country.

The director told me to let him know if I knew any natural citizens that were graduating soon and he'd give me a $500 bonus for each they hire. Sadly there's only 1 other natural PhD graduate in my group this year and he's heading to a postdoc at an ivy league school, 1 that still has about 2 years left, and 1 that just started. Group of +-25 chemists under my PI with 5 concurrent grants (dude is like 70 years old and writes grants 24/7) and in the entire time I've been there the most natural citizens we've had is 4... I TA'd 2 semesters only in my entire time there, which is what he requires in the beginning to make sure we're not retarded. So it's not like there isn't a massive incentive for grad. students to join our group...

Forgot to address mergers/outsourcing...

Mergers are not that bad, unless it's the Pfizer-type. P.sure the US is cracking down on that bullshit. It's a lot tougher for MedChem drones because they literally have zero visibility in the company, they just repeat the same procedure every single day looking for the next penis pill. Process Chemists are probably the most visible positions in the Chemical industry and are tough to just fire on a whim.

Outsourcing sucks because it's just too sweet of a deal for the business guys at the top. Jobs in process chemistry negate that, because you need the chemist in the production facility when shit hits the fan. The quality of research in India/China is really bad though, you can't trust a single thing that comes in from those places.

You can look up some process scientist positions posted around the US. There's quite a selection. Not sure why unemployed chemfags aren't taking them - maybe they want to be MedChem drones and just look for jobs at the big pharma companies? The money is great, of course, but the job security is shitty.

I study Chem using the VCE coursework, year 12.

Year 11 is like basics, essentials; foundation+ chem, you can't go wrong. It's like AP Chem from the movies.
Year 12 is a bitch of a thing; all the content is compacted and you move so fast.
Uni Chem is bitchy to the nth degree if you don't experience it all as one.

What I mean is that Chemistry itself is very easy, but once you start to move on unless you compartmentalize info you're in a bad situation.

You learn to appreciate easily worded stuff and scanning paper for relevant info as you find questions on your test papers that are a page long with hugeass names, figures and weird, weird ways of just saying simple things.


I have no idea of the downside to western chem at such a level, I understand it's probably similar if not more concentrated.