chemical engineering colleges

[anthropos]

um in US and UK are there any universities that are relatively good in chemical engineering? (I know universities like Purdue and Columbia are renowned for its engineering faculties but I am not very confident if I can get in because I don't expect much from my SAT and A-levels).

 

uh, and one side question, is the uinversity of chicago selective?

 

thanks. =) I am a bit clueless.

[insane_alien]

i haven't been keeping track of the rankings lately but strathclyde university has a decent chemical engineering department. just got its labs revamped too.

 

</shameless plug of university he attends>

[bored_teen]

MIT is renowned for all kinds of engineering...

[Bignose]

I haven't checked them out for a few years now, but the magazine U.S. News and World report does an annual ranking of colleges every year, and at least 5 or so years ago that included a ranking of chem e departments.

 

The classically good ones: MIT, Minnesota, UC Berkeley, CalTech

 

The ones that are certainly still good, but are living a little more on reputation and history than current achievements: Wisconsin, Illinois

 

The ones that aren't traditionally well known, but are making a name for themselves with good younger researchers: Delaware, UC Davis

 

The ones that have long been considered good, but never seem to break into the tip top elite group: Purdue, Ohio State, Florida, Iowa State, Arizona, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Illinois Inst. of Technology, Michigan State, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, RPI, Texas, Washington.

 

And then there are many very good programs. As much as anything, you want to visit the school and get a feel for the school, the people that work there, the other students and see if you'll fit in. Being happy and comfortable you'll get a lot more out a school than if you went to a school with a better name but you were miserable there.

 

** My apologies to the chemical engineering departments outside of the US, but being a life-long resident of the US, I am only most familiar with the US ones. I am sure that there are many, many fine non-US schools, but any rankings I would do would be based a lot on reputation/word of mouth, and nothing about the actual quality of the people that are there doing the work and how good the instruction the students get.

 

edited to add: furthermore, if you are only just starting your engineering student career, I hope that you won't get too hung up on just chemical engineering. Your first year or so of classes, you wouldn't be taking any chem e-specific classes anyway. You'll just be taking the basic physics, math, etc. classes. Make sure that you explore all the different engineering flavors that are available -- go to a professional society meeting is as many of them as you can. You'll get a good idea of what people in those professions actually do by talking with the guest speakers they bring in. And you'll get a good idea of what kind of students are in each disciple. You might find something that just jives with you better than what you first thought would be best. In the long run, it is far, far better to be happy with what you are doing than to force yourself to complete a degree in a field you don't enjoy all that much.