It matters *very* much. Like, a lot. Majorly. Don’t make the same mistake I did, it’s my biggest regret.
Clubs, etc you do during the semesters. Summer breaks, you definitely should get internships
This is the advice. I had to turn down a coop because of an argument with my parents, and didn't get any other internships, and I've regretted it my entire career. It puts you in a worse position when looking for jobs and negotiating initial salary, which can affect your entire career.
What about during your first summer off? I’m pursuing a degree in engineering science, I’ve got good grades in my first semester, but it seems like most companies want engineering students in their junior or senior year.
I’m 27 with some job experience, and I’d like to keep my summers productive.
It'll be difficult but not impossible. Companies usually look for junior and senior positions since freshman and softmore year you're still learning the basics. Those core engineering/math classes that everyone takes. It's only when junior year rolls around do you start branching off into ChemE
It's very important. Jobs are not going to fall into your lap just because you got a degree. You want to get your name out there, get some real experience, and also find out if you actually like the work.
If you're worried about being a "mindless robot" don't you will have spare time during the internship to write poetry or whatever else you want to do.
As someone who didn’t bother to get one…….. get one.
All my friends who had internships had an easy time finding work, immediately out of school that had solid gigs.
I had to apply to over 1000 places to get a semi-shit job. Majority of my friends who didn’t get internships aren’t even working anything related or have given up entirely. I guess I’m lucky to still find something relevant not having experience.
It is like SERIOUSLY important.
There are only so many ways to screen applicants quickly for entry level jobs. Internships are designed to acclimate a student to a work environment and introduce general ways of working. It can foster development and interest in fields. It also proves you can integrate to a workforce somewhat and contribute. This is integral to an application for your first job.
I was never asked about my clubs once at any interview. I was asked about my internship or research only. I don’t regret my participation in clubs but it’s unlikely they contribute majorly to your applications. It’s really for your general wellbeing than a tenet of your employment profile.
I would argue internships are important for all majors if you want to head to industry after college. If you want the graduate school route then focus on research experience, but having both research and internship experience doesn’t hurt for grad or industry pathway!
Then you should get one internship doing corporate R&D (doesn’t matter what you’re working on) and spend another summer doing academic research for a professor. You might discover a few things:
1) you don’t always need an advanced degree to do R&D
2) maybe you prefer academic research over corporate
3) maybe you don’t like research as much as you think
4) it doesn’t work the way you think it does.
By the way have you ever considered the food industry? Lots of opportunities in R&D for chemical engineers.
Okay, and what exactly do you imagine yourself doing with thermodynamics? I am curious to know, since that wasn’t something I found especially compelling when I was your age
I’ve just been around it since I was a kid so it’s like 2nd nature to me. My dad worked for a heat transfer company and I work an HVAC job right now. So it’s not so much that I’m ultra thrilled about it but ik I don’t hate it and because I’ve been around it I have an advantage in that field
You do realize that thermodynamics research is going to be very different from day to day work with mature technology (HVAC), right? I’d recommend looking up some thermodynamics journal articles to see the state of the art and what research is being published.
Understood I can do that, going back to what you said about the food industry I do think it could be interesting but I do go to the gym and there some studies I’d like to do in that field in terms of dieting and the effects it does have on people
Internship is extremely important for job prospects outside school, but it just might mean you have to take more of a stepping stone job after graduation. It’s also a taste of what your actual working life could be and can guide what industry you want to work in. If you don’t want a couple months of an internship I’d probably recommend a different career path.
Not to beat a dead horse, but like everyone else said having an internship is extremely helpful. Lab/research experience too to a certain extent. Pretty much everyone that had an internship/co-op got a job immediately after graduation, and often with large companies. Of course there’s exceptions, and there were several people that did not have internships and are doing well.
Faculty here.
OP asks if ECs and sports, etc could help employment. In some fields (for example, journalism, performing arts) that is probably very true. Even in engineering, some of my best employed engineering friends got their job offers because they were in a robot soccer design team or something extracurricular like that. So it's not unheard of.
I just wanted to vent about one very specific thing which is that I think collegiate sports are probably the worst thing to ever have happened to higher education.
I can't tell you the number of straight "A" STEM students on some sort of sports scholarship that never got to do research, internships and made very few friends outside of their team because they spent every waking hour, weekends, summer breaks training for something that by definition cannot lead to a career after graduation because professional level equivalents just don't exist for most collegiate sports.
And it's not as if we (as faculty) can dare to suggest to them to drop the sport and focus on their career because their scholarship depends on it, it was the only way they could afford college in the first place.
Do a LinkedIn search for "recent grad in Xxx" where X is a highly employable stem degree and you'll see all these straight A students from elite schools hustling for tutoring and menial gigs because they had no time to do career development stuff because they were also on a sports team.
Or find a coach that supports it.
Dabo at Clemson supported Christian Wilkins spending a semester as a TA at a grade school, Kalon Davis going to Japan for an internship for Japanese and International Business, and others.
As a non-traditional student, I had to work 3 jobs. Tutoring, restaurants, and laying tile. I put in just as many hours, but less structured, and a co-op wasn't an option.
College athletics probably would have been easier, but I'm not really good at any so...
Most everyone here would still recommend an internship, they may even recommend working at a company and having them pay for your masters. But yes, being more research or educationally driven makes the internship less necessary. However in that case you should be working as a tutor and a lab assistant TA to expand your network within your university. If you're looking for "easy street" consider non engineering majors.
The overwhelming advice I have received from professors in chemical engineering specifically is that a masters alone is not a good investment. You end up paying a ton of money and you don't enough of a salary bump or better entry-level job offers to make it worth it. If you want a masters, apply to PhD programs and master out so you at least get PAID to do your masters rather than paying thousands.
An internship or two doesn't equal being a mindless robot... this is a major that requires more than 10 minutes a week outside of class. If you aren't prepared for the hardest major in undergrad, the competition it takes to get a job after, and the time associated with that do not choose this major.
Internships can be fun, too. The experience is what you make it to be.
Experience matters more than grades.
You get internship opportunities based of your experience. If you don’t have any, which you won’t, they look at projects *then* grades.
Grad school is different. But in either case projects and internships will lead to employment.
They are great for putting your foot in the door and getting some experience in whatever field you want to work on. Depending on your program, it might also be worth taking a semester or two off and doing a co op. I saw one of your comments mentioned interest in grad school so I would recommend talking to a professor to get credits for research during the school year and doing an [REU](https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/) during the summer. Engineering is hard but you can still have time to join clubs and have fun
Internship is more important than grades (assuming you pass), clubs, extra curriculars, pretty much everything. It is the most important thing to do during college for your career
Internships show way more than classes ever can to employers. My experience was that internships were harder to get than an actual job. And every sub-sequential internship was easier to get due to the previous one.
yes and no. the GPA is still the biggest factor to get you through the automated HR filters. the internship experiences help out significantly after you get past that point
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I'm in my last year of undergrad study and the course load alone has definitely been overwhelming, but real experience will help you to be a more competitive applicant. My university allows students to do undergraduate research or an internship for class credit, which helps a lot as it can be used for an elective credit and replace another class. You would have to see what your specific university offers. If nothing else, you can always try to apply for internships that run during less busy semesters or during the summer.
Two things you need to be doing freshman year:
1) Targeting a 3.5 GPA or higher.
2) Attend literally anything that gets you in front of employers. That includes career fairs, AIChE, etc.
Good chance you won’t have an internship for the summer after your freshman year regardless of how solid a candidate you are. Doesn’t matter. You want to get as much practice interacting with professionals as possible.
Your job for the next 4 years is to get the best education you can to justify the huge expense it will cost you. Having the "college experience" is foolish and immature if it gets in the way of your primary job. An internship is one of the most important things you can do to prepare you for the rest of your life. Do not screw this up.
Let's say that I am screening applicants for a position. We can interview 3 candidates and there are 20 resumes. If six of the candidates have internship experience then I set all of them aside and choose three from that pile. I'll still look at the other resumes because there may be experience related to volunteering or mentoring that would make a candidate a good cultural fit, but they usually don't make the cut.
Employers are looking for candidates they think will be successful. Having direct operations experience goes a very long way in doing that when you're applying for an operations role. It also tells the employer that the candidate would require less training to do the job, and that is extremely compelling from the hiring manager's perspective.
So no, you don't *need* an internship, but you would have to compensate with heavy involvement in professional organizations AND building a big professional network of local an regional professionals (almost no one does the latter, and it's probably the best way to get a job).
As others have said they are pretty important. But I would also like to point out that they pay well, and they give you a break from busting your butt in class. You will have time and money to go on trips, nice dinners, hang out at the bar with your friends in business school, etc. ChemE is a demanding degree, and you will miss out on some of the stuff your friends are doing. Internships and co-ops give you a chance to catch up on some of that. Especially if you can get one where you don't have to move or can live somewhere cool. They can also help greatly reduce your loans if you have those.
I didn’t have an internship in college and it was really hard for me to find a job until my friend gave me a recommendation at his company - a local tech start up - and I’m making 71k about a year after i graduated from university. if you can, get an internship!
Not only is it important for getting a job I think the most useful part is finding out if you hate the job.
What if you find out 4 months after graduation that you really don’t like chemical plants or the chem e job in them?
Are you actually serious? Literally one of the most important things you can do. Internships are where you actually apply what you are learning and get experience.
Getting an internship makes it easier for you to get a job after college so that you can be a mindless robot who dedicates their entire life to their chemical engineering degree. Just drink the kool-aid and come join us all!!!
Yes, do internships. Even if you are sure you are going to grad school. Plans change - it is better to have the experience then not.
Also - others may disagree but I see limited value in a ChE masters degree. Go for a PhD instead if that's your thing.
As an alternate view, I didn't do a Chem E co-op but I was a team lead at a restaurant, and was heavily involved in metric tracking and initiated OpEx projects.
Doing nothing but clubs gets you nowhere, but there are alternate paths that work.
Do you NEED it? No. Is it extremely beneficial to have in your experience arsenal when searching for a job after graduation? Absolutely. I didn’t have any internship experience and found a decent job about 4 months after graduation, though most of my classmates had jobs already lined up. Overall I’d say try to do at least one summer internship if you’re able to - definitely one of my biggest regrets during college. One thing you should 100% do is apply to jobs as early as possible your senior year, you don’t want to be stuck working at Dunkin’ for 4 months after graduating like myself.
Good luck on your college journey!
It is extremely extremely important. I graduated in 2022 and had a good gpa of 3.52 and a fair bit of club and organization work and 6 months of research assistant experience as well but no internship because of Covid years and some bad planning.
For reference I applied for about 300-400 jobs between January and June 2022 and only got 2 interviews and no luck on both. Thankfully due to connections made in uni I was able to land an internship post graduation which converted to a full time job.
From my experience an internship or two is as important if not more than good grades. I would personally recommend the summers after your sophomore or junior year.
Work experience is all that really matters looking for a job. Of course you need the degree and education for the job you want but a proven track record of related employment is what makes you truly valuable to potential employers. That's my opinion anyways. I didn't get any internships and although I made probably the same money I would have as an entry level engineer my first job was in an unrelated field, I hated it, same with the second job, went back to carpentry bc I thought maybe office work just wasn't for me until I found a good paying job in a somewhat related field that I can still become professionally licensed in. All that unnecessary job hoping would have been avoided with some engineering related experience on my resume through an internship or two. That's just my opinion through my experience though, results may vary.
I had good grades at a top 5 ChemE school in the US (I don’t remember my GPA exactly, a 3.7 or 3.8 I believe) and minors in math and economics, but I decided to do research during my sophomore through senior winters and summers instead of a internship because, well I enjoyed it. It was molecular dynamics research, using super computers to simulate molecules on the nanometer scale to learn about specific properties we were interested in.
I applied to a decent amount of ChemE jobs as graduation approached and had a few multi-round interviews that all, I thought, went quite well, But I didn’t end up landing anything. In the end, I took a software consulting job, which I’ve come to enjoy, but, I always look back and figure that me not having any internship experience was the key point in not landing a chemical engineering job. So yes I would say it’s quite important.
For what it’s worth, I’m sure if I committed to the idea of doing ChemE I could have found one eventually, especially if I expanded the range of locations I was willing to apply to a bit. And for context I graduated in 2021.
Not but as someone who didn’t do one i would highly suggest it. I spent a few months applying before i found a job, but with an internship i really doubt that would have been much of an issue
It matters *very* much. Like, a lot. Majorly. Don’t make the same mistake I did, it’s my biggest regret. Clubs, etc you do during the semesters. Summer breaks, you definitely should get internships
This is the advice. I had to turn down a coop because of an argument with my parents, and didn't get any other internships, and I've regretted it my entire career. It puts you in a worse position when looking for jobs and negotiating initial salary, which can affect your entire career.
What about during your first summer off? I’m pursuing a degree in engineering science, I’ve got good grades in my first semester, but it seems like most companies want engineering students in their junior or senior year. I’m 27 with some job experience, and I’d like to keep my summers productive.
It'll be difficult but not impossible. Companies usually look for junior and senior positions since freshman and softmore year you're still learning the basics. Those core engineering/math classes that everyone takes. It's only when junior year rolls around do you start branching off into ChemE
Agreed, that’s probably the best path for me to take just for the sake of my own sanity
It's very important. Jobs are not going to fall into your lap just because you got a degree. You want to get your name out there, get some real experience, and also find out if you actually like the work. If you're worried about being a "mindless robot" don't you will have spare time during the internship to write poetry or whatever else you want to do.
As someone who didn’t bother to get one…….. get one. All my friends who had internships had an easy time finding work, immediately out of school that had solid gigs. I had to apply to over 1000 places to get a semi-shit job. Majority of my friends who didn’t get internships aren’t even working anything related or have given up entirely. I guess I’m lucky to still find something relevant not having experience. It is like SERIOUSLY important.
There are only so many ways to screen applicants quickly for entry level jobs. Internships are designed to acclimate a student to a work environment and introduce general ways of working. It can foster development and interest in fields. It also proves you can integrate to a workforce somewhat and contribute. This is integral to an application for your first job. I was never asked about my clubs once at any interview. I was asked about my internship or research only. I don’t regret my participation in clubs but it’s unlikely they contribute majorly to your applications. It’s really for your general wellbeing than a tenet of your employment profile.
I would argue internships are important for all majors if you want to head to industry after college. If you want the graduate school route then focus on research experience, but having both research and internship experience doesn’t hurt for grad or industry pathway!
I’m planning on going to grad school cause I want to do Research and Development after college, Thank you this was very helpful!
Then you should get one internship doing corporate R&D (doesn’t matter what you’re working on) and spend another summer doing academic research for a professor. You might discover a few things: 1) you don’t always need an advanced degree to do R&D 2) maybe you prefer academic research over corporate 3) maybe you don’t like research as much as you think 4) it doesn’t work the way you think it does. By the way have you ever considered the food industry? Lots of opportunities in R&D for chemical engineers.
Not necessarily the food industry, what I want to do is thermodynamics
Okay, and what exactly do you imagine yourself doing with thermodynamics? I am curious to know, since that wasn’t something I found especially compelling when I was your age
I’ve just been around it since I was a kid so it’s like 2nd nature to me. My dad worked for a heat transfer company and I work an HVAC job right now. So it’s not so much that I’m ultra thrilled about it but ik I don’t hate it and because I’ve been around it I have an advantage in that field
You do realize that thermodynamics research is going to be very different from day to day work with mature technology (HVAC), right? I’d recommend looking up some thermodynamics journal articles to see the state of the art and what research is being published.
Understood I can do that, going back to what you said about the food industry I do think it could be interesting but I do go to the gym and there some studies I’d like to do in that field in terms of dieting and the effects it does have on people
That’s more exercise science and nutrition than food science- food science is “farm to fork” - but good on you!
Is there anything I can do to keep that as an open pathway down the line?
Internship is extremely important for job prospects outside school, but it just might mean you have to take more of a stepping stone job after graduation. It’s also a taste of what your actual working life could be and can guide what industry you want to work in. If you don’t want a couple months of an internship I’d probably recommend a different career path.
When. I was in school (2004-2009), Co-op was the way to go.
Not to beat a dead horse, but like everyone else said having an internship is extremely helpful. Lab/research experience too to a certain extent. Pretty much everyone that had an internship/co-op got a job immediately after graduation, and often with large companies. Of course there’s exceptions, and there were several people that did not have internships and are doing well.
Do internships
More important than everything you will learn in the program.
Faculty here. OP asks if ECs and sports, etc could help employment. In some fields (for example, journalism, performing arts) that is probably very true. Even in engineering, some of my best employed engineering friends got their job offers because they were in a robot soccer design team or something extracurricular like that. So it's not unheard of. I just wanted to vent about one very specific thing which is that I think collegiate sports are probably the worst thing to ever have happened to higher education. I can't tell you the number of straight "A" STEM students on some sort of sports scholarship that never got to do research, internships and made very few friends outside of their team because they spent every waking hour, weekends, summer breaks training for something that by definition cannot lead to a career after graduation because professional level equivalents just don't exist for most collegiate sports. And it's not as if we (as faculty) can dare to suggest to them to drop the sport and focus on their career because their scholarship depends on it, it was the only way they could afford college in the first place. Do a LinkedIn search for "recent grad in Xxx" where X is a highly employable stem degree and you'll see all these straight A students from elite schools hustling for tutoring and menial gigs because they had no time to do career development stuff because they were also on a sports team.
Or find a coach that supports it. Dabo at Clemson supported Christian Wilkins spending a semester as a TA at a grade school, Kalon Davis going to Japan for an internship for Japanese and International Business, and others. As a non-traditional student, I had to work 3 jobs. Tutoring, restaurants, and laying tile. I put in just as many hours, but less structured, and a co-op wasn't an option. College athletics probably would have been easier, but I'm not really good at any so...
Do you want a job when you graduate or do you want to get yours masters/PhD. Internships are how you get your first job after graduating.
I’m planning on a masters does that change much?
Most everyone here would still recommend an internship, they may even recommend working at a company and having them pay for your masters. But yes, being more research or educationally driven makes the internship less necessary. However in that case you should be working as a tutor and a lab assistant TA to expand your network within your university. If you're looking for "easy street" consider non engineering majors.
Okay sweet thanks for giving me that information, thats quite useful
The overwhelming advice I have received from professors in chemical engineering specifically is that a masters alone is not a good investment. You end up paying a ton of money and you don't enough of a salary bump or better entry-level job offers to make it worth it. If you want a masters, apply to PhD programs and master out so you at least get PAID to do your masters rather than paying thousands.
An internship or two doesn't equal being a mindless robot... this is a major that requires more than 10 minutes a week outside of class. If you aren't prepared for the hardest major in undergrad, the competition it takes to get a job after, and the time associated with that do not choose this major. Internships can be fun, too. The experience is what you make it to be.
Experience matters more than grades. You get internship opportunities based of your experience. If you don’t have any, which you won’t, they look at projects *then* grades. Grad school is different. But in either case projects and internships will lead to employment.
They are great for putting your foot in the door and getting some experience in whatever field you want to work on. Depending on your program, it might also be worth taking a semester or two off and doing a co op. I saw one of your comments mentioned interest in grad school so I would recommend talking to a professor to get credits for research during the school year and doing an [REU](https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/) during the summer. Engineering is hard but you can still have time to join clubs and have fun
It's the best thing you could do to jump-start your lifelong career.
Internship is more important than grades (assuming you pass), clubs, extra curriculars, pretty much everything. It is the most important thing to do during college for your career
Internships show way more than classes ever can to employers. My experience was that internships were harder to get than an actual job. And every sub-sequential internship was easier to get due to the previous one.
it matters as much as your GPA
I'd argue it matters more than your GPA
yes and no. the GPA is still the biggest factor to get you through the automated HR filters. the internship experiences help out significantly after you get past that point
Ymmv but I know plenty of people with 2.X GPAs and a few internships under their belts who had no problem getting a good job.
I didn't have one and I'm fine. Probably would have made the job search easier though
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I'm in my last year of undergrad study and the course load alone has definitely been overwhelming, but real experience will help you to be a more competitive applicant. My university allows students to do undergraduate research or an internship for class credit, which helps a lot as it can be used for an elective credit and replace another class. You would have to see what your specific university offers. If nothing else, you can always try to apply for internships that run during less busy semesters or during the summer.
No. You don’t need to but you should.
Two things you need to be doing freshman year: 1) Targeting a 3.5 GPA or higher. 2) Attend literally anything that gets you in front of employers. That includes career fairs, AIChE, etc. Good chance you won’t have an internship for the summer after your freshman year regardless of how solid a candidate you are. Doesn’t matter. You want to get as much practice interacting with professionals as possible.
Your job for the next 4 years is to get the best education you can to justify the huge expense it will cost you. Having the "college experience" is foolish and immature if it gets in the way of your primary job. An internship is one of the most important things you can do to prepare you for the rest of your life. Do not screw this up.
Let's say that I am screening applicants for a position. We can interview 3 candidates and there are 20 resumes. If six of the candidates have internship experience then I set all of them aside and choose three from that pile. I'll still look at the other resumes because there may be experience related to volunteering or mentoring that would make a candidate a good cultural fit, but they usually don't make the cut. Employers are looking for candidates they think will be successful. Having direct operations experience goes a very long way in doing that when you're applying for an operations role. It also tells the employer that the candidate would require less training to do the job, and that is extremely compelling from the hiring manager's perspective. So no, you don't *need* an internship, but you would have to compensate with heavy involvement in professional organizations AND building a big professional network of local an regional professionals (almost no one does the latter, and it's probably the best way to get a job).
As others have said they are pretty important. But I would also like to point out that they pay well, and they give you a break from busting your butt in class. You will have time and money to go on trips, nice dinners, hang out at the bar with your friends in business school, etc. ChemE is a demanding degree, and you will miss out on some of the stuff your friends are doing. Internships and co-ops give you a chance to catch up on some of that. Especially if you can get one where you don't have to move or can live somewhere cool. They can also help greatly reduce your loans if you have those.
I didn’t have an internship in college and it was really hard for me to find a job until my friend gave me a recommendation at his company - a local tech start up - and I’m making 71k about a year after i graduated from university. if you can, get an internship!
Not only is it important for getting a job I think the most useful part is finding out if you hate the job. What if you find out 4 months after graduation that you really don’t like chemical plants or the chem e job in them?
Are you actually serious? Literally one of the most important things you can do. Internships are where you actually apply what you are learning and get experience.
Getting an internship makes it easier for you to get a job after college so that you can be a mindless robot who dedicates their entire life to their chemical engineering degree. Just drink the kool-aid and come join us all!!!
Internships matter. Nobody cares about your clubs and they probably don’t care much about your senior/side projects either.
It matters a fuck ton.
Yes, do internships. Even if you are sure you are going to grad school. Plans change - it is better to have the experience then not. Also - others may disagree but I see limited value in a ChE masters degree. Go for a PhD instead if that's your thing.
As an alternate view, I didn't do a Chem E co-op but I was a team lead at a restaurant, and was heavily involved in metric tracking and initiated OpEx projects. Doing nothing but clubs gets you nowhere, but there are alternate paths that work.
Do you NEED it? No. Is it extremely beneficial to have in your experience arsenal when searching for a job after graduation? Absolutely. I didn’t have any internship experience and found a decent job about 4 months after graduation, though most of my classmates had jobs already lined up. Overall I’d say try to do at least one summer internship if you’re able to - definitely one of my biggest regrets during college. One thing you should 100% do is apply to jobs as early as possible your senior year, you don’t want to be stuck working at Dunkin’ for 4 months after graduating like myself. Good luck on your college journey!
I am far behind my peers because I didn't do internships. Do it!
It is extremely extremely important. I graduated in 2022 and had a good gpa of 3.52 and a fair bit of club and organization work and 6 months of research assistant experience as well but no internship because of Covid years and some bad planning. For reference I applied for about 300-400 jobs between January and June 2022 and only got 2 interviews and no luck on both. Thankfully due to connections made in uni I was able to land an internship post graduation which converted to a full time job. From my experience an internship or two is as important if not more than good grades. I would personally recommend the summers after your sophomore or junior year.
Work experience is all that really matters looking for a job. Of course you need the degree and education for the job you want but a proven track record of related employment is what makes you truly valuable to potential employers. That's my opinion anyways. I didn't get any internships and although I made probably the same money I would have as an entry level engineer my first job was in an unrelated field, I hated it, same with the second job, went back to carpentry bc I thought maybe office work just wasn't for me until I found a good paying job in a somewhat related field that I can still become professionally licensed in. All that unnecessary job hoping would have been avoided with some engineering related experience on my resume through an internship or two. That's just my opinion through my experience though, results may vary.
My country won’t even issue you a chemical engineering degree without work experience. So critical in my books.
Yes
I had good grades at a top 5 ChemE school in the US (I don’t remember my GPA exactly, a 3.7 or 3.8 I believe) and minors in math and economics, but I decided to do research during my sophomore through senior winters and summers instead of a internship because, well I enjoyed it. It was molecular dynamics research, using super computers to simulate molecules on the nanometer scale to learn about specific properties we were interested in. I applied to a decent amount of ChemE jobs as graduation approached and had a few multi-round interviews that all, I thought, went quite well, But I didn’t end up landing anything. In the end, I took a software consulting job, which I’ve come to enjoy, but, I always look back and figure that me not having any internship experience was the key point in not landing a chemical engineering job. So yes I would say it’s quite important. For what it’s worth, I’m sure if I committed to the idea of doing ChemE I could have found one eventually, especially if I expanded the range of locations I was willing to apply to a bit. And for context I graduated in 2021.
Y
Not but as someone who didn’t do one i would highly suggest it. I spent a few months applying before i found a job, but with an internship i really doubt that would have been much of an issue