Careers in Chemistry

[heylilbunny]

My 14 yr old DD loves chemistry and enjoys all the sciences as well as art and other subjects. She is very ambitious and I wondered if any chemists or others could give ideas of the range of careers open to chemists. She also is at native fluency in German and already has two years of French. I am aware of BASF as have many friends working for the company in Germany and the US. She has dual British/US citizenship. We are in London next week and have booked to have a tour of Imperial. We saw there is a 5 year Chemistry with Management undergrad degree there with a year in industry and a year in the business school which looks very interesting. She has been in German Gymnasium (grammar) but will start attending high school in the USA in August.

Any thoughts or experiences would be great.

Sadly Auntie Dee, lots of the major chemical companies won't even look at candidates with degrees from Universities like Man Met. They take their graduate trainees from places like Manchester University.

And looking at the RSC website, Manchester Uni courses are accredited anyway.

I have a friend who did chemistry at Edinburgh uni then did a PhD and went to work for one of the big pharma corporations.

DH and I are both PhD chemists. He would probably advise against it as a career choice in the uk because too much of our excellent industry got flogged off and research centres lost - but a quite different story in Germany and the U.S. So that's good for the op.
Personally I've got a lovely niche writing molecular modelling software.

In general avoid over specialised first degrees - a vanilla chemistry degree from a good university followed by appropriate postgrad course is the usual route

I'm a biochemist, did a sandwich degree then a PhD, one postdoc then pharmaceutical industry doing analytical development for the last 13 years. Lots of my contemporaries are in academia, pharmaceuticals (very good industry to be in with excellent terms and conditions and still offering 'jobs for life' which become very attractive once you have family, and a lot of the industry in the north so good quality of life), then all the usual careers that require numeracy and logic listed above by PPs.

When recruiting graduates we take people who have done sandwich degrees (preferably with us) over anyone else, they have much more real experience and can be trained up much quicker than someone who has only done a few hours in a lab at uni.

Fugacity can I ask why you believe chemical engineering to be the best degree ever?

Mindgone - I was thinking the same. And is it really worth 8 years study? I mean the salaries aren't that high and that's a lot of student debt...

When our DD decided she wanted to be some sort of engineer, Chem Eng was the one sort DH advised her against - from his many years of experience as an industrial chemist. Maybe he was involved with particularly unpleasant plants.

The 5-8 years of study quoted by Fugacity is when including an MSc or PhD, which is really an essential in the sciences these days, even in industry (and an MSc doesn't really cut it any more).

PhD's are usually funded, either by industry or by the research councils e.g. EPSRC, BBSRC, MRC, NERC etc and students receive a tax-free stipend, which is not a fortune, but enough to live on. In the sciences, students are usually advised against self-funding, unless they are overseas students (which the OP's dc would not be, due to having dual nationality).

A standard undergraduate degree will normally only qualify scientists as lab technicians these days.

Big pharmaceutical companies pay very good salaries. We have our own small company but my husband was offered a six figure job by a chemistry industry company recently

My father did chemistry degree, then accountancy and ended up chairman of a group of mining/manufacturing companies around the world. My uncle did chemistry and became a professor in the subject. DH is a chemist & worked in a few different industries doing lab/quality assurance/product development then moved across to health/safety/environment in a manufacturing company.

As a couple of people have suggested up thread, consider a career in intellectual property. Patent attorneys often need very good technical and language skills.

Wow! Thanks everybody for your very interesting and helpful replies. In response to a comment upthread German is not my DDs first language, she has picked it up since we moved to Germany 6 years ago. We did visit Imperial for shits and giggles and it was naturally very interesting if incredibly nerdy and lacking in any sense or aesthetic, design or artistic side. We were told that the whole chemistry department will be moving out of Kensington and over to the new campus they are building in Hammersmith (I believe). The senior student showing us around had already told us that after the first year most students are living over in Hammersmith anyway. They said the dept would expand and they intend it to be the most cutting edge in the nation.

We are definitely moving back to the US this summer and DD has been accepted at an excellent high school and will study a joint physics/chemistry class as a Freshman along with other subjects so we'll see if her enthusiasm survives the transition. I noted to her recently that maybe her massive love of cooking and chemistry are not unrelated : )

My only concern is that from my understanding in the U.S. chemistry is often taught in a less hands on way at High school compared to the UK (I'm not sure about Germany). This could put off good Chemists.

It is a good basic science with a huge range of opportunities, and areas to explore.

Well we looked around the school last week and they had an entire floor of science labs so I think she should be OK.