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Old Thursday, August 04, 2011
chemguy chemguy is offline
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Talking It all comes down to Chemistry 2

I too have a chemical engineering background.

Should you opt for the chemistry in CSS? It depends on your choice. For someone with chemical engineering background, I think this mini-guide should be helpful

If you look at chemistry in CSS, it is divided into branches of chemistry. Chemistry 1 covers Physical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and industrial chemistry. Chemistry 2 is purely Organic chemistry.

Chemistry 1 should be quite easy for someone with chemical engineering background. The only thing you need to learn here is the chemistry of Transition State elements and some quantum theory in atomic structure (Which is optional), everything else you just need to revise. Because the rest is your chemical engineering and Intermediate chemistry

Chemistry 2 on the other hand is a very different story. It is purely organic chemistry. And it is much much more advanced than what is taught to chemical engineering students. To be frank you need to spend 7-12 months exclusively on this chemistry 2. It is very dry and very long. There are tons of reactions that you will have to cram.

The problem is that Thermodynamics, and Kinetics you studied is way way too advanced for chemistry in CSS. If you studied just one subject of physical chemistry, its thermodynamics and kinetics should suffice. The extra Thermo-1 and Thermo-2 that you studied, are useless. The refrigeration cycles, air conditioning, vapor equilibria.. All useless. Also, the kinetics subject taught to chemical engineers is too advanced for the tiny portion of kinetics in CSS.

Remember that this is a science subject. If you write wrong, you get zero. Wrong theory, no matter how long and beautifully written, will get you a zero. In other subjects, if you write your opinion or your experience, you might get some marks.

Also if you look into the past papers, you will see that each questions comprises of 3-4 parts. It is a very intimidating paper.

What should you leave? To be honest, you shouldn't leave anything. Sometimes the question is out of the curriculum mentioned by CSS. Why? Because they assume that you have done at least a BSc in chemistry and are capable of answering questions up to that level. This is particularly a problem in science subjects of CSS because the trend of paper often changes. Don't rely on past papers thinking, "OK, so 3 questions come from this section, 2 from there". The pattern can change unexpectedly.

You can get A LOT of marks in chemistry. Chemistry 1 is a piece of cake, chemistry 2, not so much.

You should download past papers, and curriculum given on CSS site, go through them, and then come to any conclusion. Chemistry 2 is very long, dry and boring, specially for an engineer. There are a lot of other choices. Most people don't select the subject of their study in CSS. If you think you can do Chemistry 2, you should definitely take Chemistry because this will give you the most marks.

Last edited by Predator; Thursday, August 04, 2011 at 09:55 PM.
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