Is a Chemistry Degree Worth It

Is studying a chemistry major to get a chemistry degree worth it

That's what we're going to be talking about today. But before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil

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But let's jump into it back to the main subject. Is a chemistry degree worth it? We're going to

be talking about this today. But first, let's go ahead and define what a chemistry degree is. So a

chemistry degree is going to be the study of matter and all of its different forms and how

it transforms between one form or the other. There's a lot of science, of course, but you're

also going to be doing lab work as well as mathematics. There's about 14,000 people that

graduate with a bachelor's in chemistry every year. Now, I've said this before in a lot of other

videos, but I have to say in this one as well, science degrees compared to the other STEM degrees

in my opinion, are a little bit overrated. A lot of people think that STEM degrees are amazing

And if you get any type of STEM degree, companies are just going to be lined up, ready to give you

a job right after you graduate. And that's just not true. The truth is, if you get some science

bachelor's degrees and you expect to get a job, chances are you're going to have to get a master's

or a doctorate. And if you're going to go on average about $40,000 in debt in order to get

your degree, you can't just snap your fingers and make it go away. Now, we're going to go over four

different sections here. The first one is going to be salary. Then we're going to talk about

satisfaction. Then we're going to go over demand. And then lastly, we're going to talk about X

factors. First, let's go ahead and talk about salary. With a chemistry degree, you would expect

to make around $49,000 a year in your first five years working. And then mid-career pay would be

$93,000. You can compare this to petroleum engineering, which is an extremely high paying

degree or recreational therapy, which doesn't pay very well. And you're going to see that it is

somewhere in the middle, but it's definitely above average when it comes to your salary

Now, one career path you might go down is becoming a chemist, of course, and they make around $78,000

a year. Now, if you look at the median annual earnings for young people, people between the

ages of 25 and 29 for all different types of degrees, you see that STEM degrees tend to rank

pretty well. So not only do you make more money down the line, but you also make more money right

off the bat at the beginning of your career. Overall, this one's pretty good when it comes

to science degrees and above average when you compare it to all degrees. So I'm going to give

this one a seven out of 10 when it comes to salary or earnings potential. Next, we're going to be

talking about satisfaction. And first, we're going to go over meaning, which is how much your career

positively affects the rest of the world. So when it comes to meaning, chemistry comes in at 55%

And you can compare that to radiation therapy at 91%, which is the highest. And one of the lowest

is plastics engineering technology at 31%. So it's right there in the middle, I would say it's

slightly above average. If you look at job satisfaction for something like material scientists

you'd see that it comes in at about 67%, which again, is slightly above average as well. Now

science degrees tend to be some of the most regretted degrees or the second most regretted

in fact, at 35% of the people who get the degrees regretting them according to zip recruiter. And

the reason for that is because a lot of people expect to be able to get a job with just a

bachelor's. And unfortunately, for many types of careers out there, when it comes to science

you have to get a master's or a doctorate. However, chemistry is one of the better science degrees

And overall, I would say that science degrees when you're actually able to get a job

you do seem to be relatively satisfied with the career. Now, this is extremely subjective. Like I

said, it depends on your personality, it depends on the industry you work in what you're good at

company that you work for, in some cases, however, I'm going to go ahead and give this one a 7.5 out

of 10. Now when it comes to demand, science related degrees are pretty average. For the

most part, you can sometimes get a science related degree and then go into the health field. But that

of course, is going to be extra schooling, health related degrees, health related careers have the

highest demand out of any type of career out there even higher than technology. But let's say

you're just sticking with a bachelor's and you're trying to get a job with just a four year degree

So if you wanted to become a chemist, that one's growing at about 5% over the next 10 years. And if

you wanted to become a material scientist, that one's growing at 3%, which is about average. Now

if you search monster.com for the keyword chemistry, you're going to see that only around

600 jobs pop up. That means only 600 people had the keyword chemistry degree and their job listing

compare that to computer science, which had 141,000 and anthropology, which is around 800

Now it's not a perfect test by any means, but it gives me a hint that not a lot of hiring managers

or owners are looking for people who have a chemistry degree. There's not an insane amount

of demand out there like computer science, for instance, for people who have software development

skills. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get hired with a chemistry degree

but it is a little bit of a red flag. So with this one, I'm going to go ahead and give it a 6.5 out

of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about X factors, which encompasses everything else that

we didn't talk about already. So first, when it comes to physical science degrees like chemistry

they make around $2.6 million over a lifetime, which is more than the average degree, which

makes around 2.4 million. On top of that, you see that if they go into other career paths like

management, for instance, they can make around 3.4 million over a lifetime. I think the reason

for this is because if you get a chemistry degree, you're going to have a pretty strong background

in science, lab work, and mathematics. And although that might not directly translate to

helping you get a job, indirectly, it's probably going to help you down the line. There's a lot to

say with some of the hard skills as well as some of the soft skills that you learn during college

indirectly helping you throughout your entire life. And it looks like physical science degrees

are pretty good all across the board. Now, when it comes to the skills that you learn, chemistry as a skill is rated 56 out of 100 on ZipRecruiter's skill index. Compare this to the

highest rated skill of software engineering, which is 88 out of 100, and the lowest rated

which is industrial sewing at 8 out of 100. So it's going to be somewhere in the middle there

So the skill of chemistry is somewhat valued on the market. That doesn't mean that it doesn't

have more value or less value than anything else. It simply means that people who own businesses and

hiring managers are more likely to hire you and pay you more money if you have the skill of

chemistry, because for whatever reason, it's pretty hot right now. You know, maybe 100 years ago

industrial sewing would have been the hottest skill around. But unfortunately, right now

it's not really needed. Now, when it comes to automation, science degrees, science careers in

general are relatively low and chemists is no different. It only has around a 10 percent chance

of being automated. And when it comes to difficulty, the science related degrees are pretty

high up there, in my opinion, but they're probably not some of the hardest ones except for physics

That one's really difficult. I think engineering degrees and mathematics degrees realistically are

probably going to be harder for the average person. But again, that's extremely subjective

It could be completely different depending on who you are. You know, I took a lot of chemistry

classes in undergrad. Organic chemistry is really difficult. Physical chemistry, really difficult as well. I'm sure some of those upper chemistry level classes get even harder

but I don't think it's going to be as hard as something like engineering. For what it's worth

the reference I always use tab.com, which kind of goes off of the dropout rate for the different

majors, says that chemistry is the third hardest one. Let me know down below if you're a chemistry

major, how difficult it was. I mean, I'm not trying to say that it's easy or anything by that

by any means, but I didn't remember thinking that it was one of the hardest majors. But hey, maybe

I'm wrong. But anyways, when it comes to flexibility, unfortunately, this is where some of the

science degrees kind of don't do so well. For one, out of all the different types of degrees, science

degrees kind of make the worst combination with other degrees. So there's some types of degrees

where if you double major in something else, you know, it might not be that great on its own. But

if you double major, you can actually, you know, make it work with science related degrees. I mean

I guess it depends on what career path you're going down, but double majoring in something else

isn't going to help nearly as much. And when it comes to flexibility, they're honestly not that

good either. A lot of the skills that you're going to learn are going to be relatively narrow

They're not going to extrapolate out to other things nearly as well as something like business

for instance. And so that makes the overall score six point eight, seven, five out of 10. This is

one of these degrees where you can definitely make it work as long as you do your research, you know what you're getting yourself into, but it's not going to be one of those slam dunk degrees

where you're pretty much set once you get a bachelor's. You're going to want to go above and

beyond. You're probably going to have to learn extra skills, do internships and network like

crazy. On top of that, I always like to mention this because it's so important. You should contact

somebody who is in whatever career paths you're interested in and just ask them about what they

would recommend that you do. In fact, you should contact a few people in each career path if

you can. I've made entire videos about how to go through that whole process and you can check

them out on my channel. If you want some other help with degrees, I did make a college degree

ranker. It's going to be in my Patreon down below. I've been working really hard on this and it's

basically something that ranks different college degrees and it makes the whole research process

for you much easier. If you're one of these people that keeps commenting on my videos about how you

want to see your degree sooner and you can't wait for it, then just go ahead, check it out

do the Patreon and you can see it. It's version 1.1 right now. It's not done yet, but it's a

work in progress, but I think it's the best list out there. I'm also going to be uploading other

exclusive content like a stock portfolio, for instance. If you haven't done it already, go

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