#degree programs

Whether or not graduate studies would be worth it for you depends entirely upon the type of career you want to have. Based on my understanding, if you want to work in research, as opposed to pure industry, a Ph.D. would be the most help. This would be universities, national labs, and probably R&D departments of big companies. You could probably still do that with a masters, but those kind of jobs are much more likely to take scientists with Ph.Ds. 

A masters does still help your job prospects, but mostly when it comes to industry related jobs. It can help you start at a higher level in a company, or move up faster, and can lead to managerial level positions. That is not to say that you can’t do that with a bachelors, but with a bachelors you’re much more likely to start at an entry level position. 

I, personally, have decided to go for my Ph.D. after three years out of school, because I’ve decided that I want to work in a research oriented job. But if that’s not what you want to do, there are a lot of job opportunities for bachelors students at the moment, in my opinion, especially in materials science, if you go that route.

Hello! To be honest, there are probably too many schools for me to name. I can, however, give you a couple lists and a good search engine to use:

The NSF has a list of all REUs (Research Opportunities for Undergraduates) that their Division of Materials Research supports at this link, which as of this writing includes over 70 opportunities at a wide variety of universities. 

Aside from that, Pathways to Science has a list of “STEM programs, research opportunities, and contacts in Materials Science & Engineering” that can be sorted by your level of study (K-8, High School, K-12 Educators, Undergraduate, Post-Baccalaureate, Graduate, Postdoc/Early Career, Faculty and Administrators, and Research Centers). 

If that list doesn’t work for you, you can simply search their website by institution, level of study, discipline, start date, or geography. 

Keep in mind that the links I’ve mentioned are for US based research programs at US universities. If anyone outside the US needs more information, let me know and I’ll see what I can find! 

If you have a college in mind, don’t be afraid to search what summer programs are available on their website.

Short answer: Yes, I think you could be prepared for grad school studies in materials science with a B.S. in chemistry.

Long answer: The type of classes you’re going to want to take in undergrad are going to depend on what area of materials science you want to focus on. I’m no expert (particularly because I didn’t get a chemistry degree) but it’s my understanding that, with a chemistry degree, you’re going to get a bit of background in thermodynamics (perhaps from a different perspective), diffusion/mass transfer, phase diagrams, and other things like that - all part of the curriculum I took for my MSE degree. 

So, extra classes really depend on if there’s an area of materials science you want to focus on. To start, I’d say take a basic intro to materials science/materials science and engineering/engineering materials class if your college offers it, and maybe even an introductory level materials science laboratory course, which should hopefully go into several different areas of materials science with each lab. 

After that, if you’re interested in polymers then I’d suggest focusing on organic chemistry and seeing if there’s any intro to polymer courses. If you’re interested in something like semiconductors, see if there’s an electrical properties of materials class that you can get into. I know I personally had an optical properties course, an electrical properties course, and a mechanical behavior of materials course - but these were all higher level and you have to watch out for prerequisites. I also had classes that focused on metals, and another that was all about glass.

It just depends on what you’re interested in. 

Thanks for the question and the kind words, hope this answer was what you were looking for! Feel free to let me know if you have any follow up questions, or if I just made you more confused!

In my mse department a fair number of the professors started out it chemistry, my thermodynamics, kinetics and organic materials professors are all chemists.

im looking into getting my master's in library science and a master's in environmental history to go along with my environmental science bachelor's, or conservation of historic & artistic works

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