I am so confused about my college choices (biomed engineering).......

[ryzmah]

Originally posted by: stevens

Originally posted by: fyleow
With your academic record I wouldn't count on getting into many of those schools. My cousin went to Duke and did economics and a minor in Chinese. He had a 1600 SAT on his first try, a 4.0 unweighted GPA at a private school, and crazy water polo (he won tournaments etc)

Oh and both his mom and dad went to Stanford.

I am just wondering what schools I should be looking at in term of program quality. I never asked anyone to critique my chances. I am aiming high and maybe too high, but I will never know unless I apply. I am a poor standardized test taker which reflects my probable sat scores, but my extracurriculars balance out my transcript nicely imo. I do have fallback schools, but I am not particularly interested in going to any of them, which is why I am trying to get as much information as I can before I have to make any decisions.

This is the standard I was taught for applications - have 1 fallback school that you know you can go to. If you have more than one fallback, cut it down to no more than 2 - there's no point wasting money on applications to places you wouldn't go.

Apply to 2-3 schools that you think are in the proper range for you - it's hard to say what that is without the SAT because schools vary so much, but match up your scores/GPA with the acceptance ranges for the schools you're looking at.

Apply to 1-2 schools you think might be out of your league. People often undervalue themselves, or hear of impossibly high standards and take those as the only way to get in.

You can change those numbers if you want to spend more or less on applications, but those are proportions to aim for.

 

[stevens]

Originally posted by: fyleow

Originally posted by: stevens

Originally posted by: fyleow
With your academic record I wouldn't count on getting into many of those schools. My cousin went to Duke and did economics and a minor in Chinese. He had a 1600 SAT on his first try, a 4.0 unweighted GPA at a private school, and crazy water polo (he won tournaments etc)

Oh and both his mom and dad went to Stanford.

I am just wondering what schools I should be looking at in term of program quality. I never asked anyone to critique my chances. I am aiming high and maybe too high, but I will never know unless I apply. I am a poor standardized test taker which reflects my probable sat scores, but my extracurriculars balance out my transcript nicely imo. I do have fallback schools, but I am not particularly interested in going to any of them, which is why I am trying to get as much information as I can before I have to make any decisions.

Extracurriculars are not a supplement for SAT scores, they are used to distinguish you from all the other people getting 4.0s and 1600 SATs. I have a 4.0 UC weighted GPA and a 1450 SAT 1 score. I am applying to Reed, Williams, and Rice and I do not expect to get into any of them. My realistic school right now is UCSD. Good luck though.

I have a friend who is practically a math genius and he is applying to MIT. He is ranked #14 in the nation for mathematical contests. He has won many many awards, has a 4.0 unweighted and a 1590 SAT. He scored 800 X 3 on his SAT IIs. He has taken something like 10 AP tests, even on classes he never took because he self studied. His math skills are way beyond calculus and he has exhausted all the options at the local community college (I think the last math he took was Advanced Linear Algebra).

Well congrats to you and your friend. I wish you the best of luck in your college quest.

 

[CanOWorms]

ack

 

[Growltiger]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Those are all good schools. Just do some research on your own. People on the Internet will tell you to go to Bubbaville State because their cousin's boyfriend's pig's sister told them it was supposedly good in some particular field.

Here are the rankings for GRADUATE bme schools (not undergraduate). Maybe it can help you a little bit in checking out some programs.

1. Johns Hopkins University (MD)
2. Duke University (NC)
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
..........
18. University of Virginia
19. Cornell University (NY)
20. University of Texas?Austin

I'm assuming this is the US News and World Report ranking. Take this with a grain of salt because their ranking is very subjective. UVa has a good program, but it is significanlty boosted because it is "UVa's program." They're strong in biotransport, but I certainly wouldn't go there for biomechanics. LIke I said, just because a program is ranked doesn't mean it's strong in all areas.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: stevens
Ok, so I am a junior this year, but all i have ever been interested in is engineering. A friend of mine went to Duke this year to study biomedical engineering. This sparked my interest, and I have already decided that I would now like to focus on schools with good biomedical engineering programs. I have been researching different schools and have come across the usual MIT, Duke, and Johns Hopkins as excellent biomed schools, but in the last few weeks I have discovered that places like Penn have excellent biomed programs. Basically I am overwhelmed with my choices. I am looking for personal opinions because all the college lit stuff says the same "this schools awesome blah blah blah". I don?t really know what to look for in a biomed program and what even makes a biomed prog good. If anyone could shed some light on this subject and recommend some schools, I would greatly appreciate it. Here is my list so far:

Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Johns Hopkins
Duke
Northwestern
Cornel
Rice
Penn

Granted I don?t know what my chance are at each one of these schools, I am just looking for opinions/advice/recommendations or what ever you feel is pertinent to this topic. I appreciate any information you can give me.
Steven

I wish I had your problem.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: Sukhoi
Check out the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign too. We certainly do as much as we can with AA too as frickin' Nancy Cantor is our chancelor.

Wow, I'm surprised UIUC isn't on that list in the post above since we have a top engineering school.

It probably could be... since BME is so closely associated with EE in some fields. A lot of these are universities that aren't too big in engineering, but still very good universities. But I think a lot of these universities (like Boston University, Wash U St. Louis, etc.), are completely geared towards BME in almost all research (in EE, BME, MechE, etc. is all essentially used to advance their BME).

 

[cerebusPu]

i graduated from hopkins about two years ago. i did biomedical engineering with a concentration in computer science. i can tell you it was easy to get into hopkins but hard once you are there. (versus hard to get in and easy as pie courses)

you'll need more than 1300 - 1400 SATs to get into top notch schools. but thats not including affirmative action. I believe you'll need to do 1450 or better.

to chose which college you want to go to, you can start by prioritizing what you care about.

climate
location
ranking
tuition/costs
party atmosphere
academic atmosphere
sports programs

to chose which BME program, you'll have to look at the graduate program. for instance, hopkins has the best BME graduate program in the nation. (not kidding about this. those phd students are insanely bright) and also one of the best medical schools in the nation. Thus the undergrad program gets alot of those top notch professors and research opportunities.

the engineering concentration is also very important. we had to choose from the following engineering concentrations. 1) computer science 2) electrical 3) mechanical 4) chemical....etc. if the school does not have engineering specialities, its likely to have too board of a BME program. if teh school has only a few engineering specialities which you dont like...then you shouldnt go there.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: Growltiger

Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Those are all good schools. Just do some research on your own. People on the Internet will tell you to go to Bubbaville State because their cousin's boyfriend's pig's sister told them it was supposedly good in some particular field.

Here are the rankings for GRADUATE bme schools (not undergraduate). Maybe it can help you a little bit in checking out some programs.

1. Johns Hopkins University (MD)
2. Duke University (NC)
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
..........
18. University of Virginia
19. Cornell University (NY)
20. University of Texas?Austin

I'm assuming this is the US News and World Report ranking. Take this with a grain of salt because their ranking is very subjective. UVa has a good program, but it is significanlty boosted because it is "UVa's program." They're strong in biotransport, but I certainly wouldn't go there for biomechanics. LIke I said, just because a program is ranked doesn't mean it's strong in all areas.

Yeah, it's US News and World Report's rankings... but it can give you a general idea. I agree you shouldn't take it as 100% truth.