MYOS1634 said:
“Finally, why BME? It’s one of the most competitive Engineering specialties and the only one that requires a Master’s degree (meaning you’d be eligible for OPT but wouldn’t be as likely to find one as with another Engineering major…)”
True, Masters degrees are common in this field, but it is not required. BS in BME job opportunities are not bad when compared with many other subject areas in the life sciences.
Evidently the BME market in some parts of the country are not doing well. I hear this often repeated on CC. The following specific data is taken directly from the WPI website. It pertains to the latest available data (class of 2019). Given the pandemic we don’t know how the class of 2020 will do, but the same pandemic impact concerns apply to all majors.
The following data actually includes ALL BME graduates in the class of 2019. I.E. this is a report on 100% of the class. None were left out (not common in this sort of data)
The average starting salary for the 39 graduates who took jobs with their BS in BME was $63,985. Ten graduates reported that they were still seeking employment at the time of data collection in the summer of 2019. Eighty percent seeking jobs with a BS in Biomedical Engineering had jobs before the end of the summer.
Please note that these salaries are about 20% above the BS degrees reported in the Biology and Biotechnology report. How many life science majors have jobs by the end of graduation summer? Do I have the ears of all those premedical students?
One BS graduate reported joining a “volunteer service.”
All twelve BME MS graduates are also included in the corporate listing below. Their average salary was $71,490 or only about 11% higher after another year of university expenses.
All three PhD graduates took jobs, but salaries were not given (sample too small).
Employing companies were:
AbbVie
Altran IPD
Americorps VISTA
Analog Devices
Astellas
Azzur Group
Barry-Wehmiller Design
Group, Inc.
Boston Children’s Hospital
Boston Scientific
Brainlab, Inc.
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Charles River Laboratories
Confluent Medical
Technologies
CONMED
DEKA Research and
Development
EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma
and EMD Performance
Materials
GE Healthcare
Global Prior Art, Inc.
Helen of Troy
Hillrom
Hub Recruiting, LLC
Instrumentation Laboratory
Insulet Corporation
Integra LifeSciences
Corporation
IPG Photonics
Johnson & Johnson Family of
Companies
KLS Martin & KLS Martin
Manufacturing
KorroBio
Massachusetts General
Hospital
Masy BioServices
Medtronic
Mocerna Theraputics
Northern Arizona University
(NAU)
Process Design Solutions
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals,
Inc.
Selux Diagnostics
South Shore Health
StemExpress
Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Townsend & Associates
Translate Bio
University of Massachusetts-
Amherst
ZOLL Medical Corporation
Twenty-nine BSBE graduats went on to graduate schools at:
Brown University
Johns Hopkins University
Queen’s University Belfast
Tufts University
University of California-San
Diego
University of Pittsburgh
University of Utah
Worcester Polytechnic
Institute (WPI)
Point of interest, double majors were:
Electrical & Computer
Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Pyschological Science
Robotics Engineering
Writing (Professional)
I am not trying to talk students out of graduate school. Life has its twist and turns. It just seems that a BS in BME is not the big waste of time as is often reported on CC.
Really strong students who want a premed program should also look at this option. The foundation achieved may actually offer greater flexibility in a rapidly evolving medical/engineering world.