I second ASU recommendation. After visiting 22 schools, my son selected ASU. The scholarships have been outstanding, Barrett Honors is an amazing treasure and despite being a large school, my son is thrilled beyound belief. He likes his experience so much that his goal is now to become a Community Advisor after 9 weeks because he wants to help others have the experience ASU and Barrett have given him. Get on campus, meet the leadership of Barrett and the head of your department, we did and it was a game changer for us
Just look very carefully at the GPA required to keep any scholarships from Barrett. Unless this has changed, that GPA was pretty high.
Not to mention that UW-Madison is jacking up out of state tuition from the mid $20,000 range to the mid $30,000 range over a very short period of time, making UW Madison very unappealing to OOS students.
https://apir.wisc.edu/tuitionandfees/2016_Big10_Tuition_Comparison.pdf
Yes, the tuition and fees at UW-Madison have been increasing for non-residents over recent years and now is 4th among Big 10 schools instead of in the bottom half.
I wouldn’t say it’s very unappealing for nonresidents but less appealing.
We took UW Madison off the list. I would like to find one more smallish college that had an ABET accredited biomedical engineering program.
I wish ASU had BME in the WUE. Montana would be great, expecially since her boyfriend goes there, but they don’t have a BME program.
Thanks everyone for talking me through this. Keep the ideas coming!
@lstirl - for ASU be sure to run their scholarship estimator - while their WUE offerings are limited, they are very generous with merit aid. With decent stats you can cut the cost of OOS tuition in half making it comparable to what the WUE cost would otherwise be. Apply to Barrett as well and you will have another excellent college option. Here is the link to estimate scholarships: https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator
What about Ohio University. https://www.ohio.edu/engineering/biomedical/ My niece got a full tuition scholarship there. It is a very nice campus.
You may have to be a little more open to majors other than biomedical engineering if you want a school at a good price. There are plenty of schools that offer engineering, and you can take the courses to be a mechanical engineer or electrical, and just take the courses you want to be biomedical. She could take those courses for a semester at UW or over the summer. She could do them at another school (many schools offer a semester at another school, just like a semester abroad, and you pay the same tuition and use the same financial aid)
Don’t get into the Goldilocks situation where every school is too big or too small or general or too specialized. Most engineering programs will work for most engineering students.
My DD was a bio engineering major as an undergrad. There was NOTHING she and her fellow,bio engineering majors could do with THAT degree…except go to grad school.
If your daughter wants to do biomedical engineering, she will NEED a graduate degree. Really, she doesn’t need to major in THAT as an undergrad. Mechanical engineering would be fine.
She is planning on getting at least a masters. She wants to take the BME classes, not just the ME or EE. While it might be fine, she much prefers the class selection for BME.
Perhaps it’s school dependent or region dependent, but my daughter graduated with a BME degree in May. She initially planned on attending grad school but decided to work for a while first. She had no trouble finding a job in her field and she knows of no BMEs from her class that are still looking for work. A few did decide to go directly to grad school but most are employed in their field in well paying positions. I have read several times on cc about BME being a useless undergrad major unless the student plans to attend grad / professional school but that has not been her experience at all.
Edited to add:
Some programs have concentrations within the major - my D’s concentration was biomechanics. Some schools also offer a relatively easy path to double major because of shared foundation courses and cross listed electives within concentrations. Although my D did not take advantage of this, it is a nice option. Once you narrow down affordable options, these are some characteristics of programs that may be worth looking into.
One more thought: Thumper made an excellent point about the path to grad school. Within engineering, it’s not difficult to go onto grad school for BME with an under grad in ME (or chemE or EE). The same is true the other way as well, as long as the student has the necessary undergrad coursework. For example, my D got into all of the grad schools she applied to - some of the programs were BME, others were ME, but all were biomechanics focused.
Thanks for this. A dual degree or having a 5th year masters program definitely make a program more appealing.
@lstirl With those stats, if she’s willing to do Mechanical Engineering she would get $25K off tuition at University of San Diego (the private school). That would put the net price in the high $30s, which seems to be within your budget based on a previous post. Run the NPC at USD to see the $25K award.
@twoinanddone - MSU (Bozeman) is cutting back on merit this year. It’s no longer automatic. Weighted GPA’s aren’t considered per the AO we communicated with. You have to have a 4.0 unweighted to get the highest achievement award (even with a 36 ACT, though that seems strange). They only gave 120 WUE scholarships last year and only to high stats. It could be more competitive this year. And definitely cannot combine the merit with WUE.
She really doesn’t want to change majors. She has a lot of friends in montana, but the school doesn’t seem a great fit, even if it did work with wue.
Cal Poly SLO will come in around 40k annually total COA. She may get a small OOS scholarship, our D does, which apparently is rather standard, though not published (2k).
UDub will be around 25k total COA unless she commutes. SLO is one of the better deals out there for OOS. But very competitive as is UDub.
Our deal for our current senior is if he wants anything OOS that is more than UDub he’s got to have skin in the game in the form of loans and work, I’ve saved for UDub but not beyond. I will to an extent, match what he puts in but our cap is targeted around 40k and ideally less.
A couple of thoughts, CSLB will have a lot of commuters so that may or may not be what she wants.
If she will consider ME as a fallback option good options for her that will offer merit and get you into the mid/high 30’s would include Colorado State, Oregon State, University of Portland, Gonzaga, maybe Temple. Wyoming has already been mentioned but is a great deal and lovely campus.
She would rather stay in state and keep her major, so non abet accreddited schools are out. Sounds like she mostly isnt a going to get merit aid with her major.
I think there IS a lot of extra merit aid for engineers. Several schools give extra ($2000-5000) just for engineers, but California schools aren’t in that group. If she wants to go south, many schools love women engineers. There are also private scholarships for engineers (Society of Women Engineers, Department of Defense).
She just can’t have exactly what she wants, which is an inexpensive California school. She’ll have to decide if she’d rather be ‘too’ close to home and get the exact major at the exact price she wants, or go farther away but have to give up one of the other items on her checklist - location, size, cost, major.
Many years ago I was hell-bent on studying biomedical engineering but had to choose an electrical engineering degree with a specialization in biomedical engineering. I am SO GLAD that my degree says “BS Electrical Engineering”! I was able to get jobs after graduation while others that had Biomedical Engineering could not. I probably had the same classes as they did, but my diploma opened more doors.