Before I apply for Bioengineering @ UCB..

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>I have some questions, because I don't exactly know what bioengineering encompasses. What do bioengineering majors study, what courses do they take, and what kind of jobs do they get in the real world?</p>

<p>Thats my first question, my second question is "how tough is this major to get into?" </p>

<p>I think I have pretty good stats, but I don't want to commit to a harder major if I am not sure thats what I want to do.
thanks</p>

<p>finally: are majors that important? I hear both things, that majors dont matter and majors do matter???</p>

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<p>I'm a freshman BioE major right now. When I first came, the director of the department, Steve Connally, told us that BioE is the most impacted major in the engineereing school so it is toughest major to get into in the College of Engineering. I don't think you need astounding stats though, because I was only ranked 4th or 5th in a graduating class of 350 at my school. </p>

<p>The question of what BioE encompasses is still being debated by those academic giants who created this field. There are two ways to look at it: engineering using biological processes or engineering that has applications in biology and/or medicine. If you were to go to MIT for example, they will tell you that bioE is taking the "codes/components" of biology and engineering something such as changing the DNA of bacteria so that they can detect and destroy cancer cells. At Berkeley, however, what BioE is gets a little fuzzy. Yes, messing around with DNA and proteins to engineering new proteins and what not is part of bioengineering, but so is biomechanics, biomaterials, biomedical devices, imaging, and so on. At some other institutions, namely MIT, these areas are not BioE, but are simply branches of mechanical engineering, material science engineering, and so on that have biological applications. </p>

<p>As for what bioengineers study, it is probably better to ask what bioengineers don't study. BioE is just about the most interdisciplinary major at Berkeley. You need biology (of course), physics, chemistry, math, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, and lots more. If you figure out which area of bioE you want to focus on early, maybe you can rule out a few of the other disciplines. Courses taken correlate to what you study (but don't take BioE 10 unless you're biology knowledge is really solid).</p>

<p>As for jobs in the real world, about a third of the bioEs at Berkeley end up at medical school I believe, another third go to academia/grad school, and another third go into industry I think. The third in grad school though did not all go into grad school for bioE; some went into Public Health, Business, Law (patent law makes a lot of money), Mechanical Engineering and so on. People in industry work as consultants or for pharmeceutical or biomedical device companies. I think some also work for the government. </p>

<p>I think the most important thing to keep in mind about BioE is that it is such a new field you really won't know what you should do with yourself both while you're majoring in it and when you get a job.</p>

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<p>Just to clarify, dill's example of a tumor-killing bacteria is a notable Berkeley-based project. But he's right that the idea of parts that program bacteria is very hot at MIT; this field is actually called synthetic biology and is very well represented at Berkeley (UC-B is arguably stronger than MIT). He's also right that BioE at UC-B encompasses a mind-boggling diversity of fields. I'm pretty annoyed right now that Stanley Hall is just a jumble of stuff that doesn't mesh together--there's no cohesive theme.</p>

<p>By the way, I wouldn't agree with Leftist that you should really know what BioE is to major in it. I'm sure most ppl became interested in the field because they got a general vibe that it's a hot field without really knowing what they would pursue.</p>

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<p>That's actually pretty interesting stuff. If I go bioengineering, I am most likely going into business afterwards getting an MBA from a graduate school. </p>

<p>I'm pretty sure I could get into CNR or L&S, but I would probably be average at CoE. I'm ranked around 15/550 students at my school. </p>

<p>Thanks for the info... now to make my decision.</p>

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<p>dill_scout: UCSD bioengineering is ranked higher than UCB's by a lot. I think its like rank 4th vs rank 13th. I'm not dinging on either as Berkeley's Engineering School is like 2nd in the nation.</p>

<p>Is this a fair comparison? Like you said, berkeley's bioengineering is a very "all encompassing" major, so maybe Berkeley BioE is different? Or something?</p>

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<p>I don't know how much the department has improved in the past couple years, but if I had to do things over again, I definitely would not have majored in BioE at Berkeley. </p>

<p>First, read this: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/222845-avoid-bioengineering-if-you-can.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/222845-avoid-bioengineering-if-you-can.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Second, whether majors matter depends on what you intend to do with them...generally, major does not matter. For graduate school, GRADES, coursework and research is what matters. You can apply to BioE graduate programs with a major in any technical subject (biology, eecs, etc.), and in this sense, they kind of matter, but not really. For law and medicine, majors do not matter at all. For industry, employers prefer some sort of specialization, so you may be more marketable for BioE-related work with a traditional engineering discipline, but it all comes to how you market yourself with your coursework and research experience.</p>

<p>Since you are considering an MBA, you would want to work after graduation. You don't need to major in BioE to work in BioE. But are you sure you want to work in BioE?</p>

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<p>I think the comparison for BioE programs is more based on age than anything else. UCSD is probably the UC with the longest running BioE program, and thus, they are closer to the top of the rankings. UC Berkeley's BioE program is perhaps just a bit over a decade old so it's still fairly new. I had originally been set on going to UCSD after I got into their BioE program. However, after I visited the BioE office and got some information, I realized how rigid their program is. UCSD, if I remember correctly, had 4 or 5 BioE pathways, but these pathways were extremely rigid, meaning if you picked one pathway when applying then you have to stick to that pathway. Also even if you get into UCSD's bioE program, you are not really in the program unless you manage to keep your GPA high until your junior year. I do believe many of the institutions with top BioE programs are also exceedingly rigid. For me, that did not sit well since I realized that I was interested in some of the other bioE pathways, but was told that I had to stick to the pathway I applied for. Another thing I realized was that in the case that I did not make the GPA cut in my junior year what else would be worth majoring at UCSD. The truth is that bioE and oceanography are perhaps the only majors worth going to UCSD for when compared to Berkeley.</p>

<p>What I like about the Berkeley BioE program is that it allows for a lot of freedom; you can take many different classes from 7 different concentrations while also taking courses in other engineering disciplines. I think the Berkeley BioE program is trying to set a precedent by taking a more liberal arts approach to this engineering program. Then again, because of the program's youth, it may also be that they are not quite sure how to organize it yet. To people who are interested in working in industry after graduation, this may be a disadvantage since the bioE field has yet to find its niche in the industrial world. However, if you want to go to grad school or something, BioE is good in that you can do a lot of exploration to see what you are really interested in. </p>

<p>In your case, if you want an MBA, Berkeley would be a better fit for you than UCSD since you can explore different areas of pioneer technology and figure out which has the best future in industry. Berkeley also offers better business courses and such than UCSD. </p>

<p>Overall, I think Berkeley's BioE program will be very good given a few more years. However, if you are very serious and absolutely certain about becoming an amazing bioengineer ready to generate thousands of dollars per year for some company, then you should go to UCSD. If BioE is only bridge for you to some other academic destination, then this is a great place to be. You get bragging rights to being in the most impacted major at one of the top three engineering schools in the nation. You can also relatively easily get research positions in labs that are working on cutting edge technology and perhaps get a publication or two out. You should realize that the reason bioE is the most impacted major at Berkeley's Colleing ge of Engineering isn't because they feel bioE majors require more brains than any other sort of engineering and only partly because bioE is a hot major, but mainly because the folks in the department are trying very hard to build up the credibility of Berkeley's BioE program and improve that ranking so they care very much about how students are fairing.</p>

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<p>Another thing I thought I should add is that Berkeley BioE definitely has potential, because recently British Petroleum poured $500 million into research for new biofuels into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Berkeley has two stakes in this money and both are primarily related to the bioE department.</p>

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<p>Adding to dill_scout's excellent (and quite long) posts, Berkeley BioE (I'm in it as well) has been pretty aggressive in hiring - I mean, some of the newest profs are damn amazing in their specific fields. As an example, Professor Anderson (the newest professor) is basically the poster child of Synthetic Biology right now. All/most of the "old" professors - old is relative, I mean, 4-5 years isn't old by any stretch of the imagination - are still huge leaders in their fields.</p>

<p>Examples, Professor Connolly - nicest guy ever, and also crazy well respected in the Imaging field.
Professor Fletcher - Princeton, Stanford, Oxford (Rhodes scholar), MIT. Amazing guy, well known in the field of microfluidics and biomaterial fabrication and engineering. He's out for sabbatical this semester because he's Cal's science liaison to the White House. Pretty spectacular stuff.</p>

<p>Honestly, I've heard so much flak directed against BioE recently, and I don't really find it totally founded. One common criticism is that BioE tends to explore a myriad of topics in all of engineering, i.e. EE, CS, Materials Science, MechE, ChemE, etc, but does not know as much as an engineer in those other disciplines. Well, OBVIOUSLY.
See, the problem is that BioE as a discipline of engineering isn't really well defined yet. It's just too new. Coupled with the fact that BioE is so multi-disciplinary, it is inevitable that we have to study so many different topics.</p>

<p>Advantages of BioE? Cutting edge stuff, ALL THE TIME. I mean, there are no textbooks out yet, so all we learn we learn from current research publications. For example in my Intro to BioE class (BioE 10, dill, you know what I'm talking about), we cover a ton of topics, and most of the research has occurred in the last 2-3 years. We even read/were tested upon material that had just come out August-September 2008. A couple of months ago. Wow.</p>

<p>So all in all, I'm a fan of BioE, especially at Berkeley. I was also accepted to Duke's BME program, which was a really, really tough call for me. Ultimately I went with Berkeley because of distance, general atmosphere, and $$$, but both programs are really similar in that there is a lot of flexibility (as opposed to UCSD, which is just evil =/ ). Def. look into Duke as well.
Go Bears :)</p>

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<p>I am thinking about applying under MechE for berk and BioE for UCSD.
I think both s1185 and you guys have good points for and against BioE.</p>

<p>Overall I just want to get into the CoE at berkeley, since BioE and EECS are super hard to get into, should MechE just be a tiny bit easier? =]</p>

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<p>Yes. It is. lol
Make sure your app/essay talks about MechE though, even if it is very little. Good luck, and we'll hopefully see you at Cal next year.</p>

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<p>I think its going to be tough to try to integrate MechE in my personal statement about "where i come from and how its shaped my dreams" but ill try. Right now I just talk about science in general.</p>