Biomedical/Electrical Engineering - Confusion - Help please!

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I've only a week left to choose and I'm pretty much confused.</p>

<p>When I grow up, I wanted to become a doctor. But I don't like their crazy lifestyle...I like traveling, researching, debating, etc.
I want to do something in the medical field in the future where I will have the ability to conduct research, make money, fix problems, but eh - idk what field that really is...</p>

<p>Any help?</p>

<p>For the past few months I've been leaning towards Biomedical Engineering; however the school I will be attending this fall as an undergrad freshman has a fairly new program for this major. It's not really settled in and has very few kids.
Besides that, now I'm wonderin if I should even pursue medical school.
I'm lost.
Sigh.
Should I do electrical engineering and see how my 4 years pass by so I can decide for med school/grad school? </p>

<p>My end goal is to become a doctor who also knows the ways of law and public speaking. I want to help people but also wish to do research among other great doctors and scientists. I hope to become a doctor. But the thing is, I don’t just want to be a normal doctor and help patients near my home. I want to be a doctor that will travel the world, help patients’ world-wide, build hospitals in poor places, and do research in finding new cures. And then I hear that doctors have trouble with their liscences when going to other countries. Their life is just so stressful. And medical school is tough..to where its all memorization..</p>

<p>I love math. For now. People say I'll hate DiffEq. But yeah. My passion is for sure in Math & Science...I like biology, but chemistry more. Sort've never understood Physics.</p>

<p>See how its all confusing?
Thanks for reading, if there's any suggestions or opinions that'd be awesome! :)</p>

<p>Considering what it takes to get into med school I would also take that into consideration. A friend’s kid with a near 4.0 college GPA and MCAT in the low 40’s was accepted by a couple of ‘near safety’ med schools, and ignored by some of the avant garde places… </p>

<p>Anyhow, tho, a doctor’s life is not necessarily stressful, if he or she does the right specialty. My kids see one of the top dermatologists in the US, and he’s the most relaxed person I can think of. The main cause of stress in the medical field is probably the fear of being bought out by some hospital or HMO, which seems to have happened to nearly every doctor we use, and also that Medicare rates will continue to cause problems…</p>

<p>^^ The stressed life of a doctor really depends on what type of doctor they are. Family doctors, doctors that work in hospitals, surgeons, are the types that will have a crazy lifestyle. </p>

<p>You said you never really understood physics, which will definetly be a problem for engineering because physics is a HUGE part of engineering.</p>

<p>The whole time I was reading your post, all I could think of was that you should be a pharmacist. You could travel the world and help poor countries like Africa. You could do research on new drugs. Or, you could work in a local pharmacy. The benefits of that would be that you leave your work at work. You get paid a lot, and have time to do other personal things because you generally don’t take your work home as a pharmacist. You would have much of the knowledge doctors do plus some. Also, you don’t really need physics but you need a lot of chemistry. If you wanted to know law and public speaking, maybe you could create your own business? You could run your own pharmacy, and have a mix of everything you want.</p>

<p>Just a suggestion, I hope it helps give you some ideas even if you don’t pick pharmacy!</p>

<p>Haha yeah. If i was to be a doctor…it’d been a family doctor/general ya know. And i know thats a tough life :o</p>

<p>And about the physics part, lol - I just never really took it…and well never really had a teacher so in high school it was just a blow off class honestly…but yeah if i dont like physics when i really learn it in college, then engineering shouldn’t be definetly, i agree?</p>

<p>Now pharmacist…wow never thought of that…i don’t even know anything about them lol. Is that a major…? Salary…? jobs…? How to study and become …? Omg more research to do :(</p>

<p>Yeah, before you go into engineering you would probably want to kno if you liked physics. Then again, I was reading some posts on CC and it turns out a lot of your coursework isn’t even used on the job, so I guess if you were really dedicated to engineering it could all work out? </p>

<p>It just seemed that for what you wanted to do, pharmacy would be a better choice than doctor or biomed. </p>

<p>You could get your bachelors in pre-pharmacy, or there are certain schools that condense your college time and allow you to get your PharmD in 6 years (basically you’re automatically accepted into pharmacy school, and they take around 2 years out of college). Salary: the median is somewhere between $100,00-125,00. Jobs: I think I mentioned some above. Don’t forget, they generally have a pretty relaxed lifestyle but they also have many options of what they want to do with their degree. How to study and become… college?</p>

<p>Engineer would be a tough path to get into med school due to the gpa is very hard to maintain. However, it is a good safety in case you do not want to pursue med school. IMO, the best way is to pick the easiest major and aim for 4.0 gpa, then study hard on MCAT and take those required premed courses.</p>

<p>^^ Pick the easiest major that will prepare you for the MCAT and med school… and only pick that path if you are 100% sure you will get your MCAT or something past your bachelors, you don’t want to be stuck with a major you don’t like or won’t support you financially if you decide not to go farther with your education.</p>

<p>Electrical Engineering and premed do not go together. You will need to take a lot of classes outside of your major to fulfill the premed requirements.</p>

<p>If Biomed is too new, have you considered chemical engineering?</p>

<p>If I read the original post correctly, Yshooter is a senior in HS. At many colleges, it is not critical to choose a major and decide on a career path while in HS. Instead you’d have the opportunity to try BME, EE, and medicine-related classes while in college and see if they appeal. My college didn’t even require declaring a major until junior year. </p>

<p>I majored in electrical engineering and also completed the pre-med track. It wasn’t as many extra courses as some might think. There was overlap in a lot of the pre-med chemistry courses and EE required chem courses (foundation requirements), and I used some of my electives for the pre-med biology courses. I also fulfilled my EE degree requirements by taking some EE classes that overlapped well with medicine such as Electrical Engineering in Medicine, and Medical Imagine Systems. I ended up pursuing graduate degrees in engineering , rather than medicine, so I never applied to med school. Looking back on it, I’m quite satisfied with that decision because engineering fits better with my interests, talents, and personality. I’ve read that engineering majors are looked upon more favorably by med school admissions than the common med school majors, like biology and chemistry. I agree that if engineering really drops your GPA, it is not going to be a helpful major for med school. However, engineering does not mean a low GPA for everyone. It was easier for me to maintain a high GPA in engineering classes as a whole than biology or humanities classes.</p>

<p>^ so did you complete all of the premed requirements while doing undergrad - 2 years of chemistry including one year of orgC, one year of biology with labs? Did you take MCAT?</p>

<p>I decided on engineering over medicine near the end of my 2nd year. This decision related to really enjoying my intro to EE class and getting an A+, while really disliking the rote and non-intuitive memorization of my biology classes. I felt that the engineering both better matched with my talents and interests. By that point I had taken almost all of the listed classes. I did not take the MCAT or pursue applying to med school. Instead I took the GRE and was accepted as a coterm MS in engineering. From that point on, I focused on engineering, but I still took some classes that combined engineering and medicine and kept the door open to switch back to medicine, if I choose to do so in the future (I did not). I was not the only EE major in my class/year who also did the pre-med track.</p>

<p>I am looking at the EE requirements at Stanford and don’t see any chemistry or biology requirements. I track the requirements closely since my daughter is a premed and based on what is needed, they add up to 45 credits or more. I don’t see 45 credits of leeway in EE requirements.</p>

<p>Did you just not need as many EE credits when you did undergrad?</p>

<p>As a new freshman, I was not certain what engineering major I wanted to pursue only that I was interested in engineering. Our dorm had a common counselor for engineering students who recommended to us all that we take chemistry, which I did. I took this same chem class with the premed students and enjoyed it, which led to me pursuing the premed track. I don’t recall for certain whether chemistry was required when I was a student or whether it was just a class that our engineering counselor thought we should take. When looking at their web site, I do see that chem is not required for EE, but chem 31 is listed as one of the science classes for some EE specialties. Bio is definitely not a degree requirement.</p>

<p>A typical schedule at Stanford is ~15 credits per quarter or ~45 credits per year. Most students come in with transferable AP credits, so in 4 years one can easily do well over 180 credits. An EE major at Stanford requires 106-133 credits, leaving room for far more than 45 credits while still finishing in 4 years. </p>

<p>For me personally, I did not just read the minimum degree requirements and take those courses. Instead I took what courses interested me and often took well above 15 credits per quarter. I took the minimum EE courses, as well as the pre-med track courses, and various other courses that interested me. For example, for awhile I tried to create a self designed major that combined biology and psychology into a unified way of looking at the same problem. I also entered a 2nd coterm program in a field unrelated to EE (MS&E with concentration in investment science) before graduating. By the end of my 4th year, I probably had more than 100 credits above the min EE major numbers listed above. This includes nearly a year of transferable credits from when I was in HS (half time student at state school while in HS + summer classes at RPI).</p>

<p>Adding to my earlier reply, looking up the specific degree requirements on the Stanford website shows a requirement of 180 credit in total for a Bachelors, including the 106-133 credits mentioned earlier for the EE specific requirements. This leaves 47 to 74 credits of required electives, implying that completing the pre-med track will not increase credits required to graduate, if a portion of those required electives are used for the pre-med courses. The same could be said for many other majors.</p>

<p>Data - I am encouraging my D to take BioE. The problem with BioE is similar to EE that that they require well over 100 credits just for the major. Adding the required GERs, breadth etc adds another 30-40 credits which means premed requirements fill up the rest. The big complaint is that choosing BioE and doing premed leaves room for nothing else. AP credits are pretty much out the window when pursuing premed since all courses need to be repeated. Only area there might some credit is language.</p>

<p>Btw - are you still in college or working?</p>

<p>I agree that engineering degrees at Stanford don’t leave a lot of time for non-premed electives, but it’s certainly doable, especially with BioE (since BioE requires ~1 year of chem and biology). I was under the impression that AP credits are okay for general bachelors degree requirements outside of premed, but not for the premed requirements. </p>

<p>

I’m currently out of school and working. I have a day job in EE, but make the majority of my income through a website I started, which would not have happened without the MS&E classes I mentioned earlier.</p>

<p>I hate to be the buzzkill here, but the pharmacy field is turning very bleak. Mainly because how pharmacy schools are popping out of thin air, and the myth that the old baby boomers will require a TON more pharmacists.</p>

<p>I’ll explain. Many people want to work in medical but don’t want to go through the rigor of getting into medical school and so forth. Graduating out of a PharmD program can take as little as 6 years with little competition to get in, in contrast to 8. Also, pharmacy school is cheaper even in rate, so that adds to it. There is the myth of getting over 100k starting, and that there are a ton of jobs that the media is chanting over and over.</p>

<p>Pharmacists at drug stores NOW are getting entry salaries at around 70-80k (and luckily for drug store companies, they can pay that low because there is a huge supply of pharmacists now). They work 12 hour shifts (roughly around there) with no breaks, and a lot I know work seven days or M-F and every other weekend. Drug store pharmacists entail little math or science, they basically doublecheck the doctor to see that they didn’t screw up, toss the customer their pills, and send them on their way. Because their job is based strongly on customer service, if they take a little TOO long and someone complains, they suffer. Also, drug stores are trying to give all responsibilities as legally possible to the pharmacy techs because they are cheaper to hire. Also, there is a hiring freeze for pharmacists in big cities and I heard there is SOME demand for pharmacists in rural areas, but I’m talking really rural like Western North Dakota (these rural jobs can pay a little more because no one wants to work in these places).</p>

<p>Hospital pharmacists pay less, but their work is much less stressful. They don’t have much jobs either. Nuclear pharmacists don’t have a lot of job growth because there is little demand for medicine that needs radioactive material and the fact that the influx of pharmacists have taken. Another profession that PharmDs can pursue is pharmacology (researching to create new drugs) but also is slow because of the pharmaceutical business.</p>

<p>If you want to do something related to pharmacy, become a professor in pharmacy, with the growth of pharmacy schools I don’t see a hiring freeze for them haha. But only pursue pharmacy if that’s a topic that TRULY interests you, because if you have the passion you will conquer all the odds in some way.</p>

<p>^^ That’s an interesting view point on the topic of pharmacy that I never really considered. Definitely take that into account while making your major decision. Something I thought was interesting was that hospital pharmacists make less money and have less stress. I thought it was the other way around.</p>