<p>i've seen other topics similar to this but most are a little old so i was looking for some more recent advice if anyone could help me out:
is it a good idea to do biomedical engineering as a pre-med course? i heard as long as u get in the requires pre-med classes (which isnt too difficult for BME) u can use it to get into med school. and if yes, any advice on a BME college? i've heard JHU is good but i like Duke. any tips? thanks</p>
<p>You can major in anything and go to medical school. The key factors are your GPA and MCAT scores. Obviously, BME is a difficult major, but you need to study why you love. And by the way, JHU isn’t good for BME, it is regarded as the best program in the country.</p>
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<p>what about duke?</p>
<p>How strong of a student are you? GPA? test scores?</p>
<p>Eng’g is one of the hardest majors to get a high GPA. It’s not unusual for eng’g students to graduate with low 3.X GPAs. Med schools are not going to give you a break because your major was eng’g.</p>
<p>Also…pick a school where your stats are well within the top quartile. If you pick a school where you were “lucky to get in” because your stats were average from the school, then that means that your premed classmates will be stronger students than you are…and guess who’ll likely be going home with A’s? Most schools use the premed prereqs as weeder classes and limit the number of A’s given. </p>
<p>We’ve seen this happen here. Premed kids with low-average stats for their top schools end up posting here that their GPA’s aren’t med-school-worthy.</p>
<p>Duke is also a very strong BME program, probably in top 5-10, depending on where you get the info.</p>
<p>You mention in another thread that you’ve “heard” that being a biomedE major is an “edge” when applying to med schools. That’s not true…at all.</p>
<p>I know that there are kids out there that think biomedE sounds sexy and that med schools will accept you because you’re going to develop some amazing cure…but that’s not true. First of all, undergrad BiomedE is almost a misnomer. BiomedE undergrad majors aren’t doing medical work. They’re not more prepared for med school. </p>
<p>do not major in biomedE just because you think it will impress med schools…it won’t.</p>
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<p>oh okay the article i saw said that studying engineering along side pre-med classes gives u and edge in the technological sense. like u can cope with the fast advancing medical tech faster than most others since u actually understand wats going on</p>
<p>I don’t know if there’s any info out there indicating that BME majors have a higher rate of acceptance, but I believe that there is data from the AAMC that they have higher MCAT scores than almost all majors.</p>
<p>oh really? well i do kno that like a 1/3 or so of BME undergraduates (in Duke at least) go to med school</p>
<p>^is that published or verifiable information? Be very careful when quoting statistics that a school puts out or saying “I heard that…”. Just because someone went to Duke as a BME major does not automatically increase their chances. Admission to med school is still highly dependent on GPA and MCAT score and NOT on the major that one chose.</p>
<p>Suppose that 1/2 of Duke BME class apply to med school, and 1/3 of the Duke BME class go to a med school. The acceptance rate is then 67%, which is not that high. So I suspect that the % of Duke BMEs applying to med schools may be lower than 50% if what you said is true.</p>
<p>I think most students choose the BME major because of its perceived benenit of being a good “backup plan.” Everything else is secondary. I believe also, at least at a strong BME programs like those at JHU, Duke and likely UC San Diego, the proportion of more competitive students may be higher. If you have what it takes, go for it. But do not rely on it giving you an edge. Actually, for an applicant who would like to attend A medical school rather than a top research one, the competition in these 3 programs may be more fierce just because of the student composition in them – and what you learn there may not be more useful (when you get to a med school) than what you may learn in most other academic majors because of its math/physics/engineering inclined courses in BME, IMHO.</p>
<p>I heard at many med schools, if the professors try to present materials in a typical undergraduate science/engineering way, it is a big turn off for most preclinical med school students – as they think it is a waste of their time and efforts when their focus is exclusively on either boards test or the clinical training. An exception may be for those MD/PhD students as they may have the need to learn that in a deeper level. A BME major graduate once posted on SDN that in almost two years of his time in med school, he had seen a formula whose understanding requires a very basic calculus background (like what you may have learned in a high school AP Calc class) exactly once.</p>
<p>PsychoDad</p>
<p>AMCAS tables for MCAT scores by majors are here:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf</a></p>
<p>The trouble is that engineering isn’t listed as a category. There’s debate whether engineers are included among the physical science majors or among other majors category. IIUC, student self-identify their majors on the primary so engineers could represented within several categories depending on how individuals chose to list their major.</p>
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A clarification on this: DS once told us one of the MD/PhD students tend to ask too many questions at a deeper level in class (Is she/he the student who consistently studies more than 13 hours every day – according to DS, even before the preparation of the STEP-1 test?!) It causes some “resentment” from many other students as they are not motivated in learning things in that way just to pass the boards test with a good enough score.</p>
<p>It appears there is some “disconnect” between these two groups of the students due to their different focus or future plan, practicing doctors vs medical scientists. And this happens at a school which has relatively more focus on grooming some medical scientists as a part of their mission. (I guess ditto for a school like WashU, UTSW, Penn, etc. e.g., at the second look event at UTSW, there appears to be a major recruitment effort for their incoming students to join a research lab in addition to the typical MD training. It was funny that DS met an international student there who was graduated from my alma mater – DS learned by talking to him that the college I attended when I was his age now is not a “bad” one – but I majored in an arguably easier major, an engineering major at that time.)</p>