<p>How is BME @ Cal? Anyone here have experience with that department?</p>
<p>Some like it, some don't. Some say not to go to Cal if you want to major in BME, but regardless, its BME department is strong.</p>
<p>NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas</p>
<p>The US News ranking for undergrad places it in the top 10 or so, I think. It's a good program, at any rate.</p>
<p>Is that graduate school or undergrad?</p>
<p>How did they come up with NRC rankings when the last rankings were done in 1995 and the BioE dept wasnt founded until 1998? Besides, NRC is for graduate, not undergraduate, programs.</p>
<p>Yes, the NRC ranking is for grad. Search the forums for the US News undergrad ranking -- Berkeley's is still a top-rated program.</p>
<p>NRC rankings are not relevant. Try US News.</p>
<p>Generally it is a bad idea to base your decision to attend a college based on the strength of a specific department. 1) most people end up changing their majors so the point becomes irrelevant and 2) the value you gain from college is from the overall experience and not purely academics - while you should choose a graduate program on departmental strength, the strength of your undergraduate department will be mostly irrelevant. Most employers will not hire you based on your department, and graduate programs will be able to overlook a weaker (and if we're just comparing top 10 engineering programs, minimally weaker) department if you have a grades, coursework, and research experience.</p>
<p>My experience with the department (I recently graduated) has been far from positive. The office staff are often clueless and unorganized. The curriculum, compared to higher ranked programs (e.g. JHU, UCSD) is much too free-form and "engineering light" to make you a competitive candidate for employment if you fail to take the initiative to self-specialize. (see the thread I linked above for details) Theyve redesigned the curriculum this year for the better and hope to get the main track (not the premed track) accredited, but that still doesn't take away the faults that the industry has against BioE grads in general.</p>
<p>That said, you should not avoid Cal just because I have some beef with the BioE department and its curriculum. There's much more to absorb here than a few classes. If you want to work in bioengineering, the EECS, MEchE, ChemE, and Mat Sci departments are all very strong. If you're just interested in the subject and hope to do better things, then be assured that a good number of upper division courses in the department are graded fairly leniently (even though lower division courses shared with others, eg physics, linear algebra, are not).</p>
<p>I've been debating whether or not to apply to UCSD for a while. Can I still add it? (when I turned in the UC app, I only turned in UCLA and Berkeley)</p>
<p>It is very shallow to rate a department based on some crapshoot ranking. I am a currently a BioE at Cal myself, and I can confidently say it is far from a top-rated program. Any specific questions are welcomed, but I highly recommend against going to Cal for BioE, or BioE in general for that matter.</p>
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I've been debating whether or not to apply to UCSD for a while. Can I still add it?
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<p>No. I don't think that's an open major anymore.</p>