Biomedical engineering?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>hi guys, I'm gonna enroll at Purdue this spring and I was wondering about the Biomedical Engineering field. I am quiet interested in it and am planning to specialize in genetics later on. However, I was worried about the job opportunities.. I read that there aren't many jobs for biomedical engineers available. Due to this reason, my relatives were trying to persuade me into changing my stream to computer engg (which i also find interesting but not as much as i find BME). So, what do you think? do you think its a wise desicion to take up BME? or should I just go for computer engg?</p>

<p>(P.S: I also wanted to know the average starting salary of a biomedical engineer.)</p>

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<p>bump! (sorry for digging up an old thread, i was just going through the same dilemma right now as a rising sophomore at USC)</p>

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<p>Undergraduate BME is a waste of time. If you’re interested in it, get a BS in ME or EE and then get a MS or PhD in BME. There are very few good job opportunities for those with only a BS in BME. At least if you get a ME or EE degree you can choose to not continue on with school and can get a job if you so desire.</p>

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<p>Hey, PurdueEE that’s complete and utter crap. Check the stats from your own school and if they’re like those at UW Madison and Iowa, 95% of BMEs are placed immediately upon graduation with salaries the same as the other discplines.</p>

<p>Barney, do the same. Purdue probably has exhaustive stats on who recruits, how many jobs, what they pay etc etc. How likely is it that you get your BSBME and NOT get a job to your liking? Slim to none. But don’t deal with these anecdotal generalizations. Do a nickel’s worth of research and you’ll find your answer.</p>

<p>In fact, here’s the page you need to look at.<br>
<a href=“Purdue CCO”>https://www.cco.purdue.edu/Student/PostGradData.shtml&lt;/a&gt;
Mean BME salary 55k. Number of 2008 grads seeking employment at time of survey (which is not cited): one. Not the most exhaustive set of stats on earth but certainly sufficient to tell the story.</p>

<p>And really think about your passion and interest. If you’re equally interested in computer engineering, great. Compare the two and make your choice. But if not, stick with what thrills you. You ain’t gonna starve.</p>

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<p>In fact, that’s not the page you need to look at unless you only care about salary. The pages you need to look at are the Careers pages on company websites you might be interested in looking for. That might give you a bit more perspective on what the degree actually gets you beyond just some number. </p>

<p>I considered BME and decided against it after doing a good amount of research. When I looked into it pretty much every job I found interesting required, at minimum, a MS. You could most definitely obtain a job with a BS but they were usually not jobs I was very interested in. These jobs were often rather generic and open to anyone with a science or engineering major. Examples would be QA and process engineers.</p>

<p>While it’s likely that the BS BME degree will become increasingly more acceptable as more and more students acquire it I don’t think it’s worth the gamble. Let’s assume your plan is to go to graduate school for BME, but after four years of school you’ve had more than enough. Would you rather be “stuck” with a BS in EE or BME? </p>

<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#outlook]Engineers[/url”>http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#outlook]Engineers[/url</a>]
Biomedical engineers, particularly those with only a bachelor’s degree, may face competition for jobs. Unlike many other engineering specialties, a graduate degree is recommended or required for many entry-level jobs.</p>

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<p>PurdueEE, the page I’ve posted also links to “Post Graduation Reports” or some such. Look a bit down the page and you’ll see them. They show number of students obtaining jobs, going to grad school, etc.</p>

<p>I respect your research and the time you’ve taken to gather it and make your plans accordingly. I think that Barney and anyone in the position of considering BME or any other program should do the same. I take exception to your calling BME a “waste of time” because that’s not only a sweeping generalization but discouraging to someone who might really enjoy and excel in that field.</p>

<p>I suggest co-oping to any engineering student interested in both learning about his/her chosen field and in increasing their value to recruiters.</p>

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<p>Thanks, Beastman, for your post. I’m really getting nervous with all those references to BS BME being a “waste of time”. It will be a major expense and an extremely difficult geographic change for our son to obtain a BS BME, but it’s what he really wants to do. It’s very tempting to “make him go” to a southern state school that he could probably get a free ride to, but if he, as was mentioned above, is burned out after a BS, all he’ll be able to do is be a EE or ME, or whatever degree he obtains, which is really not what he wants to do. He really wants to be a BME. If he goes on for his master’s, fantastic. But it would be great if he could get a job right out of college if he wants to go that route.</p>

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<p>Montegut, I bump into you about 10 times a day on this crazy forum! You and I share the same brain! err… something!</p>

<p>While I argue with the “time-wasting” contingent I, like you, have my ear to the ground on this very question. My son and I visited a friend’s office at a biomedical company locally for “what do engineers do” day recently. They make test equipment that analyze large volumes of blood, etc. I asked if they hire BMEs and our engineer-guide said, well, they’re sort of jacks of all trades, masters of none. Hmmm… They hire MEs, EEs, ChemEs and they work together in teams, much as has been described in these forums.</p>

<p>So what does this mean? All hope is lost? Legions of BMEs doomed to dead-end careers?</p>

<p>I’m not quite there yet, for sure. The employment numbers I’ve cited here and have seen at other schools don’t lie. BMEs are as employable as any other engineer, at least on paper and BME programs are growing like crazy. But yes, 1/3 go to med school, 1/3 to grad school and only 1/3 to industry. </p>

<p>So here’s my plan of attack. My son’s interested in three schools at the moment. UWisc, Iowa and Marquette. I plan to ask directly of the career office: who’s recruiting your BMEs? To do what jobs? What’s up with this time-wasting theory? Same question of the BME co-ops. Who’s hiring them? To do what? Co-op rotations can move around between disciplines, giving the student worker a good broad view of what’s available. My ME wife did co-op rotations in multiple divisions of 3M, some in medical, some in magnetic media. She worked one in marketing, for pete’s sake. And remember that co-op is the holy grail of employment. If he co-ops and does something suitably BME-ish, the chances of him landing an offer upon graduation are extremely high. </p>

<p>Second plan of attack: do what my friend PurdueEE has done. Check a few biomedical firms in an area where he might wish to live to see whom they hire.</p>

<p>Third plan of attack: re-think the BME question. Hey, son, when you say you want to be a BME, what do you mean? Well, gosh, that means I want to design stents and prosthetics and such. I’m interested in health care. I don’t want to design brake pads for GM. Ahhh, you’ll say, knowing that MEs and EEs etc can do these things. In other words, don’t exclude that he could study ME with the intention of WORKING for a biomedical company. He tries to co-op/interview with Boston Sci rather than Rust Belt Inc.</p>

<p>So I’m with you. My son really loves biology and has an affinity for it. It makes no sense to me that he’d forgo BME to take three courses in thermodynamics. There are a few dots that need to be connected!</p>

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<p>There are plenty of jobs in BME for people with just undergraduate degree, but BME is more competitive than other engineering fields due to burgeoning interest, so if your son doesn’t keep a decent GPA he may have more difficulty than he would in other fields, but if he stays focused and performs well (shouldn’t be hard if he really enjoys BME) then he won’t have trouble finding a job and making decent money with just a BS. With that said, to have more flexibility in choosing what you want to work with it may require a MS, but it is not as if getting your MS is some huge burden, and if you like the jobs you can get with a BS (which are still plentiful and growing, albeit competitive) it won’t be a concern. Your son could also get a job after undergrad and later decide to go get a more advanced degree if he wanted to specialize in some other field of BME/get a more favorable job, but he shouldn’t be discouraged from pursuing his passion simply because he is worried about this made up job crisis for BME’s. BME employment is the fastest growing in engineering (21% compared with 8% for ChemE, and just 4% for ME, non-computer related EE, and Materials Engineering, which are the other fields related to BME).</p>

<p>Regarding pay, Biomedical Engineers make competitive salaries when compared to other engineering majors(although the do typically have slightly lower starting salaries). All this talk about how they are paid less is a misnomer. (see the below table) I left out the engineering fields that don’t really pertain to BME, since that is your sons interest.</p>

<p>Notice that mechanical engineers make less, and Electrical engineers only do marginally better than BME’s.</p>

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<p>And for starting salaries, BME starts lower but it is still good pay and as you saw above it becomes more competitive with other fields very quickly:</p>

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<p>And as beastman pointed out above, if your son wants to work in the biomed field he’ll be wanting the same jobs that the BME’s with BS want and he’ll still be competing for those jobs if he majors in something else. It is not as if it is easier to get a BME job with an ME or EE degree than a BME degree… When others point out higher salaries and easier job placement for other majors they are pointing out jobs that your son likely is not interested in so don’t let irrelevant statistics sway your choice.</p>

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<p>Thanks so much for these posts. I agree. If BME jobs are so competitive, wouldn’t you have an edge with a BME degree rather than an ME or EE degree?</p>

<p>Beastman, please update me on any info you gain on your visits. I would so appreciate it.</p>

<p>A big fear of mine is son just giving up on engineering if he majors in ME and just throws in the towel after thermodynamics or heat transfer, as my husband did.</p>

<p>If his BME curriculum has engineering courses, but is not overrun with them, he may more likely stick it out in engineering and get that engineering degree.</p>

<p>I’m strongly encouraging schools with BS/MS programs so the transition into the grad program won’t be such a jump.</p>

<p>As he’s a male, he may not be so anxious to get married, like his momma did, and forego getting the master’s, but who knows what the future holds. Another reason why I’m anxious about unemployability without a master’s.</p>

<p>I am hopeful for a good advisor, who can guide him in course selection. </p>

<p>Which brings up a question, when you interview for your first engineering job, do the employers look at just the fact that you have a BS in BME, or will they look at your transcript and see that you also took a lot of basic engineering courses that may give you the needed skills for the position they’re looking to fill?</p>

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<p>The advice that I have received from my professors tends to agree with most of the posters here. If you are thinking of bioengineering or biomedical engineering get your undergrad in EE, ME, or materials. The reason behind this is that you are going for an undergrad degree and thus should not specialize (pigeon-hole). Get as broad of an education as possible, your MS or PhD is where you tend to specialize. </p>

<p>Personally, I got my undergrad in CompE, and am working on my Master’s in EE. Yet, in my Master’s I’m working on bioelectrical signals, for wireless sensors. At least to me, making a jump into bio from ECE is not too hard since the body transmits information basically in the same way that electronics do. </p>

<p>I wasn’t planning on getting my Master’s right after undergrad, but things went that way. I was lucky enough to get a job right out of college, and my employer pays for continued education. I was basically in your son’s shoes, not married and no kids, so I might as well get my Master’s for free. </p>

<p>For course selection I would simply say use common sense. Example, I had two courses to choose from, Computer Networks and TCP/IP to fulfill my degree requirement. One of my professors pointed out that the Computer Networks course was the theory of networks, whereas TCP/IP is simply a protocol and can thus change. He recommended us not to take the TCP/IP since it is just the current technology that we use and may not be applicable over time. </p>

<p>For me, the employers first looked at my degree, than what I listed on my resume. Usually for a fresh grad, you won’t have too much experience, such as in my case. In place of the experience I listed some of the subjects that I studied, and the technologies/software that I was familiar with. Almost none of the interviewers asked for transcripts until later in the process. I would also list anything that your son might consider an asset with the interviewer. I got lucky as I had listed being a tutor and bartender through college. Most of the interviewers liked the tutoring since it demonstrates that you have somewhat good communication skills and can relate material to people that are having difficulty with it, at least it is hoped for. The bartending helped out since the interviewer used to be bartender when he was in college and understood that to do that job most people have to multitask and have good communication skills. Now, both of those positions are not on my resume as I have replaced them with more professional experience, but both did help me. </p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

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<p>Employers will want to know what skills you have, whether you got them through courses or co-op, etc… If you major in BME your curriculum at most school is pretty rigid so this shouldn’t be an issue. Most places are simply looking to see that you have the background to easily transition into your new job. No degree will likely prepare you exactly for what you will be doing (that would be trade school), but if you get a BME degree and enter into BME positions you should have all the necessary requirements as far as courses go.</p>

<p>You mention that you are worried that your son may not like his engineering courses, or at least that you husband did not. I don’t know your son, so it may be presumptive of me to say this, but if you are going to major in BME you must like engineering. Lots of people think what BMEs do/create is interesting, but that doesn’t mean they will actually like BME. Just make sure your son is truly interested in engineering. If he would hate ME and EE then he probably won’t enjoy BME either. If he doesn’t like the calculus, physics, and engineering courses related to actually designing things he may be better suited in science rather than engineering, but that route would almost certainly require graduate school.</p>

<p>What exactly about BME does your son like? Answering that question should give you some idea about whether science or engineering is a better fit.</p>

<p>As for the worries about finishing, if he picks something he loves doing I don’t think that will be a concern. If he just wants to get a degree and get to work and doesn’t really enjoy what he is doing it is more likely he will give up.</p>

<p>And don’t rely to much on advisors for course selection. Some are good, but they can really screw things up. Make sure you take pre-reqs in a manner that doesn’t exclude you from taking certain required classes when you need to thereby forcing you to delay your plans. Listen to the advisor, but don’t let them be authoritative in scheduling.</p>

<p>I also agree that BME does somewhat pigeon-hole you, but if you’re sure that’s what you want this isn’t an issue.</p>

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<p>What about Computer Science as a major? I keep seeing ME, EE, and ChemE as the best majors to get into the BME field, but for where I leave (Silicon Valley) I see CS as the most versatile major, given that every company in the world needs a Computer Scientist aboard to make things work, in addition to the massive tech field in my area, so that’s what I currently am at USC.
However, honestly I don’t want to be behind a desk coding forever, and I am fascinated by the biotech and BME fields. If I were to pick up a Biotechnology minor (it’s a fairly big minor, 7 science classes, 4 business), and a BME master’s would I be able to get a job at biotech firms, preferably not one that’s just more coding? Thanks!</p>

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<p>If you could get into a BME masters program that would work, but computer science isn’t really related. You might be able to get into computational biology/bio-informatics though.</p>

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<p>DeadMonkey321: Do not do a CS major unless you like programming. That’s all I have to say :)</p>

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<p>But assuming I had a Master’s in BME I would be good? It seems that having the minor and master’s in BME would give me a good enough background, given that the minor would be the scientific background equivalent to that of BME majors, almost on par with bio majors.
At my school they have majors in BME (jack of all trades style), BME (Electrical) and BME (Chemical), with special emphases in the respective subjects which seem interesting as well, but I get the feeling that they would force me into an industry with a relatively limited scope (albeit a field I want to be a part of).
And Ghandiji, I do like coding a lot, I just don’t really want to be behind a desk forever. But yeah, that’s where i feel like I would like the BME major more, it just seems like it’s too limited.</p>

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<p>This comment is not as much about BME as it is about the general business of getting hung up TODAY about academic decisions and how they will affect careers TOMORROW. </p>

<p>And this is my theory, strictly. I think it becomes very risky and uncertain to extrapolate too far into your career years the decisions you make as a 17/19/20-year old today about your course of study. Really, there is one job that’s heavily impacted by your academics, and that’s the first one. When and if you move to a second job, that employer will likely be as interested or more interested in your WORK experience than your academics. And by the time you’re 5-6 yrs out of school your academic record will be a 1" tall blurb on your resume. I say this because I see a lot of kids (and parents of kids, which is what I am) agonizing about very detailed aspects of their academics and how it will affect them in the job market years down the road.</p>

<p>My belief is that whether you’re studying BME or anthropology, your prospects in the job market will be good IF you’re passionate about your subject area and IF you’ve gotten some experience along the way (intern! co-op!) and IF your academics are decent and IF (get ready for this one!) you come across in an interview as a communicative human being that the interviewer would actually like to work with. And you know what? I don’t think the recruiter will necessarily give a fiddler’s fart if you took ME300a or ME300b, or have a 3.7 or a 3.3.</p>

<p>Focus on the Big Picture. Make choices today that point you in your area of interest and offer you some flexibility if your interests change. My son thinks BME is for him and while I’d like to be certain that the job market will shower him with opportunities, the fact is I just don’t know. But I’m not too worried because even if he strays from that path he will likely stay within the realm of technical degree programs that generally speaking lead to good jobs. And really, that’s all the certainty we can ask for about outcomes that are years down the road.</p>

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<p>Okay then for someone who is fascinated by Biotechnology/BME and at the moment plans on going to grad school for BME, which would be a smarter path?

  • Computer Science major / Biotechnology minor (i think this minor actually takes more science classes then our BME majors, and is potentially more relevant to what I want to do: i.e. genetic, molecular stuff more than prosthetics)
  • BME major / Computer Science minor</p>
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<p>everybody do the bump.</p>

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<p>IDEA!</p>

<p>It turns out for the same number of units as the Biotechnology minor, I could actually remove the business classes and get a BA in Biology. Then I would have a double-major with CS/Biology, and I could do MS in BME later if I feel I still want it, and get an MBA later. Good plan? Because I like it right now.</p>