<p>Bioengineer and Biomedical engineering are, in general, not the same thing. Bioengineering deals with things like tissue mechanics, cell manipulation, growing organs, etc. . It involves a lot of biology.</p>
<p>Biomedical engineering has a much heavier emphasis on traditional engineering and typically involves designing things like bone screws, pace makers, fixation pins, LVADS, instrumentation, etc. Some schools use the terms interchangibly, but check the course descriptions to see what a particular program's emphasis is (bioengineering or biomedical engineering). It's an important distinction because Medtronic, for example, hires a lot of biomedical engineers but signifcantly fewer bioengineers. </p>
<p>Ranking and name in BME is not nearly as important as a BME department's history and research. An ABET accredited program is also important. Schools that have a solid BME program will typically have some corporate contacts to leaders in the field (J&J, Beckman Coulter, Medtronic, Guidant, Boston Scientific, etc.). They may also have connects with smaller companies and have a good amount of research going on. The hotbeds for BME are the northeast (all over), California, Minnesota, and Florida/South Florida.</p>
<p>ABET accredidation is important because it gives you other avenues of getting a job (namely allowing you to sit for the FE exam). If you can't get a job with a BME company, you can take and hopefully pass the FE exam. This will demonstrate to non BME employers that you've got enough background in traditonal engineering subjects to work for them, and that your not just some sort of hyped up biology major. This option is not a possibility if you get a non accredited degree, no matter what the name on that degree is. The aforementioned approach is basically how I got an internship at Lockheed even though I'm a BME (with a ME concentration). </p>
<p>Some schools also allow or require that their BMEs actually take a good bit of their coursework in other departments like ME, EE, and IE, and may have specialized concentrations (like Bioengineering, Biomed-ME, Biomed-EE, etc). This is also very important and useful if you try and get work in an industry other than biomed.</p>