Any thoughts on BME undergraduate program at CMU, CWRU or Northeastern? It s definitely rated high at CWRU. At CMU, one needs to double major in BME along with some other Engineering program. Not sure about the Bioengineering at NE… Is it hard to double major and still do a premed track? Thanks!
Case doesn’t make you double major, but there are different tracks:
Biomedical Devices and Instrumentation
Biomechanics
Biomaterials Engineering
Biomedical Computing and Analysis
See https://engineering.case.edu/ebme/academics/undergraduate
With any college, fitting pre-med courses into Engineering is tight…but advisers will help you do it.
“Unless your SAGES First Seminar advisor is an engineer professor, it is better to declare BME now and then switch to a different major in a semester or two. The engineering curriculum is the most constrained of all CWRU majors. The faculty in CSE will probably give you better advice on how to utilize open slots from AP or transfer credits, how to navigate a pre-med curriculum within a CSE major, and how to structure your extracurricular activities to meet your career goals.”
Also if you search Biomedical and pre-med on the main case.edu page, you will get many examples of students who do it.
It is significantly more difficult to do pre-med or a double major than do the bme major alone.
@sanders123 The track in biomaterials pairs nicely with a pre-med focus. Undergraduate studies has a pre-med adviser that you could ask about the double major.
Thanks for all your replies. At Northeastern, one can complete BME in 4 years after doing 2 co ops. Does that mean the course load is much lighter than cmu or cwru?
Reread your literature. Northeastern is 5 years, including their co-op program … accreditation in BME by ABET requires a 4 year academic program.
Actually at this point, you should have 4 year plans printed out for all of your choices. Which one sounds interesting, which one veers into something you are sort of blah about? How do the courses relate to the department’s research goals and the other programs at the school (BME is multidisciplinary field). Do you want an EE focus, a ME focus, a materials science focus (and yes, that at least includes one semester of Orgo), or some imaging/comp sci focus?
Case has tracks, but does not go so far as to require a double major (that may be onerous or take 5 years, I would look at the CMU courseload and see if makes sense). If you need 5 years, you could try to get into the BS/MS program at Case, which would get you out of the no jobs for BS in BME issue. You don’t have to decide, so if you are firmly a pre-med by then, with great grades and progress on your med ECs … you could just stop doing the MS part and take your BS degree and go to med school.
CMU and Case will be hard programs … not sure about Northeastern (but I don’t think that one is as prestigious).
Also if you want co-op jobs, ask at NE what kind of placements their BME students get. If they are great, and you want to work after 5 years … maybe that is a plan (and you can earn money to pay college costs too).
Double major and pre-med in addition would be crazy, you would need to somehow get that all to fit into 4 years … ask CMU for a 4 year plan (I’m thinking 5!) or to talk to a student who has done this.
Case’s biomedical engineering department was awarded an award from the Hartwell Foundation. This is among the most prestigious awards for a department or researcher in biomedical engineering. Case is among the best.