<p>I noticed that there are many people who sign to do BME as an intended major. But I also do know that on the national level, most college students change their intended major more than once in their college career. Knowing that there are many students intending to major in BME at Case, what exactly is the drop-out rate for the major?</p>
<p>In other words, does the BME department maintain their freshman student base as the students get older? or do they drop many students so that only the elite are left? I understand that Case's BME program is "ranked" 4th in the nation, and thus many people may intend to do BME, but I really would like to know exactly how many stay on to finish the program.</p>
<p>I've never thought of it like that, but knowing Case as a serious academic school, I'm sure the students enrolled in the BME programs entend to continue with this program and continue to be strong at it. I'm not exactly sure about the statistics, but it would be interesting to see what they are.</p>
<p>I'm a frosh in BME right now...at the end of the Intro to BME course that most freshman that plan to major in BME take, our prof asked how many still planned to major in BME. Of the about 100 people, about 15 said they didn't plan to stick with it. I know that others drop out later, but I don't know any specific numbers. Case doesn't select who they allow in their undergrad BME program, it's open enrollment, it's just the students chosing they don't want to work that hard or in that discipline.
The biggest problem is so many people come into Case thinking that BME will be an easy engineering major. At many schools it's a degree in how to fix medical equipment, but the reason why Case is ranked so well is because it is not a technician program in the least. Getting a BME degree with a bioelectric specialty for instance essentially gives you the same training an electrical engineer would have with anatomy and biology courses added on top. BME IS NOT AN EASY MAJOR! :-) The faculty is great, the research possibilities are incredible, and the people that you meet with passion about changing lives through technology will influence you forever.<br>
A lot of people also think that BME would be excellent for a PreMed...while this is true, you get a very strong foundation in everything you need as a PreMed, it's very difficult to get the grades you need or want to get into your med school of choice.
The best way to determine whether BME is right for you is to take some time and look at the website at what the BME faculty are doing and what the classes are. We have to take the entire engineering core curriculum...that means Physics 1 and 2, Math through Calc 4, Circuits, Intro to Computer programming...not fluff classes, but completly manageable. I would also recommend taking the Intro to BME course, it's not a very heavy workload class, but it exposes you to the very different aspects of BME. A lot of my BME friends were thinking about changing their major, but when the class got to tissue engineering, they loved it and decided to stick with it.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with Ctheflute. While I'm not an engineer major, I can attest to the general fact that many who start out as BME tend to not stay in it because it's too hard. It is Case, and Case is serious about academics.</p>
<p>Ditto to the rest of what Ctheflute reported.</p>