<p>What is the career path for a bachelor's in biomedical engineering and how significant could a masters be in this field?</p>
<p>Hello again, gagglefish. My son is an entering freshman, and had hoped to get a BS in BME. As we did our college search, it became more and more apparent that at least a masters was going to be necessary for him to pursue his goal to work as a BME, so he decided to get his BS in ME and then pursue BME in grad school. </p>
<p>There are, however, schools in the midwest with BME undergrad that also have coop/internship programs, although they may not fit your 25K criteria that you referred to in another post. However, their financial aid for internationals may be more generous than that offered to my son.</p>
<p>You might want to check out University of Iowa or University of Missouri-Columbia or University of Minnesota.</p>
<p>MS and PhD degrees are HUGE in BME. In fact, they’re close to being required. The career prospects for a BS BME are, unfortunately, not very good.</p>
<p>That’s what we came to earn, Purdue. For son to get his BS in BME at the schools he wanted to attend, we would have accumulated over 120K in debt. The fact that he would have had to attend grad school was a big influence on his decision to take the full ride and get a regular BSE, and save for grad school.</p>
<p>so it is better to pursue a bachelors in mechanical engineering and then do a masters in biomed?</p>
<p>That’s what they are trying to get at.</p>
<p>Not necessarily mechanical. Maybe electrical as well. </p>
<p>Marquette had three different divisions under their BME program: Biomechanics, biocomputing, and bioelectronics.</p>
<p>Depending on your field of interest, you could maybe major in computer engineering or electrical engineering instead of mechanical.</p>
<p>I would definitely take computer courses, though, as we’ve done job searches for BME careers and many have asked for experience or knowledge of computer languages such as C++. These may be covered by an engineering course, but if not, you may want to pick it up in summer school or as an elective.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I’m at WashU, and am a BME undergrad. The “plan” all along was to go to grad school since I knew jobs for bme undergrads weren’t all that common.
Yeah… not going to grad school anymore (I don’t want to go into research…), so I’m double majoring. And yes, I can still graduate in 4 years.</p>
<p>As Montegut said, it doesn’t have to be mechanical, although that would be beneficial if you are interested in biomechanics. Personally, I’m interested in the bioelectric side, so I’m doubling with electric. And from simple internship searches for next summer, there are plenty of opportunities for EE’s looking at what you would think would be a BME job.
(That’s why they say a bme is a jack of all trades, master of none)</p>