Looking for some guidance to build a college list with safety, targets and reach schools for biomed engineering.
Prefer: California, Seattle, Boston area, Washington DC…northern east coast
Stats:
GPA: unweighted 3.96/4; weighted: 4.3/4. School does not inflate grades and is known as a tough academic program.
ACT: composite: 33, math 34, science: 33, reading: 35. English needs improvement and retaking it this month.
Intern at a major hospital for a year. Great extracurriculars.
APs are science, math, stats, psych, chem, economics. Lots of honors classes.
Do not need merit scholarships, but plan to work/study and wish to volunteer regularly at a hospital.
The California UC’s will be full pay so make sure $67K/year is affordable with no financial aid. Also the UC’s do not consider test scores and have become very competitive even for top students.
If she wants to do “Pre-Med” she will want to keep Undergrad costs reasonable since Medical school will be very expensive and little to no FA other than loans.
UCR has the Thomas Haider program which might be of interest.
If Rochester, NY is NE enough for you, take a look at the University of Rochester. Not only are they well known for research, the hospital is right across the street. It takes 10-15 minutes to get to the airport from a dorm.
This is a big list, but these colleges all offer a biomedical engineering major and are either in the designated cities/states, or close by, or in similarly large cities (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh), or are really well-known for their excellence in medicine and biomedical engineering (Johns Hopkins). There could be some nice merit from the universities in the “likely” category. The universities with asterisks by them were among universities that I saw highlighted multiple times for their teaching hospitals.
Likely
• Rutgers (NJ)*
• College of New Jersey
• U. Pittsburgh (PA )*
• Duquesne (PA )
• Drexel (PA )
• Widener (PA )
• Fairfield (CT)
• Loyola Marymount (CA)
• U. of the Pacific (CA)
• Stony Brook (NY)
• Hofstra (NY)
• New York Inst. of Technology
• CUNY: City College (NY)
• Wentworth Inst. of Technology (MA)
• Catholic U. (D.C.)
Possible
• U. Washington
• Boston University (MA)*
• Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo (SLO)
• Santa Clara (CA)
• UC Irvine
• UC Davis
• UC San Diego
• UC Riverside
• UC Santa Cruz
• Cal State: Long Beach
• San Diego State (CA)
• San Jose State (CA)
• George Washington (D.C.)*
• Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ)
Less Likely
• Johns Hopkins (MD)*
• U. Pennsylvania*
• Columbia (NY)*
• NYU (NY)*
• Harvard (MA)*
• MIT (MA)
• Tufts (MA)*
• Stanford (CA)*
• Cal Tech (CA)
• UC Berkeley (CA)
• UCLA (CA)*
• USC (CA)
I just feel that Rochester isn’t as big of a city, and from the locations that OP listed, it seemed as though the student had a strong preference for big cities or close proximity. Just did a quick web search and Rochester’s population is about 200,000 while Pittsburgh’s is a little over 300,000, so not monumentally different. But Rochester’s metro area is about 1 million whereas Pittsburgh’s is 2 million. So Rochester does have more folks than I thought, but that was my reasoning.
Gotcha. Having visited both colleges, there’s not much difference in what one will experience - except sports. Pitt is big on sports. Rochester isn’t. Both have terrific research and both have hospitals in easy walking distance of dorms. Pitt (the college itself) is a bit larger than Rochester at close to 20K undergrads vs 6K. Per capita I bet more students do research at Rochester if that’s of interest.
WSU is guaranteed admit with a 3.6 GPA. Also, it is in the middle of nowhere (Pullman, WA), which is about as far from Seattle you can get while remaining in Washington state. UW does not consider test scores but your GPA is strong. You can’t apply directly to Biomedical engineering (“Bioengineering” at UW), but you apply to the college of engineering by selecting an engineering major on you Coalition app and then can apply to Bioengineering one you are accepted to the CoE.
Coming from CA, Utah is a great safety (WUE makes it the same price as an instate UC and there are some higher level scholarships). Easy to get there, in a nice city with unsurpassed outdoor activities, and a major research hospital on campus. Much better bet as a safety in the west than WSU.
I would put Northeastern in the less likely category. I think that its acceptance rate looks to be around 6% this year. There are tons of very highly qualified students gunning for this program, and they just don’t have the capacity.