So I have a couple questions about my major. I got accepted but the acceptance letter says I have been admitted into the COE not which major. Does the mean I can declare my specific area of Engineering later. If not, how hard would it be to change from Mech E to Biomed E Basically, for college I was debating between biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering with a focus on biosystems. Since Berkeley was ranked higher in mechanical I chose mechanical engineering. However, after a lot of contemplation, I realized that I really want to do Biomed E. Any former/current UC Berk students willing to help me out?
I believe you’re going to be in Mech E, since that’s what you applied to.
From anecdotal evidence, switching majors in the COE isn’t that hard - I had two friends who switched, respectively, from Mech E to EECS and from Civil to Materials Science and Engineering. In both cases the COE told them that all they needed to do was finish all of the lower-division classes for the new major and keep above a 3.0 overall GPA. Both were successful in transferring, one after fall of her second year and one after spring.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure if there’s public data on this stuff overall - and I know Bio E is a fairly competitive program, so it may be harder to switch into. I’d suggest asking the COE what you’d need to do. But as a start, I’d try to take intro bio classes (BioE 10 and Bio 1A/1AL) and keep up a good GPA - courses and GPA seem to be the only things considered.
By the way, the major (and department) is Bioengineering, not Biomedical engineering.
Unless you specifically selected ‘Undeclared’ as your major when you applied, you should have a major within CoE.
As far as changing to BioE, you can certainly do that after you come in, however there were several of my ME peers who took BioE classes as ME major and some continued their grad studies switching to BioE or technically under ME but studying kinesiology and other BioE fields .
There are 5~6 concentrations of studies under BioE in case you haven’t checked out the BioE website already. If you’re into biomaterials or biomedical devices, you don’t even have to be under BioE since those studies are hybrid of ME and MSE with BioE application. There are several courses at both undergrad and grad level that are co-listed in both ME and BioE department (i.e. ME C117 = BioE C117, ME C115 = BioE C112)
Bottom line is, a number of studies and concentrations aren’t defined by a single major but rather a combination of several different majors, especially more apparent in grad school. If your particular interest (assuming you’re still exploring what you like) indicates switching to BioE gives a greater chance to study what you want, certainly make the change in major, but remaining in ME will still give much opportunity to study BioE, especially in areas that ME and BioE overlap. There are several common classes that all engineering majors have to take at least in the first 1.5 years, so don’t rush to change the major and keep looking up the career fields and list of research to see what is more relevant for you.
Welcome to Berkeley and congrats on your acceptance letter!
http://engineering.berkeley.edu/academics/majors-minors/change-major
http://engineering.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate-guide/degree-requirements-and-major-information
http://engineering.berkeley.edu/admissions/undergrad-admissions/prospective-freshman-faqs
The last link indicates that EECS and BioE are more impacted and difficult to change into.