<p>Hello,
I’m part of Brown’s class of 2015 and I’m in a bit of a conundrum.
Since my sophomore year in high school I have always wanted to major (concentrate) in a science and technology intensive field. My hope is to one day (if it hasn’t been cured by the time I’m out of college) is to work in the field of HIV research, improving treatments, etc.
The point is that I decided that I wanted to major in BME, however just last night I was reading about different Brown concentrations, and I stumbled upon computational biology, which also seems incredibly interesting/ science and technology intensive.</p>
<p>I wanted to ask this forum, in which concentration am I more likely to be able to work in this field? Thank you so much for your valuable time.</p>
<p>I can’t really tell you which to concentrate in. That’s a decision that you can make as time passes and you take classes and talk to professors in both departments. However, if BME is still a consideration, you should definitely stay in that program and take the freshman year engineering classes. They’ll probably cover many of the requirements for Comp Bio, and you won’t have to worry about having missed part of the BME sequence if you make up your mind to do BME later.</p>
<p>Start out on the ENGN track and if you can handle it, try a course like CS15 or CS17. If you change your mind and go from Biomedical Engineering to CompBio, you won’t be far behind because the two concentrations have a bit of overlap.</p>
<p>BME is the field you need to go into if you want to do comp bio unless you don’t want to understand anything they try to teach you…then just do comp bio. But trust me, BME sucks it is the hardest major in America and will make you sad on the inside. But then again I’ve heard Brown is pretty lax so maybe not.</p>
<p>^ Nonsense. Go take a look at Brown’s Comp Bio requirements before spouting rubbish.</p>
<p>Back to actual helpful advice, do also keep in mind that Comp Bio is very requirement intensive. On top of that, there seems to be many mandated classes they want you to take. If you start the CS sequence in your sophomore year, make sure you plan carefully so that you can complete all the requirements on time.</p>