<p>I am wondering what you all think of Duke BME vs Penn BME vs Stanford BME (pre-med route). If you had the choice, which one would you choose and why? I have received a likely letter from Duke, but I am unsure of my admission to Stanford and Penn at the moment. Stanford is my number one choice, and I will probably attend it if accepted. I basically want to know if Duke BME (pre-med route) or Penn BME (pre-med route) is better, but I thought I would throw Stanford in the mix too. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>For pre-med, it doesn’t matter. Just choose which school you think you’d enjoy the most. Also be aware that there’s a decent chance that you won’t end up pre-med - not trying to be a downer, I’m just going by statistics in that many people realize it’s not for them or can’t cut it in various courses. So, certainly choose a school that you’d be happy not being pre-med at as well. BME is certainly not the easiest med school curriculum as well - but if you succeed, you’ll certainly be well-prepared for the rigors of med school. I personally chose Duke BME over Penn (but not pre-med), but really like Penn as well. They’re really all three great choices and it sounds like you like Stanford the most, so just follow your gut if you’re lucky enough to be admitted. Good luck!</p>
<p>^ I second the above on a few points with a few to add of my own. Premed requirements and the BME curriculum really doesn’t have much to do with each other. In the years past, I’ve usually advised others to take a good hard look at why they want to do medicine and how BME will fit into that before diving into this track. As you may know GPA is one of the more important things to consider for premeds and BME isn’t known to be incredibly GPA friendly. If your GPA tanks and you find yourself not liking BME too much, you may have just dug yourself a hole that you’ll have to spend the rest of college trying to climb out of. </p>
<p>Second, while Duke’s BME curriculum has been drastically restructured in recent years to be more diverse and better organized, I still encourage you to take a look at the faculty and types of fields that they are doing research in regardless of whether or not you are interested in research. Because BME is such a broad field, many schools with older BME programs have had focuses on narrow segments of “BME”. That means their BME department’s senior faculty, emeritus faculty, and perhaps even a large proportion of current mid to upper level faculty are in that field. This also means that the curriculum and types of opportunities available within the department may also have a slant towards those fields. When I was a BME at Duke, the department had a lot of electronics and imaging faculty and those fields were what Duke BME has been known for traditionally. If you are into tissue engineering (like I was) then you may find your choices limited (but not nonexistent). I can’t say much about Stanford or Penn but this is something worth looking it as well as the curriculum and available courses at each institution.</p>