What makes a ‘top’ biomedical engineering program a good program? Like a lot of areas, it seems hard to ‘rank’ them.
Is it faculty, research, facilities, graduate level exposure, etc??
Even after visiting a handful of programs, it is difficult for me to tell them apart…
Honestly as long as you attend a top 20 or so program, then you should start looking at factors other than rank. If you are interested in doing BME, then chances are you will need to get at least a master’s degree before employers will consider hiring you. You can consider whether they have a 5 year B.S./M.S. program for their students, for example.
This is classic US student, brainwashed, groupspeak…“top 20 or so program.” Based on what? You’ve asked the better question @CDK, WHAT makes a top program, and that varies from individual to individual. Ranking methodologies are HIGHLY flawed, especially for engineering, because they don’t include a single thing you might care about. Are class sizes important to you? Professor vs TA? Job placement? Weather? Region you’ll live in? I could go on and on. NONE of those things are reflected in any way shape or form in the “rankings.” So, start developing a list of traits important to you and then report back. Some of the long time posters will then be able to suggests schools that fit you the best. Good luck
CDK is the parent, if I recall correctly?
I was speaking in part to the first reply, “attend a top 20 program or so.” What does that mean?
Nothing wrong with using “rankings” as a criteria. It’s usually a first step, before digging into the details. The caveat with rankings, is that you can’t let a college “rank” blind you to other opportunities, especially since engineering isn’t as dependent (though it still matters) on prestige or reputation as other majors/career choices.
CDK, I think you’re on the right track. With BME, you should be thinking about which school would best prepare a student for grad school, med school, etc. The best are usually private and public research universities, for all of the factors you mentioned.
Rankings are flawed but you can’t outright dismiss them either. While it is far less of a factor than, say, in business, your pedigree can still be helpful in engineering.
Take applying for graduate school as an example. Graduate school applicants come from all sorts of backgrounds, including small, little-known schools all the way up to the “top” schools. If you happen to be a slightly weaker candidate (maybe every aspect of your application is good but your GPA is slightly low, say), then coming from a respected program is going to alleviate some of those concerns on the part of admissions committees or prospective advisors.
Another example I like is on the job front. A lot of major companies recruit at a variety of schools. They generally follow a pattern of recruiting the regional schools they’ve grown to respect along with a lot of the “top” schools. In other words, if you go to smaller schools with a more local reputation, you are still going to be fine and likely have plenty of interesting career opportunities. At the “top” schools, there is likely to be a little more variety to the companies that actively recruit graduates.
In other words, the rankings are subjective and may not reflect your own priorities in school selection, and you certainly aren’t screwed if you choose a “top 50” program. They aren’t useless, though. As it turns out, many aspects of life are subjective and reputation can be important in some cases, even if that reputation isn’t build on the same priorities as your own.
Still, I advocate first and foremost going somewhere you’ll be happy and can afford and can still help you achieve your career goals. If you are miserable at a “top” program, your grades will suffer, and a strong candidate from a solid program is going to beat a mediocre candidate from a “top” school 90%* of the time in engineering.
*Don’t fact-check this. It’s simply anecdotal and based on my experience and may not hold up to scrutiny.
@eyemgh I totally agree with you. @bodangles I am the parent.
What I was getting at is what goes into a BME program that would make it a good program. Obviously a very generic question, and one you could ask about any major. But BME seems very dependent on certain factors…like what kind of labs/research they have, faculty and their interests, proximity to hospitals for clinical applications, preparation for grad or medical school, etc. It just seems a little harder to put all of this together since it is very technical. I do not want to rely on the rankings…but, for example, why exactly is Johns Hopkins routinely considered the top, or one of the top, BME programs? I have a son applying now, and even after visiting some, it does not seem obvious. I see some further visits after all decisions are received.
@boneh3ad well said, no fact check required. Works the same way in medicine. I guess evaluating for that elusive ‘fit’ with a school and BME program is the best thing to do. Hopefully S1 will have a handful of great options that we can check out in more detail.
I was ranting a bit, but in many respects it’s legitimate. How does Harvey Mudd, a very well respected small engineering school rank versus Berkeley? It doesn’t because USNWR doesn’t put them in the same categories. HMCs ME program is ranked #5 in schools that don’t offer doctorate by USNWR. HMC doesn’t offer ME. Their methodology is based 100% on institutional reputation. Not to say Stoneybrook or Olin are bad in any way, but there’s a reason they blanket NPR with ads. Yes it informs the parents, but it influences the school staff that rank their peers to come up with the USNWR rankings.
I do agree with what @boneh3ad said. To many overemphasize rankings and under emphasize other very important factors, many of which are non-academic. Why is JHU always near the top? It’s one of the oldest. USNWR started ranking in 1983. There weren’t many BME programs back then. Since it’s 100% reputation based! there’s HUGE inertia to overcome to change.
So, all I can tell you is what my son used as his criteria. Then your family should build their own. He was only able to really conceptualize his criteria AFTER we visited quite a few schools.
He wanted a typical college experience. He didn’t want to go to a 100% tech school and especially had no interest in schools that are known as grinds and where students are often unhappy. Cal Tech and Colorado School of Mines are both good examples. He wanted a program that engaged students in some tangible way with hands on or project based work prior to junior year and ideally during freshman year. He eliminated all programs that didn’t have direct engineering admission (i.e. Starting as pre-engineering). He looked carefully at class size and whether or not the honors program could have a positive impact on that for engineers. Along with that he wanted a school where the bulk of the teaching was done by professors at all levels, including labs, and not graduate assistants. Lastly, it was important to him that there be outdoor activities nearby. Ideally it was skiing and hiking, but surfing and hiking were an option too.
He ended up at Cal Poly, a very competitive admit for ME and the USNWR perennial #2 or #3 for ME at schools that don’t offer doctorates. I mention that only for one reason. His other two final schools Utah and WPI are neither highly ranked nor very competitive to get in. He eliminated quite a few high ranked schools that he was admitted to prior to narrowing to the final 3. He picked Poly because after visiting it fit his criteria the best. He didn’t though until almost the deadline, because every option has strengths and weaknesses.
Students and families that are primarily rankings oriented often end up with kids who get into their “dream” school only to arrive and find their experience anything but dreamy.
I’d suggest you read this great article by Malcom Gladwell: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-order-of-things and buy this amazingly powerful tool, Do It Yourself College Rankings, http://diycollegerankings.com/college-spreadsheets/. The latter is all the IPEDS data, but in a very powerful, searchable and sortable format.
Good luck.
USNWR has the same problem with traditional schools as well. It ranks the undergraduate aerospace engineering program at Caltech in the top 5, yet Caltech doesn’t offer an undergraduate aerospace program; just a concentration in the ME department. However, few would argue that Caltech is a very well-respected school and that ME undergrads getting an aerospace concentration don’t derive major benefits from GALCIT, Caltech’s excellent graduate aerospace program. There again the rankings are flawed but do have some meaning still. The problem is people taking them at face value, which doesn’t make sense, but is pretty ingrained in college search culture at this point.
Also, for what it’s worth, most of the non-PhD schools are very different both in culture and in approach and there really wouldn’t be an objective way of ranking them alongside the PhD schools. It sucks for those who are trying to make a comparison but it just doesn’t generally make any sense. You just have to leave it at “they’re both good and employers will like either, so figure out which is a better fit.”
I’ve gleaned a lot of useful information from the American Society of Engineering Education school profiles. http://profiles.asee.org/
BME is a newer smaller field than ME or EE, and different schools have different flavors of BME, bioengineering, biochemical engineering, etc. Some are more and some are less medical in scope or flavor.
I think rankings for this field do differentiate programs that are serious and have research and access to professors that are really interested in BME, but of course that does limit your choice of schools and thus scholarship opportunities, location and other things that the larger ABET accreditation criteria would lead you to.
Also if you are also interested in say aerospace engineering and BME, make sure both programs meet your interests. This means paging through lots of web pages, but hopefully this will be both interesting and informative. A few schools may fall off your list, but maybe googling something you see and like will add a school.
I would even recommend looking at actual class schedules (typically school X biomedical engineering four year plan is a good search term) to see if the coursework is interesting to your student.
Having close proximitiy to a research hospital may indicate research opportunities and also allows easy shadowing and other medical ECs that you might want if your interest wavers from BME to med school.
Having flexible programs may allow you to either double major in say ME and BME or get a degree in ME with lots of BME classes or whatever.
I also wrote this up a few months ago. It also discusses getting a more traditional degree, for job prospects maybe or to leave more options, and weaving an interest in BME into your studies.
The top BME programs now specialize in tracks, ME, EE, CS, or Mat’l Science. If you look at those, you can get some idea on how to weave an interest in BME into your undergraduate degree, and also see what a specific school offers. I think these programs are also producing graduates that people would want at the B.S. level. BME is a fairly new and evolving field, so I think some of the nay-saying is based on industry trends that are years or even decades old.
ChemE programs often specialize in process engineering, aka chemical plants or biological processes, although every school has somewhat different flavor. ChemE programs require a lot of chemistry classes and have some of the best match for pre-med requirements such as organic and biochemistry. However, the actual junior and senior year project type classes may or may not be of interest to you or applicable to your BME graduate studies. Similarly biochemical engineering, bioengineering, biomolecular engineering have very little to do with the human body, but may be very applicable to say pharmaceuticals.
Payscale salaries for BMEs are very competitive with other engineering disciplines at the BS level. And who knows if petroleum engineers will really be able to command high salaries now that oil is cheap again. Similarly aerospace pays well but is not thriving or expanding.
For now, your interest in BME and/or pre-med can help you select a good match college. Some schools have limited enrollment into engineering programs as well, and BME can be even more competitive at say UCSD.