My senior is leaning towards a career in Biomedical Engineering but I know the BioMed Engineering program at SLO has one of the lowest admit rates. When we toured last week the Engineering student tour guide said that it wasn’t difficult to switch out of the General Engineering major since it’s a broad major that many students choose when they aren’t sure what area they want to study so they kind of expect students to switch. After looking at the flow chart for the General Eng major it looks like even if he couldn’t switch to BioMed he could focus some of his classes on BioMed. I guess what I’m wondering if the General Eng. degree is a good option or does that not look as good on a resume for future careers since you don’t really have a specialty.
@eyemgh is the CPSLO guru
A student in a CPSLO engineering major who wants to change to a different engineering major should see this page: https://eadvise.calpoly.edu/changing-majors/within-the-college-of-engineering
CPSLO general engineering is not ABET accredited, according to https://amspub.abet.org/aps/name-search?searchType=institution&keyword=San%20Luis%20Obispo and Accreditation < California Polytechnic State University . So this may be an issue for going into areas where ABET accreditation is important (e.g. civil engineering or other directions designing things used by the general public, or the patent exam), though this is less likely to be needed in biomedical engineering (although biomedical engineering is ABET accredited at CPSLO).
He could go either way, stay GE, or meet the requirements to switch to BME. Everything the your guy told you was true. My inclination would be to graduate with a BME degree if that’s what he wants.
Thanks! It does seem like it’s challenging to switch majors even within the same college so that’s why I was questioning the tour guide. I do feel like by offering a broad general engineering option they would have to expect that students would want to transfer once they figured out which type of engineering they wanted to specialize in.
Thanks! I didn’t realize that the general option wasn’t ABET accredited so that’s defintely something to consider.
About 50% switch.
@lcarlson90 I just read about this really cool summer program for Cal Poly BMED students at Sierra Vista: Disrupting the Hospital - Cal Poly Magazine
We were just at the open house weekend with my son who is an incoming general engineering major - and I wanted to come back and reply to this for future researchers! The department head confirmed that it is actually higher - and that about 90% change into other majors (mostly engineering, but about 15% transfer out of the CENG)