<p>Oh, an internet tough guy, huh? Have fun with that. In the meantime, I am going back to the topic at hand.</p>
<p>I would suggest that, barring an intense personal preference for Tulane, the OP should strongly consider GT, as I feel that it offers a greater array of possibilities when it comes to the OP’s goals. Tulane can get the OP there no problem, but just not in quite the same way.</p>
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<p>Totally agree with Boneh3ad statement here. You will have better opportunity for research experience at Gatech. There’s program called UROP (Undergraduate Research opportunity program) which you send email to the professor that focus on your major’s subfield of your interest and if the professor approves you, you will be able to do research under that professor along with Graduate Research Assistants (usually you are assigned to Graduate Assistant as your mentor). You will first get 1 credit pass/fail for first semester and get 2 credit letter grade which you can use it toward your degree. If your plan change after college and decide to go on master program for biomedical degree, you will have higher chance of getting into top graduate program since you will have research experience and good recommendation letter from a reknown professor who is working at 2nd ranked Biomedical engineer program in the nation. (although that will depend on how well you did during the UROP) </p>
<p>But if your plan is to get into top ranking med school, I suggest you major either in biology or chemistry. I know Georgia Tech’s science department is not as highly ranked as engineer program but receiving low GPA to pursue biomedical can really hurt you. There are weedout classes in Georgia Tech such as Biology where I know biology grade is given by Gaussian distribution when I was doing my undergraduate study at Gatech. 60 average and how much you know more than your peers will get you B or A. Lots of premed students are taking biology / chemistry outside of Georgia Tech to get rid of the requirement. After freshmen and sophomore, it gets easier but you will be taking more required courses than premed requirement for premed program with lesser chance of getting A. </p>
<p>I have heard that Georgia Medical School takes into consideration that biomedical engineer degree student have lower gpa than normal biology and chemistry from Georgia Tech and consider biomedical student highly because they are new breed of students with engineer discipline that can tackle other areas within medical area but having same school’s name with lower GPA… within state of Georgia, it wouldn’t matter significantly but when you are applying to top medical school throughout the nation, it can and will possibly hurt you. 3.55 GPA is considered highest honor for engineer program at Georgia Tech. That’s pretty damn low for highest honor (top10%) and most medical school applicants have 3.7 GPA+. I suggest you talk to biomedical engineer advisor at Georgia Tech for more information.</p>
<p>This is all really good. And I have several friends who are having trouble with Grad school period because of their gpa’s. One from Tch who did Aerospace engineering and one from Yale who applied to law school. Does the graduate test ( MCAT, LSAT, etc.) not outweigh the gpa?</p>
<p>Here’s what I honestly think. Tulane has a large alumni network and since katrina has declined, but they’re on the climb back upward. New Orleans has a great feel to it. I think socially overall, it would be more loose. I also feel the girls on campus would be more appealing.
On the other hand, GA Tech is in Atlanta, which also is a great city. Very prestigious. I am going to be challenged. Also, It seems like it would have a fun frat life too.</p>
<p>I really want to look at the entire picture here, and I have 10 days to do so. So fallenchemist, give me your pros and cons of Tulane. And Boneh3ad, give me your pros and cons of Tech.</p>
<p>Having fallenchemist (either a Tulane alumnus or current student) give you pros and cons of Tulane wouldn’t be comparable to me doing so for GT, as I am not a GT student, no was I ever. I was merely commenting as an objective third party. I definitely agree with your assessment of NOLA being a fun city and Atlanta being just a little behind.</p>
<p>As fr your grad test vs. GPA question: it really depends on the test. For engineers, the GRE is a relatively small factor compared to GPA and reference letters. For med school, the MCAT is more important and probably about even with GPA.</p>
<p>Actually, I lived in Atlanta 3 years while I did post graduate work at GT. I guess I should have said that up front. But it was in chemistry, not engineering. Still, it gives me a faily unique perspective I think. James, I will PM you my thoughts on this a bit later when I have more time.</p>
<p>I am just curious boneh3ad - have you ever been to either school, even for a visit? Or for that matter either city, ever? Just wondering.</p>
<p>I believe that only GT biomedical engineering graduate students do work at Emory.</p>
<p>This, I am sure, is too late for you James18, and I hope you have a fabulous college career… but I will post for others who may come across this question themselves…</p>
<p>I went to Tulane, earned a BS in BME and attended UAB for med school.</p>
<p>My brother attended Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>I advise all who care to listen that engineering is a fabulous pre-med major…IF you are interested in engineering. It’s not for everybody. But if you do like it, it is a superior stepping stone to medicine because it emphasizes understanding concepts and systems and problem solving. Traditional pre-med studies like biology emphasize mastery of facts. About 15% of my med school class were engineers. As a group, we were in the bottom half of our class during the first two years (fact memorizing) but finished in the top 25% after the last two years of med school (actual clinical work…or “doctoring”). Med school deans recognize this, and thus most will account for this in admissions.<br>
Obviously, many factors weigh in admissions. If one is a dolt with poor social skills, even fabulous marks may not save you.</p>
<p>While I was at school, Tulane BME boasted a 100% med school acceptance rate for the preceding 6 yrs. I have no idea what it is now… you should ask. This is partly because the Tulane Med faculty know the quality of the grads…it’s a small program with high standards… I have been told that the MS and UAB deans feel the same way…</p>
<p>Biased as an alum, I will tell you why I liked Tulane over a “pure” engineering school. I considered RPI, GT, and Carnegie Mellon, but preferred Tulane, Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy because these four years are very important, and I wanted a broader college experience. I have friends in college who were English, PolySci, Art History and French Majors. I took electives in these courses as well, and I would say that a school like Tulane provides significantly better opportunities here. Really, it’s more interesting and provides for more stimulating coffee house chats and dating opportunities.</p>
<p>While not “dissing” on any of the other schools, NOLA is a huge benefit to Tulane. When at GT, you can walk under the interstate and eat hot dogs at the Varsity, at Tulane you can walk along St Charles avenue to the Camellia Grill. Really, there is absolutely NO comparison. Please. When was the last time you saw a bunch of tourists walking down Techwood snapping pictures…</p>
<p>Really great post Carolina. As a person who attended both, I totally, completely, wholeheartedly concur with everything you said. I really enjoyed both cities, but I LOVED New Orleans, and having just come back from there moving my D in again, it is better than ever. The vibe, the recovery, everything. Sure there are still issues, just as there are issues in Atlanta and every other city. But the atmosphere, the food, the fun, the scenery…it is fabulous.</p>
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<p>You can’t be serious. With this type of thinking then there’s no difference between a Tulane engineering degree and an engineering degree from an ABC state school that has qualified faculty.</p>
<p>The caliber of the professors and students at Georgia Tech will be much stronger then at Tulane. Same with the research and the facilities. What does this mean? It means the professors jump right into the the most complex concepts because they can. Because they know the students they’re dealing with don’t need to be led by the hand. Don’t over analyze this statement but Tulane engineering students simply aren’t going to be this breed of student.</p>
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<p>They aren’t incompetent, and the principles haven’t changed, but Tulane classes will be taught on an easier level compared to GT, no question.</p>
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<p>They absolutely will have different knowledge and to some degree different skill sets. The students at GT are all VERY smart, some of the smartest in the country. These students are pushed to the limits by their professors and by each other because of the curve. A GT grad will have learned more in class/lab and will know how to think out of the box much better than an avg Tulane engineering grad.</p>
<p>We’re all really glad that you like your education but picking on one of the words elite engineering schools just is nonsensical. To even think that Tulane is on par with a GT engineering education is almost laughable.</p>
<p>I would fully agree with what you’re saying is your replaced Tulane engineering with Maryland, Hopkins, Purdue, Duke…any of the top 30 schools compared to GT. Then the tradeoff isn’t that big since these schools are on par for the most part.</p>
<p>Many of my EE professors had some affiliation with MIT. Either they went to school there, did research there, or taught there are some point. The ones that discussed the undergraduate education between the two schools said they are very similar. Do you think Tulane is similar to MIT? Or even close??</p>
<p>Tulane isn’t even the best engineering school in the state.</p>
<p>Interesting. Exactly where did I pick on GT? I say again, GT people seem a bit defensive, don’t they. BTW, the average test scores for Tulane students are slightly higher than GT students, but let’s call it a tie. So I think it is fair to say the students are equally bright, and can be pushed equally hard. As far as the faculty, I see Michigan, Northwestern, Duke, Purdue, some Tulane grads…seems like a reasonably competent lot. From GT skimming down the first few I see Toronto, Rice, U Alabama Birmingham, Lehigh…Nothing wrong with those either. Remember, Tulane was actually one of the two pioneering programs in this area, at least as I understand it.</p>
<p>You guys can go ballistic if you want. I have said a few times the GT program is a stronger program in this area overall. I also stand by the statement that as an undergrad, a BS student from either school will be similarly educated and have similar capabilities, on average. Been there, seen that. If you want to run down Tulane, feel free. I never said one negative thing about GT.</p>
<p>It comes down to this I think. A smart student may not get as good/rigorous of an education as a GT student, but really it doesn’t matter. If the situation is that the student is doing a BS and that’s it, then a smart student will pick up whatever skills he/she missed on the job, in the field, whatever. If the situation is that he/she is going to go to grad school, then obviously the smart student will do really well at a place like Tulane (for example), probably better than he will at GT. Regardless, whatever the student misses in undergrad that is vital to a grad education, he will pick it up by self-studying or learning/piecing things together. The only situation that’s in a gray area here is research, because on one hand you could have a place like GT have tons and tons of research available for undergrads and/or you could have all the research available be grunt work, or, even worse, have the professors not even care about helping you. At Tulane you could have a limited number of opportunities, but you could have a much more helpful faculty. Of course these are the likely situations, but of course it’s possible that the situations are reversed.</p>
<p>Smart people will always be smart and figure things out. A hard working and smart person will make a good engineer, so I don’t see what difference it makes to ****-talk another school. Especially when you consider that doing engineering requires some amount of above-average intellectual abilities, most engineers will be able to figure things out on their own. If a person can’t do this… well then they’ll never be above average at their work anyway.</p>
<p>James18 long term goal was med school, something vblick seems to have forgotten.
Also, not having its own med school is a significant detriment for GT. The BME program at Tulane is well entrenched with the med schools at Tulane and LSU. I, in fact, did my senior thesis developing support instrumentation for the lasers used by the pioneers of LASIK surgery, Marguerite MacDonald. Tech is a fabulous school, deep with excellent faculty in EE, ME, etc, … but it’s a relative newbie for BME. You cant give an EE some biology classes and call him a BME.</p>
<p>Also, it’s easy to get lost at a place like Tech. EVERY Tulane BME faculty member knew me by name and genuinely cared about the students. Every one. No Hyperbole. And Cedric Walker and Ron Anderson are the top of the heap…</p>
<p>But again, to summarize, my points are these…</p>
<p>a) If so inclined, BME is an excellent pre-med course of study.</p>
<p>b) If the goal is pre-med, having the top .5% of all EE faculty in the universe is irrelevant. Besides, one of my classmates, David Filo, did a fine job with his undergrad education which he supplemented at Stanford…</p>
<p>c) There’s more to life than the science lab, dudes. Learn this soon or you’ll be sorry later. Or maybe you’ll figure it out at a Trekkie convention… (OK, THAT was uncalled for…)</p>
<p>I’d like to comment on the above post… I don’t know if you’ve heard of Emory University and Emory Medical School, but they are world class. It’s relevant because GT offers a joint degree where you take classes at Emory and GT for biomedical and other related degrees like that. So as far as that goes… well Emory is very good and very rigorous, just like GT. So you have two of the best educations you can get from two completely different schools which I think would be advantageous for any student.</p>
<p>Absolutely correct hadsed. Both schools (GT/Emory and Tulane) offer a great education with access to medical school research facilities. I just don’t understand why some posters decided that dumping on Tulane was a way to make Tech look better. Silly.</p>
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<p>In case you can’t keep up here, this topic moved far away from the original post. Way before I even posted. Guess I hit a soft spot with the comments I made about your school.</p>
<p>LOL, not in the least. They would have to make some sense for that to be true.</p>
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Your statement is based on a fallacy, which is that the faculty is the only factor that goes into the quality of a school and/or degree. In my experience, at least, the quality of your fellow students is a far more important factor. Which leads to…</p>
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Well, I already disproved the statement about the students, and I would love to see you prove that the faculty at Tulane is inferior at teaching undergrads (the subject of discussion here) than the faculty at GT/Emory.</p>
<p>Really, you are the only one trying to run down another school here. How about giving it a rest?</p>
<p>Sometimes I have not get into the this school vs. that school debate because I sure as hell did not attend one of those “target” schools.</p>
<p>I guess I can say that the more in-demand your major is…the less all of the “school pedigree” matters.</p>
<p>If one likes Tulane and does not have to worry too much about competition for employment after graduation…hell, goto Tulane. It’s not like the GT grad is gonna get $30,000 more than the Tulane grad in their first jobs.</p>
<p>This isn’t the NFL where the 1st pick gets a ton more than the 32nd pick.</p>
<p>Okay so let me get this straight…</p>
<p>You said this:</p>
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<p>I replied with this:</p>
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<p>and you replied (below) as if I made a definitive statement about Tulane faculty when I was obviously taking your skewed logic and making an equally ridiculous statement:</p>
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<p>still going:</p>
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<p>So it’s considered “running down a school” when I say one of the top engineering schools in the country isn’t the same caliber of school as one which is recognized at the second best engineering school in its own residing state? I didn’t say Tulane $ucks or that the student/professors are dumb, or that the degree was worthless. All i’ve debated was that GT was a more advanced school. Yet you go on and on how Tulane is getting “dumped” on. You wouldn’t feel this way if you didn’t think it was one of the best engineering schools in the world and simply recognized it as a good engineering school. I’m not even sure what’s up with the programs your school is cutting. Does that mean there is more to come?</p>
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<p>I completely agree. I’ve seen so many people come from smaller schools. As long as you can get good grades and good research/work experience you should be fine. I think a big engineering school helps when you want to find work outside the region. Luckly I was on scholarship so I didn’t come out of school with debt. Had I went to Duke or some school up north, and racked up $$$ in debt, i’d be pretty annoyed that someone from a much smaller school got highered knowing they didn’t go through the same stuff I did. Ya know?</p>
<p>You conveniently left out the statement you made
Really. How interesting. What is your basis for that statement? To make it easy for you, just focus on the student part of it. Also, we were not talking about overall engineering programs, just BME.</p>
<p>I am also surprised you found my statement about peer quality ridiculous. You really think that having challenging peers, i,e, people that are as smart or smarter than you, doesn’t make you work harder, think more critically, and improve the overall quality of a school? Do you really think the reason Harvard is so much more highly thought of than GT or Tulane is because their faculty is so superior? No, it is because the students are smarter going in, which means (as you say) they can be challenged more, etc. In fact, your statement about the “superior students” leading to more challenges from the profs means you agree with me. And since we now know the quality of students at each school is very similar, it rather shoots your arguments out of the water.
Which, btw, is a baseless and disparaging statement in a backhanded way about Tulane students. Really very little class shown in making that statement. As I have said, I never made any negative remark about GT or the students there. You cannot say the same.</p>
<p>You really don’t need to bother to answer, you are clearly defensive about Tech for no reason. If it is that much better than Tulane regarding the program in question here, everyone will know it and you don’t have to defend it. I am glad you got “highered”. Yeesh.</p>
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I’ve only been talking about overall engineering. I think that’s pretty obvious since I’ve been generalizing since my first post.</p>
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<p>You seem to have a real nak for going off on tangents and making stuff up. Please point out where I led you astray into thinking that it’s ridiculous? Let me save you the time, I didn’t. In fact pretty much every post i’ve made, with respect to the students, is in agreement with this. You really couldn’t pick this up? Really?</p>
<p>What I found ridiculous was that you took something I said sarcastically, mocking you, and you rambled on as if that was my position on the matter. You’re arguing about things I never said - as if you didn’t read any of my previous posts or you forgot what was in them. You didn’t understand that in my last post (because you’re still debate about points you’re making up on my behalf) and you aren’t going to understand it now because you’ve done the same thing twice. This debate has turned into a puzzle with respect to the conclusions and inferences you make. It’s really annoying to watch you jump all over the place with your points.</p>
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<p>Where did i say this? I remember saying this:</p>
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<p>Guess you over-looked that too, huh? Really?</p>
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<p>It’s not more highly thought of for engineering.</p>
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<p>You could imply that or simply reference the quote I posted two up where I say the students push each other because of the curve. You know, in-case you forgot about reading that already.</p>
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<p>I told you not to over analyze that statement for a reason. I don’t have any ill will towards Tulane engineering students or non engineering students. As I said in my last post (i’m assuming you forgot), I think it’s a great school. I’d be pleased if my own children decided to go there. I was just trying to make a relation with respect to the avg math/science intellect of students at GT vs Tulane for engineering. MIT and GT are similarly matched in several areas. I’m pretty sure their classes are taught at a faster more indepth pace than GT was. In this case, probably because of the students. My co-workers daughter started MIT this past year, she had already finished the calculus sequence and differential equations in high school. That’s probably not too far off the norm for that school. That isn’t GTs norm. I don’t have a problem accepting that MIT is a better school. </p>
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<p>You keep saying this. Is this your high horse or something? You slight the GT students and the program when you say they are similar to Tulane. The same slight I make when I say they aren’t. Again, I never insulted Tulane as an institution or the smarts of the students. I simply said it’s not the same caliber for engineering and that it’s not regarded as the best engineering school in the state of Louisiana. Interpret how you wish.</p>
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<p>Except the OP came here asking a question about the two. You come off as “ohh they are practically the same school. Go to Tulane. Blah blah blah. There’s no serious engineering gutting going on here.” Then others called you out on it and I followed. So don’t give me this “ohh you don’t have to defend it if everyone knows it” b.s. You don’t have to over hype your school if everyone knows it. It works both ways, friend.</p>
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<p>What is this suppose to mean?</p>
<p>Anyway, i’m going to be the bigger man and terminate this discussion. It has severely run its course. I think we’ve both done a fine job of ruining the OPs thread. I apologize james. </p>
<p>James:
Honestly, you should probably just go to the school that winds up being cheaper for you in the end. People from big engineering schools and small ones will find great jobs. I myself didn’t know this was when I was in school. Always thought I needed to be where I was. Granted the opportunities are better at a bigger school (career fair, coop, research, target school) but it’s not like you can’t find a great job because you went to a small engineering school (as long as you have good grades and experience).</p>