I’ve been lucky to be admitted to these three. USC costs very little, because Trustee is a full tuition. I’m sort of leaning towards UCB and JHU, but I can’t really throw SC off the table because its cost is so reasonable. Berkeley gave me a small merit scholarship (the regents) and priority registration. UCB costs about half as much as JHU. I’m looking at going to grad school for a PhD after undergrad. Does the strength of JHU BME and the med school interactions justify the cost? Is the quality/quantity of research worth the high cost?
I’m a Hopkins BME alum, now doing an MD/PhD and I definitely believe that the BME program at Hopkins is the best in the country. The strength of the faculty and research really does impact the quality of undergrad research, and the faculty and curriculum at Hopkins are second to none. Hopkins has immense strength in many different areas of BME, which I think is extremely important as an undergrad who may not know what part of BME you’re interested in (this is somewhat less important as a grad student when you’re applying with a relatively narrow research focus). All the BME faculty teach and most of them (both on the undergrad campus and the med campus) are very excited to have undergrad students in their labs, so it’s very easy as an undergrad to get involved in labs that are at the absolute cutting edge of their fields. When I was on the interview trail for grad school, I definitely got the feeling that the Hopkins BME name opened a lot of doors - the rigor and strength of the program is well known.
I don’t know much about USC and UCB - I do remember that UCB’s BioE progrm was definitely’up and coming’ when I interviewed. I believe they have some collaborations with UCSF, but from what I recall, the two campuses are quite far apart (Hopkins med campus is about 20-30 minutes away from the undergrad campus, connected by a bus that runs fairly frequently)
All that said, I do think that fit is a key component to evaluate, and from visiting all three campuses, I know their cultures are quite different, so I would recommend, if at all possible, visiting and staying overnight on campus to get a feel for how you feel on campus.
Hope that helps! Feel free to send any more questions my way!
My son is making similar decision. No regents with Berkeley EECS though. He found this course evaluation
document at JHU which was very interesting.
http://web.jhu.edu/registrar/students/evaluations/
Good luck.
@eth0up, Which schools have you narrowed down to? Is your son also USC trustee?
@CalMom2015 - My son did not apply to USC. He is deciding between Cal-EECS,UCLA,JHU-BME and HMudd.
He is not interested in medical school. However he is interested in BioE aspects more than pure CS.
I was a bit disappointed reading those course evaluations from JHU.
@eth0up, When I see BME courses, most have 4.xx , What do you mean by disappointment? Anyway, we ruled out JHU due to high cost as med school will be too costly. My son also got UCLA with some fast track award but since he is not regents at UCLA, he is not considering it seriously.
@eth0up Which course evals are you referring to? Like @CalMom2015, I see mostly 4.xx ratings, especially for the core BME courses. The Hopkins BME courses are most definitely very challenging, but I think most people find the experience totally worth it and would definitely do it again.