<p>how's penn bioengineering, especially BE 200 (biomechanics and biomaterials)? I've heard it's really hard. How hard is it to maintain a good grade (3.7+) because I'm hoping to go to med school.</p>
<p>in general penn bioengineering is great, ranked #6 for undergraduate and #5 for graduate programs by us news, ranked #1 for faculty productivity (all these for 2006-07).</p>
<p>because of the atmosphere of an ivy league school and presence of wharton / #3 ranked med school / #7 ranked law school, many bioengineering students are preprofessional (not planning on an engineering career), whether pre-business, pre-med, or pre-law, and choose penn over schools like hopkins, duke, and georgia tech.</p>
<p>be 200 is actually not too bad in my opinion, i'd say the labs (be 209, be 210) are more challenging at least time-wise... and if you're a bse student (as opposed to bas), then be 301 and 324 have a reputation for being tough.</p>
<p>as for grades, it depends - average gpa in the whole engineering school is a 2.8, i think - you'll have to work very hard, but it's not necessary to have quite as high of a gpa for med school because the admissions staff recognize the higher difficulty of an engineering curriculum compared to a liberal arts curriculum.</p>