<p>and another question is </p>
<p>Do a lot of people apply to harvard with biomed. engineering major?</p>
<p>No..... Harvard engineering is not famous... Not famous at all. Like, at all.</p>
<p>There are vastly better biomedical undergraduate engineering programs out there than at Harvard. You could probably do research at Harvard Med in biomedical engineering, but Ivy engineering is, in general, very lackluster, especially in comparison to its sterling reputations as undergraduate institutions.</p>
<p>ahh then the best school for biomed engineering is JHU rite?</p>
<p>The most famous schools for biomedical engineering are JHU, Duke, UCSD, Case Western, and MIT. Stanford and UIUC are top engineering programs which just introduced a biomedical engineering program, so I expect them to rise quickly in the future.</p>
<ol>
<li>Johns Hopkins University (MD)</li>
<li>Duke University (NC)</li>
<li>Univ. of CaliforniaSan Diego *</li>
<li>Georgia Institute of Technology *
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology</li>
<li>Case Western Reserve Univ. (OH)</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Boston University
Northwestern University (IL)
University of MichiganAnn Arbor *</li>
</ol>
<p>Harvard engineering is good for Masters and PhD, but not for undergrad. Harvard undegrad only graduated 16 people in engineering total last year, I believe.</p>
<p>oh then i gotta think about my college list again damn it
but if I go to harvard (if i am really lucky) and get into their engineering program, i can switch right?</p>
<p>Say what, now? No. Not true. It's good for natural sciences research and theoretical and applied mathematics, which are used in engineering, but if you're doing traditional engineering, then Harvard has neither the research experience nor the research facilities to sustain a high-caliber graduate engineering program.</p>
<p>I think for someone who KNOWS they want engineering, you can do better tha harvard for the reasons stated above :)</p>
<p>Harvard is ranked 20th in graduate engineering, which is pretty good. In 15 years, they'll probably move up to the top 10, considering how much money they're putting into their engy program now. However, Harvard undergrad engineering will take longer to build in reputation.</p>
<p>Biomedical/bioengineering is a non-traditional field, one that some Ivys have invested a lot into, particularly Penn, Yale and Harvard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No..... Harvard engineering is not famous... Not famous at all. Like, at all.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about that. Believe me, there are PLENTY of no-name engineering programs out there that would LOVE to be as good as the Harvard engineering program is. Harvard engineering is clearly not as good as MIT engineering, but it is a LOT better than, say, Fresno State engineering or UCRiverside engineering. Harvard engineering vs. engineering at a no-name school is not even a close call. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I think for someone who KNOWS they want engineering, you can do better tha harvard for the reasons stated above
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think this post hit the nail right on the head. A lot of students don't really know what they want to major in, and many people who think they want to become engineers end up majoring in something else, either because they find something more interesting, or because engineering is just too hard for them. Furthermore, like I said in other posts, even of those people who do wind up majoring in engineering, many of them don't really intend to work as engineers, as evidenced by all the MIT engineering students who flock in droves to get interviews with management consulting firms and Wall Street investment banks. Heck, I was just in the Infinite Corridor the other day and up on the video screens that all the students pass by was a flashing ad for a mixer for students who were interested in learning more about working for McKinsey.</p>
<p>Look, fair or not fair, Harvard has the most marketable brand-name of any school in the country. There is such a thing as "dropping the H-bomb". Let's face it. The Harvard name can open doors for you. Given the choice between Harvard or Stanford or MIT, I would say that that might be a close call, especially if you are seriously considering engineering. However, given the choice between Harvard and a no-name engineering school, that's not a close call by any stretch of the imagination. I even doubt that Harvard vs. a strong engineering school like Berkeley would be a close call, even if you think you might want to be an engineer. Let's face it. Harvard is Harvard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Heck, I was just in the Infinite Corridor the other day and up on the video screens that all the students pass by was a flashing ad for a mixer for students who were interested in learning more about working for McKinsey.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Haha, and moreover, have you seen the Tech for the past few weeks? I think there's some sort of ibanking/consulting/whatever ad on every page!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Harvard engineering is good for Masters and PhD, but not for undergrad. Harvard undegrad only graduated 16 people in engineering total last year, I believe.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, this is wrong. As Sakky said, Harvard is Harvard, its admitted students are likely to have quite strong profiles, even those who opt for its engineering dept. But it doesn't work the same for the graduate level. A good graduate engineering students would not likely to choose a school based on the prestige of its name in many departments but engineering. Simply said, the average Harvard engineering students may have better job placement than, say Michigan engineering students with bachelor degree. But for graduate students the reverse is true.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As Sakky said, Harvard is Harvard, its admitted students are likely to have quite strong profiles, even those who opt for its engineering dept.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I wouldn't just say "even those who opt for its engineering dept", I would say "especially so". Let's face it. Engineering is hard anywhere. No matter what school you're talking about, you can basically be assured that engineering is going to be one of the harder majors at that school. I can't think of a single school where engineering is considered the 'creampuff' major that attracts those stupid/lazy students who can't cut it in any other major. Every school, even Harvard, has some joke do-nothing majors from which people can graduate without working very hard or knowing very much, but engineering is almost never one of them. Hence, I would argue that the average Harvard undergrad engineer may actually be BETTER than the average Harvard undergrad, and is certainly better than the average Harvard undergrad who is majoring in a cheesepuff subject.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Harvard undegrad only graduated 16 people in engineering total last year, I believe.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I would dispute this assessment, as it seems that you are saying that just because a department doesn't graduate a lot of students, it must necessarily be bad. I don't see the connection. Take Caltech as an example. Caltech confers less than 5 bachelor's degrees in geophysics every year. Does that mean that geophysics is bad at Caltech? I think very few people believe that. In fact, most people who know the field would assert that Caltech is arguably the finest place to go if you want to study geophysics. Caltech also has numerous other programs that graduate only a few students at a time, but are still extremely highly regarded. </p>
<p>Hence, the point is, I don't see a necessary connection between the size of a program and its quality.</p>
<p>I am friends with a girl who graduated from Harvard BME (with a fairly avg gpa), and was accepted into a PhD program in Bioengineering at Caltech. </p>
<p>Now no one will argue that Caltech has a subpar engineering program, because it is light years ahead of most institutions and the research work at Caltech is as good as an institution in the country.</p>
<p>(I should note that the Caltech BioE program is also new, and fairly chaotic from what I hear.) My friend finished her master's there after a year, and transfered into Stanford's PhD program in Biophysics. After 3 yrs in the biophysics program, she got accepted to the Medical School at Stanford, and just started there this fall to try for an md/phd.</p>
<p>My point is this. Harvard engineering for undergrad won't stop someone from going on and being successful. The name Harvard speaks volumes. The program may not be big, but the education is still a quality one, and several resources are made available to the students.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I wouldn't just say "even those who opt for its engineering dept", I would say "especially so". Let's face it. Engineering is hard anywhere.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>When I made the comparison, I didn't compare the students' profiles across the departments, but rather across the schools with similar prestige. As for academic accomplishment indicators, most people would argue that Harvard engineering students have better average SAT/ACT performance than those in the film department. But this is not my point, since I'm comparing the students' profiles with respect to the strength of their depts. As to clarify my point, I would say that Harvard undergrad engineering students generally may not be really the top cream engineering students whereas its economics students are probably the best in the nation. This, however, doesn't mean that Harvard undergrad engineering students generally have weaker academic profiles (SAT/ACT/APs) than its economics dept. counterpart.</p>
<p>This I can agree with, which leads to an interesting sidepoint. I would argue that in many ways, Harvard engineering students are probably better than many of the students at elite engineering programs. Like you said (and with which I agree completely), the average Harvard engineering student is almost certainly academically superior to the average Michigan engineering student, simply because the average student at Harvard (of any major) is clearly superior to the average student at Michigan (of any major). The average Michigan engineering student is better than the average student of Michigan at large, but not by enough to equal the quality of the average Harvard student, and especially not the quality of the average Harvard engineering student (who tends to be better than the average student at Harvard as a whole). Don't get me wrong. Michigan has some brilliant students. On the other hand, it also has a large tail-endsof students who are not-so-brilliant. </p>
<p>I think we all know this to be true in our hearts. Except maybe to save money, very few people would turn down undergrad Harvard to go to, say, Michigan, even if they want to become engineers. Hence while Michigan have higher ranked engineering departments than Harvard does, that fact obviously doesn't really dissuade too many people to go there instead of Harvard. I can see somebody turning down Harvard for MIT, Stanford, or Caltech because they really want to be an engineer. But turning down undergrad Harvard for Michigan(again, except to save money)? I think we can all agree that that's a rare bird.</p>
<p>Hence, I have to ask what's so valuable about these undergrad engineering rankings anyway? Harvard may not have as highly ranked of an undergrad engineering ranking as some other schools like Michigan do, but at the end of the day, only a minority of people are really going to turn down Harvard for Michigan, even for engineering. Hence, the rankings themselves are rendered ineffectual. Why even have a ranking if the majority of people are still going to prefer the supposedly lower-ranked school anyway?</p>
<p>In the way you phrased it, I agree.</p>
<p>Another interesting aspect of Harvard is that it is one of the few colleges that confer an AB degreee in Engineering. (Other schools that I know of include Yale, Dartmouth, maybe Swarthmore.) Though the AB degree is not ABET certified, it meets the needs of those who do not want to work as engineers right after college (those i-bankers or consultants), or those who want to go to graduate school in various fields, including Engineering.</p>