nvm - I see that you are deciding between JHU and Duke. They are too comparable in terms of rankings / prestige-y stuff. Since they seem to be the same price, choose the place where your child is most likely to flourish. BME is a tough tough major, full of amazingly talented and motivated students. IME, JHU and Duke are really, really different experiences. Go to revisit days and trust your student.
@suzyQ7 - I hear you, that’s the reason trying to rationalize paying full pay is worth it or not
for the investment of 300k. Starting salaries may be higher for kids coming out of top colleges but it wears of after few years of experience.
As I mentioned earlier, my close family member graduated with a degree in BME from a top college…not quite at the level of JHU, but still very well regarded. His first job offer was at a company that does a lot of recruiting at top schools…nobody made close to $150,000 a year coming out of college…even coming out of these schools.
Using the latest available actual data directly from Duke and WPI you can see the BME BS income results and get some idea of employment prospects if you do not go directly to graduate school.
I could not find actual data on the JHU website, but did learn that about 1/3 of graduates go on to med schools, 1/3 to graduate school and 1/3 take jobs with no salary data is given.
For Duke see: https://bme.duke.edu/undergrad/prospective/where-students-go
WPI data is supplied as it shows a complete data set as supplied by their placement office including the long list of different employers and actual average BS level salaries. Go to the address below. For the latest data select 2018 and page down to 13 of the downloaded PDF to read results.
For WPI: https://www.wpi.edu/student-experience/career-development/outcomes
For 2018, the starting BS salary listed by Duke was $70,000 and is cited as one of the highest. At WPI the average salary for a BS was $61,466 and for an MS $79,250.
Being conservative and allowing for an average annual 2% inflation for four years off of Duke’s $70,000 figure, I’d work with a $76,000 figure as a BS salary guess for 2023.
Where possible, work off real data. Know where the numbers were actually generated. This is what scientist try to do.
This is NOT necessarily true! it varies tremendously by sector. Investment Banking? yes. National Labs? no bump at all. For
Look at the source for the above Duke stats: https://www.mddionline.com/top-10-biomedical-engineering-schools-salary. For BME the program matters more than the college.
The top starting salaries for BME grads are achieved by grads from: Stanford, Columbia, San Jose State University, Durham, JHU, UIUC, UWa, CalTech, NU, Cornell, UC-B, UPenn, UWi-M, MIT, GaTech, UCLA
The range is $60K-$98K, and if you eliminate the outlier (Stanford at $98K), the range is $60-75 for a group that is 50% state universities.
Over 50% of kids change their major. There’s always that to consider.
@retiredfarmer & @collegemom3717 - Thank you for the info.