Decision day is coming up (ahhhhh) and I’m really indecisive and I would love some advice on what to choose. I’m stuck between JHU BME, Berkeley Regents, and USC Trustee. Honestly I can imagine myself adapting to each one of these schools, and this is such a big decision that I don’t want to make the wrong one.
Johns Hopkins (BME)
pros: BME #1 (I like the program at JHU the best out of the 3), really nice campus, open curriculum (I hope to explore some other topics, and possibly double major/minor), spacious dorms
cons: location, far from home (I live in Northern CA), 25k more per year than Berkeley or USC
Berkeley Regents (Chem E)
pros: lots of people/diversity, regents scholarship, close to bay area (lots of opportunities in industry here), close to home, cheaper than JHU (about same price as USC)
cons: the city (the city of Berkeley isn’t my favorite but its alright), major (although Berkeley Chem E is really great, I would probably try to transfer to bioE or just do Chem E with a bio emphasis)
USC Trustee (bioengineering)
pros: Trustee scholarship/Viterbi fellow/undergrad honors program (research money, distinguished speakers, etc), easy to double major/minor, cheaper than JHU (about same price as Berkeley),
cons: location (LA is okay)
After undergrad, I plan to go to either grad school or medical school (although I’m not sure yet). Any help/insight would be appreciated! Thank you so much!
These are all great schools and 25k more per year is not pennies. You really can’t make a bad choice here, the only big concern would be if you decide to switch majors, which can be a problem at large state schools such as Berkeley. I don’t know about Cal in particular, but I know switching into engineering programs (or between engineering programs) was a big problem for a few friends who went to UCSD and ended up having to spend another year at school since they couldn’t enroll in the classes they needed to take. All three of these schools can get you to grad school or med school, there is no wrong choice here. Ultimately what makes a successful career isn’t which program you attend (in this case the differences are minimal, especially when the benefits of Hopkins’ smaller class sizes and increased resources (undergrad lab experience!) means 25k more), but rather how you perform at these schools with a high GPA and seizing opportunities.
You can look around (if you haven’t already) on the JHU thread for other discussions on choosing JHU vs. ____ since I think we have exhausted all the talking points. I will say though that JHU is not cutthroat (competitive, sure, but not cutthroat), Baltimore is not a war zone (JHU has a safer campus than both USC and Cal based on yearly crime reports) and people at JHU have fun (we’re not the soulless reanimated dead). JHU is a school made up of teenagers just like everywhere else, not some haunted castle on a hill with wolves howling. The rumors I’ve heard about JHU would be laughable if it weren’t for the stellar students who lose out and pass on JHU without giving it a fair chance.
Lastly, moving far away from home was a great experience to grow and broaden my perspective (I was also from CA). I was happy with my choice to attend JHU and would do it again. You can look at my past posts for my opinion on why.
Can your folks pay or will this involve loans for you or for them?
100K is a lot of money. Personally I would make the pragmatic choice and opt for USC as a named scholar. The UC system is facing budget cuts and switching majors may be harder than you think, especially if they are impacted.
For background I actually turned down Cal Regents for Hopkins BME and a lot of my friends and relatives go to or have gone to Cal. I’m also from norcal (not the bay area). I know nothing about USC so my response will mainly cover the perceived differences between Hopkins and Cal regents.
In terms of the BME program Cal takes a very standard approach to BioE (that’s their version of the degree) in that they teach you standard engineering, standard biology, then try to jam those together into, what @NixonDenier once described as, “some chimera of biology and engineering”. Hopkins teaches BME as a cohesive program and is focuses it’s courses on using engineering principles to solve biological problems. Additionally Hopkins BME is a design based program meaning that, from day 1, you will be learning how to design practical solutions to biological and medical problems. All freshman BMEs take a Modeling and Design course where this idea is first introduced and most juniors and seniors take a course called " Design Team " sponsored by the Center of Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID). In this course undergraduates are split into teams and given a year to design and build a solution to a biological or medical problem of their choosing (usually the problems are presented by doctors at Hopkins Med School). The most analogous class at Cal, that I can think of on the top of my head, is Critical Making, but that is one semester long and not as focused.
I don’t know anyone in Cal ChemE, but I can tell you that (at Hopkins at least) and in general ChemE and Bio/BME are very different. You can try to do a Bio-related concentration, but from what I can tell ChemE is based more in Process Management whereas BME has a much wider base depending on which area you choose to focus in. Lots of people i know actually went into ChemE with this same mindset (they either got rejected from BME or didn’t realize that’s what they wanted to do until it was too late) and they soon realized that the two disciplines are very different. Also, as others have said, switching majors at Cal is hard. Since you’d potentially be switching between two majors inside the School of Engineering it wouldn’t be as hard as it could be, but BioE (last I checked) is the 2nd most popular engineering major at Cal from an application standpoint so switching into it will be hard.
Additionally because of the smaller size of Hopkins undergraduate class and Hopkins’ focus on research you’ll have a much easier time finding research positions at Hopkins than you would at Cal. That’s not to say you won’t find positions at Cal, but at Hopkins a first semester freshman can - with a little initiative - land research position.
Moving away from CA has also been a great experience for me. You never really appreciate how beautiful the weather is in California is until you experience a full blown blizzard. Moving away has made me certain that I want to eventually settle down in California, but living on the east coast has been an invaluable experience.
However while I’ve been going on about Hopkins, $25k per year is a lot of money. If your parents can comfortably afford it then that’s fine, but I know that I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t received enough of a scholarship to mitigate the cost. In the end all three schools are great. Cal in particular is really underrated by many high school seniors as - despite that fact that it’s a public school that is experiencing severe budget cuts - it is one of the best engineering schools in the world. Hell Cal is overall better at engineering than Hopkins and USC - full stop. But if your interested in BioE and BME, in my opinion there’s no better place to be than Hopkins.