I’m a junior in Highschool and would like to become a biomedical engineer. The problem is, I have very little knowledge of programming.
The courses I’m taking are AP Us History, AP Physics, AP Biology, Pre-Calculus, and AP English III.
I have already taken AP World History, AP Human Geography.
There are no courses in my high school that specialize in programming. Should I reconsider my major, or is it possible that I can learn to program in college?
You can learn to program in college. My daughter started college with no prior programming knowledge and has done just fine in engineering. She had no trouble learning the skills or keeping up, and has enjoyed it. She had very similar high school coursework to yours at the same grades with excellent grades in those courses.
Biomedical Engineering doesn’t require expensive programming experience. If you can handle the other engineering courses, you can handle the intro to programming classes that would be required. I would be more concerned with the heavy chemistry requirement! With Physics and Calculus (and Biology), if possible, try to take a rigorous chemistry class (like AP Chem), by the end of your senior year.
Otherwise, you’ll likely be taking an intro course in Matlab or something like C++. Maybe you’ll need to take a 2nd class, but that’s about it (for Biomedical Engineering).
If you want, on your on free time, you can learn how to program. Stuff’s available online. Otherwise, it can wait till you’re in college.
Good Luck!
I Would say more than 50% of engineering students have no programming knowledge prior to starting to College.
I still have about 15 days before my junior year begins. Do you think I should change my schedule to better fit my pursuit in biomed engineering?
Is that a course that she attends in college which teaches her programming, or is she learning this by other means such as through an online course?
Apologies, I posted a link to the possible courses but it is forbidden on this website. I’ll just list some of the key courses that I haven’t taken yet which I could potentially fit into my schedule. My school runs on a A/B day schedule, 4 classes a day.
Science: Chem AP, Forensic Science, statistics AP, macro economics AP, US Government AP,
Calculus AB AP, and Calculus BC AP.
There are so many free programming courses online that you can take at your convenience. There is no excuse to not be familiar with programming before college starts, since you can learn it if you want to. As people have mentioned, you wouldn’t be the only one not knowing programming before starting an engineering degree, but if you go ahead and take one or more online programming courses beforehand, you will be able to have more confidence when you start college. If you are too busy with your classwork at school, you can plan to learn programming during winter break, spring break or next summer.
What programming language is a good starter that I can find easily online?
Opinions will differ, but personally, I think Python is a good first programming language. It is one of several languages frequently used in engineering. It’s a relatively friendly introduction to programming compared to a language like C, which is closer to the metal but less forgiving than Python. Plus, if you eventually want to learn more advanced topics, like object-oriented programming, Python allows you to do that, as well.
I actually heard about an opportunity at work today to learn a bit about Python. That sounded like fun because I have only heard about it from my son’s college days and here on these threads. (In my day, we learned mostly Fortran and Basic. Oh, and I had to do some assembler language stuff too… ha, not my cup of tea even though I am glad I took that microprocessor class at the recommendation of my summer internship manager).
Yes, every engineering major needs to at least be proficient with the basics of programming. However, they will teach you that knowledge in college. At Umich, there are engineering students all across the spectrum, from never having seen a single line of code before, to being very familiar with basic data structures. The intro programming course that all engineering students are required to take at many universities (ENGR 101 at Umich) often starts from complete scratch, assuming that you have never even seen a line of code before.
For biomedical engineering, you do not need to be amazing at programming, but you must be able to do well enough in whatever intro programming course your university will require for engineering students. Also, your success in high school does not matter once you get into college. Your ability to succeed in an engineering program will be mainly dependent on how you perform in your freshmen year engineering core courses as an actual university student.