Looking for Direction: MechE interested in BioMed

Graduate School
1

Hi!

I currently hold a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and have been working in the oil and gas industry for a little over a year. I have recently decided that I would like to change career paths and transition to the medical technology industry by going to graduate school to pursue a Masters in Biomedical Engineering. I didn’t have a great undergrad GPA (3.15) but I got a pretty decent score on the GRE (161V, 165Q, still waiting for AW).

All this being said, can anyone comment on the feasibility of getting into a graduate program/what ranking of schools I have the best chance for? Also, how common is it to accept applicants that have no background/experience in the future field of study? With my current background and lack of experience, I think it will be a long shot to get the kind of job that I want (designing medical devices) which is why I want to go to graduate school to get some experience under my belt. If I also need relevant experience to actually get into graduate school, I’m not really sure what my options are moving forward. I’ve thought about trying to find a local, part-time, volunteer research opportunity but have not looked into it much.

Any insight/advice anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated!

2

Biomedical Engineering is one of the fields that has people who started in a relatively wide range of undergraduate degrees. These include Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical Engineering, Physics and Biology. You might have to take some upper division undergraduate courses but you should be able to get into a program.

Your work experience is a plus and even if your undergraduate GPA was not outstanding, you should be able to get into a Masters program. Start making a list of programs and look for those which are not the most selective. Remember that many programs will expect you to self-fund a Masters degree so their admission criteria may not be quite as high for the Masters program as for the Ph.D. program. If you need to have funding, you might look at schools which do not award Ph.D.s in BME.