<p>I got accepted into bioengineering at Berkeley and the only thing holding me back is the possibility of not getting into a good medical school after 4 years. I also have acceptance to a BS/MD program (Union LIM) and am trying to decide between these two. So, my question is whether or not bioengineering at Berkeley is manageable in terms of difficulty and if the acceptance rate into good medical schools (top 40) from Berkeley is high.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I know a BioE student who graduated last year and is at Harvard Med right now. That being said, bioengineering is pretty tough to juggle with research, volunteering, work, or whatever other extracurriculars you have. Doing well in BioE will take you far, but the students I know that have done well are all very intelligent (and not just hard-working). If that just so happens to be you, then BioE @ Cal is probably the place for you.</p>
<p>for the BS/MD program, do you have to take the MCAT and get a certain score ? or is it an actual direct program where you maintain a certain GPA and then you are fine? </p>
<p>My first thought though is if you are sure you want to do Medicine, then go to the the BS/MD program. If you are still wavering, do bioe at Cal. It will open A LOT of doors for you in the future. Whether it is research, medicine, finance, etc. A bioengineering degree is going to be very useful down the road. One of my close friends who is getting a bioe degree from duke is being heavily recruited by big banks like goldman and citi.</p>
<p>I had the same reaction - it depends on the relative importance of the degrees to you and how passionately you are committed to an MD. </p>
<p>If practicing medicine is the most important thing to you, then a guaranteed space in a reasonable medical school is not worth gambling on a ‘better’ med school or even a great secondary (to you) credential in bioE. If you are only 90% committed to an MD and would use that qualification for research or bioengineering rather than primarily practicing medicine, I would recommend Cal. Your prospects, education and access to cutting edge research will be much stronger at Cal. If on the other hand, you really want to practice some type of medicine, where internal medicine or surgery or some other specialty is your main career, with the bioE being an interesting subject to take before you can get into med school, then the much tougher grading and curves increase the risk that you would have a noncompetitive GPA particularly for the top 40 med schools - you might earn a 3.5 or 3.6 in bioE which represents very high performance but is compared to another aspiring med student at an easy school who earned a 3.95 GPA. Admissions committees don’t compensate anywhere near enough for the difference, thus someone whose overriding passion is med school should go somewhere else. If they also are excited by research, by intellectual challenge and other dimensions of value at Cal, the risk is worth taking, but for a pure intent to set out a shingle and heal people, if you know in your heart that there is little chance of changing your mind, I would recommend the locked in slot at med school. If you do drop medicine as a career, then the choice to go elsewhere would likely give you worse options, so this has to be tailored very specifically to you - looking into your heart to discover certainty or doubt about a medical practice.</p>