My son has been accepted to a private Jesuit college with a presidential merit scholarship for BS Biology but decided to go to UT Dallas for biomedical engineering as premed tract. My position is that if he decides not to pursue medicine he can still stand on his own and find a job easily
BME does have much better job prospects than pure Biology BS, but not by much. You still need an advanced degree to increase your chances of employment and better pay. In my old days , 40 years ago, with a big pharmaceutical company, all bio related technicians have Phds. I believe it is more so now a days. There are literally tens thousands BS in bio related field who could not get into the med school looking for few bio jobs that only require BS.
A D of my friend, before she got admitted in Dental school, was selling clothes in the mall for 5 years.
BME has better employment prospects than does a BA/BS in any bio sub-field.
There are tons of unsuccessful pre-meds in the job market.
The issue your son may face is that BME is harder to maintain the high GPA needed for a med school admission.
(Pre-meds don’t get any slack for having a “hard” major when it comes to med school admissions, This advice comes from the mom of 1 physics major and 1 math major who both went to med school.)
Engineering skills are different from a science major skills. They are usually equipped to pursue quantitative, computational and analytical areas for jobs and doing BME does not require them to pursue a specific BME job.
Having said that, it is easier to be hired as an electrical engineer than BME since there are not enough jobs that directly cater to BME. I would recommend people go and do a master’s in a different engineering field or get an MBA if not doing medicine. One of my Ds did Biomechanical enroute to medical school and the other is pursuing Biomedical and will be applying to medical schools this year. I can tell you that older D’s biggest gripe is that she could have been making a lot of money outside working for someone like google or apple and not be working for 7 or 10 more years specializing in medicine working for peanuts.
D graduated this past year with a bme degree and is working in healthcare consulting to save up some money for medical school. She did really well in her bme classes because she really enjoyed the subject.
I would suggest not going this path as your student will have a greater chance of messing up their gpa. The schedule will be very tight and more than likely a gap year will be needed before applying to med school because one has to complete the engineering classes in sequence while also adding the premed classes. It is very difficult to complete all the premed classes and prepare for the mcat by end of junior year as a bme student. D was taking organic chemistry junior year because her schedule was already outlined with bme classes for four years. Also keep in mind that a bme student will be taking 16 to 18 credits a semester and there will be no room for easy classes. Imagine a semester with two science classes and three engineering classes. Now imagine that every semester.
D managed to graduate with honors but most of her classmates that were also premed dropped out of the bme program simply because it messed up their gpa.
I would also say to pursue a bme career it is not necessary to have a bachelor’s degree in BME but to pick something like computer science, software, electrical, or mechanical engineering. They can then pursue a master’s/phd in BME.
If the intention is to go to med school pick an easier major that will boost your gpa.