Prospects for a Biomed Engineering/Bioengineering degree

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I’d say it would be pretty easy to pursue a Masters in BME and if anything, it might be preferable. Right now, most BME curriculum are a mix of ChemE/ME/EE classes with a mix of Bio. If you pursue an UG in ME/CHemE/EE you can take a few bio classes and enter BME grad school or atleast have a stable major to fall back on.</p>

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<p>False. A PhD will earn you a higher salary but usually its off set by the lost salary required to earn one. Unless you are going from Math/Physics -> Wall Street, a PhD won’t give you a huge boost. </p>

<p>Keep in mind that engineering management doesn’t really depend on a degree but rather experience. You can become an engineering manager with a B.S, MBA or PhD.</p>

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<p>Can one go into a masters program in BME with a BS in say Bio or Chem or math?</p>

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<p>A good prospect for a science person wanting money would be patent law (I am going to do this). You can get an undergrad in an engineering discipline and then go to law school (go to a good one and starting salary first year out is 160K but the hours will be long.)</p>

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<p>I’m in bioengineering and I know that the petroleum field is grabbing up most of our undergraduates straight from the graduation ceremony. I’m getting out after my 4 years because a PhD doesn’t necessarily mean higher pay. </p>

<p>“Education does not mean Intelligence.”</p>

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<p>Yes but be prepared to have to take extra classes to fill your deficiency in engineering.</p>

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<p>Very true. Money is pretty good, my cousin is one and he earns about 300k a year. Hours are pretty rough and he says the material is pretty boring.</p>

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<p>Yep. Better off getting an MBA or terminary masters.</p>

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<p>“I guess to make a bit of money, you should get your PhD, work in industry doing research for a few years, and slowly advance to upper level management where the big money is. Then the sky is the limit to the amount of money you can make.”</p>

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<li><p>I thought people in engineering wanted to do research or projects, not management. Is this wrong? Do you still do research in management?</p></li>
<li><p>If you have good work experience, why do you need to major in engineering to be an engineering manager?</p></li>
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<p>‘I ask merely for information’
thanks</p>

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<p>Personally, I’m interested in business but would prefer engineering. I’d like to make more money than engineers, however. Thus, I plan on starting with engineering and working my way up.</p>

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<p>Let me just say this Bioengineering/BME hype is a load of ********. If your main goal is make money, and you’re not some nerd going into the field for the “love of science”, I guarantee you will be sorely disappointed with your BME degree.</p>

<p>At the moment, most of what’s going on in the academic world is pretty far away from what the mainstream biotech industry is doing. If you think whatever skills you’ll learn from undergrad will help you in the industry, forget about it. Stem cells are great, yeah sure I know, I’ve heard that for a looong time. Microfluidics seem interesting eh? Scratch that, it’s just not cost-effective, and it has a peanut market compared to the grand scheme of things. Technological progress in the field is painstakingly slow. If you think you can make some significant advancements in these sub-fields and make big bucks, you are as naive as a third grader. FDA doesn’t even know what the **** to do with these hodgepodge of “new” technologies; they just don’t have the guidelines for these fancy ****s. If it takes ten years for pharm giants to put a new drug on the shelves, how long do you think it will take FDA from NOW to approve these BME crap? 15 years? 20 years? And how old are you by then? like 40 or 50? Talk about a prosperous career…Also, you think you’re gonna do all these with an useless BME undergrad degree? It takes at least a team of PhDs who are lucky enough to have investors backing them up and not to get stuck under somebody’s lab doing years of post-doc while getting paid at poverty line. I might be talking about the worst, but it is also a very possible scenario. </p>

<p>Let’s look at some concrete examples, taken from real BME fresh grads. Ok, so you have your undergrad degree, and yay you got a job. So who are you? Most probably R&D scientist I, or something like that, earning some $20/hr. Sorry it’s only a contracted job so you ain’t got no health insurance. In a couple of years you may advance to R&D II or III, paying maybe $5 more an hour. Then with the qualification you have I think you’ve hit the top. Wanna be some project manager? Sorry most if not all of them are PhDs, and there’re a bunch of them out there.</p>

<p>You maybe thinking now, hm, maybe I should get a PhD. You will spend (or waste) some 5 to 6 years on average, and job prospects aren’t that much greater. You mention job stability. There is none. Say you want to initiate some start-up biotech companies, first you’ll obviously need to find some investors unless you have a rich daddy. Then you work on some biotech **** for some years, if you get lucky and your research actually yield something, you’ll hope you can convince somebody to buy your product. If you come up with jack and your investors pull out, which happens to many if not most people, you are in dip****. If you decide to stay in the field, either start over again or get some freelance consulting job. But at any rate, you’re still poor as a donkey. </p>

<p>All these sound like hypothetical, but trust me, it happens, and it happens a lot.</p>

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<p>Work as an engineer for a few years and then get an MBA.</p>

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<p>quote: So who are you? Most probably R&D scientist I, or something like that, earning some $20/hr. Sorry it’s only a contracted job so you ain’t got no health insurance.</p>

<p>You are only thinking in the narrow field of engineering of medicine or lab research. The great thing about this field is it is as broad as life itself. Think water resources, agricultural engineering (developing corn that has 3 ears per stalk), orthopedics. Also the federal government employs many bioengineers for different agencys like USDA-NRCS or Corps of Engineers. Any job with the fed pays okay and has great benefits.</p>

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<p>HypnosX is correct</p>

<p>undergrad BME is way too broad</p>

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<p>I’ve always wanted to be a bioengineer, but looking around on the boards I’m wondering if it has a stable future…</p>

<p>Is it really a bad idea to major in BME for undergrad?</p>

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<p>I’m the OP, and from what I can tell, yeah, it’s a bad idea. The salaries are bad and so is the work post-undergrad. If your passion is biomedical engineering, do some other engineering related to the work you’d eventually like to do and take a lot of biology courses. Then probably grad school and then PhD or employment.</p>

<p>Bioengineering, from what I can tell, has a very solid future. The key is acquiring skills, and it’s not possible to become an advanced bioengineer with only an undergrad degree. </p>

<p>For instance, if you want to develop pacemakers, go into electrical engineering. Prosthetic:materials engineering, or something like that. Bioengineering is a vast and poorly defined field. Decide what you want to do, and pursue a degree that’s oriented along those lines.</p>

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<p>Thanks! I understand that it’s a broad field, but I’m not sure what I want to specialize in…
I guess I can figure that out later and just switch majors.</p>

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<p>Engineering has very stringent course loads. You’ll need to figure out what degree you want very quickly… you can’t just change your mind senior year that you want to become a ChemEng from a history major. Biomed -> other Eng is probably easier, though.</p>

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<p>btw, read up on what exactly chemical engineering is before rushing into it. you’ll probably be surprised. [Chemical</a> engineering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_engineering]Chemical”>Chemical engineering - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>It’s not really chemistry.</p>

<p>This is one of the problems with engineering education in the US–students don’t know what they’re getting themselves into before choosing a school, which may only have a few types of engineering disciplines.</p>