Hello College Confidential!
Lately I have been having a serious dilemma. It is my dream to get accepted into medical school and become a doctor, but I really want to major in biomedical engineering for my undergrad. My dream school is UPenn. Everytime I visit any college campus and go on an engineering tour, I always encounter biomedical engineering students who are pre-med, and they always say that they would not want to do anything else and that I should definitely go for it. Obviously this is very encouraging, until I go back to reading on college confidential and research the average GPAs of engineering students for the schools that I’m applying to. Also, every time I have mentioned that I want to do engineering on college confidential, I get a lot of responses from people who say that engineering is too hard to get good grades in, which is really discouraging. My question is- should I pursue my interest in engineering, or should I be more pragmatic and rethink my intended major. If it helps, here are some of my grades from the math and science classes that I’ve taken-
AP Chemistry- 98% (One of the hardest classes in my school. 2nd highest score in my school.)
AP Physics- 96% (took this as a sophomore, which is very uncommon)
AP Calc AB- 95%
AP Bio- 98%
Honors Biochemistry- 100%
AP Calc BC- 99% (this is considered by many the hardest class in my school)
(All grades are unweighted and based on a 100% scale)
Do my grades reflect that I truly have a passion for biomedical engineering and that I could pull a good GPA? I really like all of these classes, and I would love to be able to use them all together, and I see biomedical engineering as the perfect major for me. Thank you everyone!
The real question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to be a doctor or an engineer. There are many majors which can lead to medical school. Biomedical Engineering is one of them and it is not necessarily the best one. In my opinion, Biochemistry might be a tad better for pre-med. Engineering degrees are usually a bit more challenging in terms of the difficulty of the courses and the lack of free electives. Biomedical Engineering is no exception.
However, if you are truly interested in Biomedical Engineering and you are considering it as a career, then go for it. You might have to go to graduate school to find a career in the field or you might end up going to medical school anyway but if it is real option for you then no problem.
The biggest problem is that many students think that a Biomedical Engineering degree is a surer way into medical school. This is a fallacy because if the students don’t really like engineering, then their grades will suffer and make it harder to get into the school they want. Instead, with a less demanding major, you can have some time to do the other things that will help your medical school application.
Most persons who apply to medical school do not matriculate. It’s good to have a back up plan in a career you’d enjoy, rather than just choose a major that you think is easiest to get high grades or has the most overlap with pre-med requirements. I also wouldn’t assume you’ll get higher grades in a particular major because the average major GPA differs by 0.1 or whatever. I did EE+pre-med and found it easier to get high grades in my objective engineering analytical problems than I did on subjective humanities papers, even though non-STEM types would generally say the reverse. Different persons have different specialties.
However, one legitimate concern is course scheduling. An ABET accredited engineering major usually requires a large number of units for the major, leaving relatively few electives for pre-med classes. It can be done, but it usually doesn’t leave room for many electives besides major + pre-med. You mentioned you like Penn. Penn solves this dilema by offering 2 related majors – ABET accredited Bioengineering and non-ABET Biomedical Science. Penn says Biomedical Science’s purpose is " to allow students to pursue dual degrees and other paths, such as premedical education, more easily", while Bioengineering is more focused on pursuing a related engineering career.
You might favor colleges that give you the flexibility to easily switch majors, so you don’t need to decide on a major that you’ve never taken a class in while you are in high school, or decide whether you want to be an engineer or doctor before haven taken any engineering or pre-med classes. At my college, the engineering and pre-med students took similar foundation classes during freshman year. Sophomore year would also likely be similar with the potential majors you listed. This gives a lot of time to make the important decisions that may change the direction of your career and life.
Many moons ago when I was on college, the pre-med majors at my college were typically philosophy majors. Why? The philosophy major was easy and you could then pick and choose which classes to take. There was no pre-med major at that college. Any other major, like biology, included tough required classes that weren’t needed for pre-med. Those pre-med guys were quite conscious of their GPAs.
@Data10, I must respectfully disagree. If very few get in, you should do EVERYTHING in your power to maximize your chances of getting in, IF you want to go to medical school. Anything short of that, including pre-planning for a backup that could derail your chances, is ill advised.
It doesn’t matter how good your high school performance is. Engineering is hard.
@eyemgh, I’d consider having an all or nothing attitude without considering the cost of failure to be ill advised, particularly when the rate of failure is high. For example, suppose in theory that majoring in Ethnic Studies gives a particular student best chance of medical school admission, while instead following his passion and career interests by majoring in Biomedical Engineering results in a 1% lower chance of admission for that student. Is that 1% benefit worth the high cost of being failing to obtain med school admission and being stuck in a major that does not interest him or assist with backup career plans? I realize this is an extreme and unrealistic example, but the point is cost of failure can have a big impact on important decisions.
It would be nice if we could do this type of analysis and knew what chance of admission we’d have with different majors, but it doesn’t work that way. It is true that the average student is likely to find any field that requires objective calculations with numbers hard, such as engineering; and is likely to find fields that emphasize light reading and papers easier. However, the OP is not average. He has a misbalanced SAT with a 800 math and much lower CR like I did, and sounds like he is more passionate and interested in engineering than other majors like I was. So I would not be at all surprised if he has experiences more like my own, and finds objective engineering classes that fit with his interests easier than subjective ones that do not.
It is by no means a given than majoring in BE will decrease chance of med school admission. Biomedical Engineering is actually one of the majors with the highest rates of med school admission, far higher than traditional majors, such as Biology or Chemistry. This likely relates to at least one study finding that BE majors had the highest average composite MCAT score, as well as well as BE premeds being composed of mostly talented students who make thoughtful decisions, without choosing the easy way out. This same study found the 2 lowest MCAT scores occurred with the easy way out type majors – Premedical Studies and Biology.
@Data10, If I believed that that there was an only a 1% differential, I’d tell everyone to choose engineering. It has the best job potential if the candidate fails to get into medical school.
I also understand that engineers (and math and physics majors), BMEs in particular, have high test scores. Engineers in general are sharp and have solid work ethic.
The reason I don’t believe the differential to only be 1% is that the number one factor in determining medical school admission is GPA. Earning a high GPA in engineering at any school is difficult and at some, it is brutally difficult. As a result, picking the major that is the best backup has a higher chance of resulting in a student in said backup.
The ONLY time I’d recommend engineering as a pre-professional degree is if the student is truly conflicted about medical school and wants to hold it out as an option, but is also passionate about math and physics and really desires to be an engineer. Otherwise, if medical is goal 1, 2, and 3, there are better majors.
@Data10 I have to side with @eyemgh on this. While I agree that it would be nice to be able to do some real detailed analysis and quantitatively evaluate the effect of specific majors on medical school admissions (beyond what general data is available from the AAMC), I think it’s irresponsible and misleading to claim that “biomedical engineering is actually one of the majors with the highest rates of med school admission”. Do you have a source for this? Claiming that one study found this to be true is meaningless without further information, and could have been due to any one of a number of confounding factors, including sheer dumb luck. The only such study I found was from the AIP, and it wasn’t really a study at all–just an unexamined, unexplained, and unqualified table of majors versus MCAT score.
The facts are that 1) engineering majors have lower GPAs than other majors, and 2) GPA plays a large role in medical school admission without regard for major, based on data from AAMC. Looking at the proportions of applicants to matriculants (https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/factstablea17.pdf), assuming that “Physical Sciences” includes engineering majors, we see that about 39% of biological science majors matriculate versus about 44% of physical sciences majors. Is this significant? I don’t know, maybe. There’s not enough information to say, but it does seem like the sample size of physical science majors was considerably smaller than that of biological science majors, which doesn’t help. There also isn’t any real information on how many of these physical science majors were engineers, if any, or how many were biomedical engineers. If self-selection among engineers really led to significantly higher admission rates, then we might expect to see considerably higher matriculation rates among these individuals, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, in the same table, we also see the GPAs of matriculating students, and find that a similar GPA is required regardless of major.
Combined with the fact that engineering majors tend to have lower GPAs than their LAS counterparts (for example, see this publication from the NCES, among others: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013150.pdf), it’s very reasonable to say that majoring in BE/BME will decrease one’s chance of medical school admission. This doesn’t mean that specific students or schools don’t have better outcomes, but generally speaking: yes, majoring in engineering will hurt your chance of getting into medical school.
Which is why I think it’s misleading and disingenuous to people like @AnthonyZ to suggest that majoring in engineering won’t potentially negatively impact their ability to get into med school.
Okay, “study” was a poor choice of words. The AAMC provides reports comparing MCAT score by major for all med school applicants, and Biomedical Engineering consistently comes out near first, while premedical studies and biology consistently come out in the bottom two.
The specific numbers in your linked study for percentage with 3.5+ GPA are below. It found that engineering majors had ~36% with 3.5+ GPA, which was nearly identical to the ~36% with 3.5+ GPA average across all majors
Percent with 3.5+ GPA
Humanities – 41%
Computer Science – 38%
Overall Average – 36%
Engineering – 36%
Business – 35%
Social Sciences – 33%
General Studies – 25%
Many schools provide such summaries of GPA by major/field, and there are usually big differences between frome one college to the next, which again makes it too complex for a simple fact assertion For example, an 9-year summary of GPA by field at Berkeley is summarized at http://projects.dailycal.org/grades/ … Bioengineering had a mean GPA of 3.56, which appears to be significantly above the overall school average and above many of the “easy” GPA majors implied in this thread (Philosophy is 3.19), but well below most language classes.
Of course self selection and ability has an influence, but the point is engineering having a lower GPAs than other majors is not a clear a fact as you claim, and it’s certainly not a given that a talented STEM kid is going to have lower grades in engineering than other majors.
GPA no doubt plays a large role in medical school admissions, but many medical schools take a holistic approach where GPA and MCAT stats may get you in the door, but specific courses taken also plays a role in admissions decisions. I wouldn’t assume choosing what is commonly believed to be the “easy” course or easy way out at every opportunity is going to give the best chance of admission.
You are rewording my statements in to claims I didn’t make. My specific claims are below. Note that I mention a lot of uncertainty, rather claiming there is no potential for increased/decreased chances.
"Most persons who apply to medical school do not matriculate. It's good to have a back up plan in a career you'd enjoy, rather than just choose a major that you think is easiest to get high grades or has the most overlap with pre-med requirements. "
" the OP is not average. He has a misbalanced SAT with a 800 math and much lower CR like I did, and sounds like he is more passionate and interested in engineering than other majors like I was. So I would not be at all surprised if he has experiences more like my own, and finds objective engineering classes that fit with his interests easier than subjective ones that do not." " Different persons have different specialties." "It is by no means a given that majoring in BE will decrease chance of med school admission.[because a GPA decrease not being a given]"
"one legitimate concern is course scheduling. An ABET accredited engineering major usually requires a large number of units for the major, leaving relatively few electives for pre-med classes. It can be done, but it usually doesn't leave room for many electives besides major + pre-med. "
Note that when listing the 1% example, I wrote “I realize this is an extreme and unrealistic example, but the point is cost of failure can have a big impact on important decisions.” In reality the chance of admission by major cannot be quantified by a simple differential of x%. It depends on many additional factors, including the specific student and the specific school… For example, the fields in which I found it easiest to get high grades are below, listed from easiest to hardest. I realize your list would be different, as would the OP’s, and most other persons’ in this thread.
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering (was an EE major)
Industrial Engineering
Chemistry
Humanities that especially interested me
Physics (took advanced physics sequence without having taken prerequesites)
Biology
Most Humanities GERs
Writing Intensive Humanities
Based on this list, I might have the best chance of admission as a CS major, and the worst chance as a language major. However, the Berkeley GPA list earlier suggest language might be best for admission and CS one of the worst. However, the NCES link listed higher CS GPA than the overall average, so that suggests CS is not so bad. Given the amount of variation, it’s good to have the flexibility to take some classes in different fields before making decisions that will change your life, like I stated in my original post.
Be careful here. Note that the lowest GPA subject at UCB is Biology, but the only courses under that subject are the introductory general biology courses*; there are no upper division courses under that subject (upper division biology courses are mostly under Molecular and Cell Biology or Integrative Biology). Some of the other lower GPA subjects are those which have large lower division enrollments by students of other majors. The highest GPA subject is Filipino, but the courses under that subject are various level language courses (including special versions for heritage speakers); presumably, there is a self-selection aspect here. That web site would be more useful if it allowed looking at lower division and upper division courses separately.