Hey. I’m an international student and I recently received an acceptance from UMass Amherst and was offered $12k/year as scholarship. I want to choose Biomedical Engineering as my major but I know that it’s not accredited because it’s fairly new(I think). I was wondering if I should still go with it.
I have SUNY Buffalo as the other option and since I was offered $8.5k/year as merit aid, the cost of attendance will almost be the same. The BME program is accredited but the university ranking is lower in comparison to UMass.
I was wondering if I should go with UMass and either choose BME or choose another engineering major that is accredited and take some classes for BME OR just go with SUNY? To be honest, I like Amherst more than Buffalo(because of the weather and all) but I still want to go with whatever will be better. Thank you!
While I’m not dismissing the accreditation issue outright, I suspect that there can be work-arounds. Does the program have all or most of the classes you’d need? If so, then it’s probably a decent program and will get you where you want to go. I suspect that if they are seeking accreditation they offer all or most classes that you need, but lack the formal assessment as yet. You said that they are trying to establish the new program stil, correct? Maybe get the list of courses that accreditation requires and see if you can duplicate them through Umass Amherst and the other 5 colleges. I am betting that you can get very close.
To my mind the Northampton/Amherst area offers much more than a degree-granting program, mainly because of the 5-college consortium. You would be able to take classes at any of the other institutions. All 5 colleges have very different cultures and different approaches to learning, from the large lecture and traditional style of one school, to the always-questioning-assumptions-style of Hampshire, to the two all-women’s colleges that are quite high-ranked as well, Mt. H and Smith. Smith has a general engineering program and I think is only one of maybe 2 such programs in the states slated for women. But that may be another resource for perspectives on what your interests are. There is the free bus system to get you to the various campuses and the little towns they are in.
To my mind also, the weather is so much better in the Northampton/Amherst area. It’s a very pretty area of the country.
My feeling is that you should choose UMass Amherst and make the most of the 5-col consortium.
New engineering programs cannot receive accreditation until they have graduated their first class. Is this the case with UMass? If so you are good. If they applied for accreditation and were denied then that would be an issue.
Thanks guys! I was leaning towards UMass but UBuffalo increased my scholarship so I’ll probably choose that. I hope it turns out to be a wise decision. 