<p>Yes, another one of those "which school should I pick?" posts. I applied to a bunch of schools as a biomedical engineering/bioengineering major, and my decision will basically be coming down to UCLA or Northwestern.</p>
<p>Some of my concerns:
- COST is huge: On top of being a CA resident, I'm getting a $5,500 Regents scholarship from UCLA, which comes to about 19k a year. Northwestern costs more than twice that... my dad makes enough money that we don't qualify for much financial aid (I was only offered $7,500), but not enough that 40k+ a year wouldn't be a big deal.
- School size: The truth is that I've never really wanted to go to a huge public school, and I think that professors and research opportunities at NU would be much more available. And I'm going to apply to grad school later, so doing research is important. (Also, I want to.)
- Competition: Does huge number of UCLA undergrads = more competition? This also affects grad school, since admissions are mostly contingent upon college GPA... However, one of the perks of Regents is priority class enrollment.
- My major: NU's BME program is more highly regarded than is UCLA's, but I don't know if that makes a difference for grad school. UCLA also has a good reputation in general.</p>
<p>So... any advice? Are the differences in size, strength of the major, etc. enough to justify NU's pricetag?</p>
<p>In case you're wondering why UCLA over state schools like UCSD and Berkeley with great bioengineering, I'll be honest. I've visited UCSD twice and hated the atmosphere. Berkeley would probably be 1) even more competitive, and 2) like my high school all over again. I visited UCLA this summer and really liked it, though.</p>
<p>My other private school options were Johns Hopkins (even more competition with crazy med school hopefuls?), Rice (will be visiting, but probably won't end up there), and Boston U (10k merit scholarship, but still too expensive with less prestige, in my parents' opinion).</p>