We attended the Admitted Student event on Monday. They mentioned mid-March for fin aid info. That’s when sign up for new student registration will also open up for committed students.
2 Likes
Thank You! Yeah ranking wise true!
Thanks for that information. My DD is leaning towards BME now, so if its highly competitive to get in at Purdue, that matters! Yeah in UIUC it’s a direct admit. Any idea why BME is in high demand now, is it because of more job opportunity in the field?
I think part of it is the popularity of the major proportional to the space available. Purdue has a total of around 440 students currently enrolled in BME. Just as a reference, another popular/competitive major at Purdue, mechanical engineering, has 1605 students currently enrolled. Therefore, the limitation on seats in BME seems simply to be based on space availability in teaching labs.
1 Like
Got it! Thank you so much!
There are a lot of pre-meds that think that BME is a good fall back if med school doesn’t work out.
Honestly for a student wanting to go into industry, ME is a more versatile major and can still land a student in the biomedical industry without needing grad school.
4 Likes
My son got into UIUC Chemical engineering and is now deciding between UIUC, FYE Purdue, and Direct to Engineering at the University of Washington. We are in the state of Washington, what are your thoughts if UIUC is worth the extra 100K+ over 4 years? The starting salaries are similar but the regions and companies are so different.
1 Like
We looked at UW and found the major selection very cumbersome and unreliable. For non CompE engineering majors, if I recall they want you to pick your top 5 engineering major choices and then depending on grades, professor evaluations etc. you will be placed into one of them.
That’s too much uncertainty in my book.
1 Like
I agree there is uncertainty. However, in the last three placement cycles, all chemical engineers were placed in their major.
Personally, this is my order of preference:
In-state + major certainty
OOS + major certainty
In-state + major uncertainty
In your case, UIUC offers major certainty but if you are confident of UW placement then UW would make the most sense.
1 Like
I’m from IL, have lived in WA for 20+ years, and last year my son got into UIUC chemical engineering, UW direct to engineering, he was waitlisted at Purdue, and he got into Cal Poly. For him the choice was really between Cal Poly (EE) and UIUC because he wanted to be farther from home than UW, but it is a good program. Congrats to your son for the great chocies :). My son chose Cal Poly; here are the main reasons why (we looked at all 3 programs pretty carefully):
- Although I was assured it’s ok that chem engineering at UIUC is in the LAS college, it made me nervous that it wasn’t Grainger. I worried about his ability to switch to another branch of engineering if he ended up not liking chem E.
- We worried some about the competitiveness of UW given how hard we’ve heard it is to transfer into engineering. Since he was direct admit this probably would have been fine, but I wondered if he wanted to change majors if he would be able to at UW. As you can tell he wasn’t super sure about his Chem E choice and we were looking to hedge our bets.
- Travel to/from UIUC from WA is not straightforward. This was a big factor for us in the end.
- We looked at the companies that hire out of UIUC chemE, UW, and Cal Poly EE. My son was more drawn to the companies that hire out of UW and Cal Poly. Yours might like the ones that hire out of UIUC – it’s worth looking into this.
- The class sizes at Cal Poly are smaller – more direct access to professors. From what I could tell UIUC and UW are comparable here.
- My son preferred a less urban campus, which is true of both UIUC and Cal Poly – UW is definitely more urban.
Can people stop recommending CalPoly? Seriously it’s a gem of a school and we don’t want too many people finding it’s amazing potential.
We are in a similar boat and CalPoly is #1 for my CompE/CS S22 even ahead of Berkeley and UCLA.
2 Likes
Oh and one other thing that we looked at - the % of OOS kids at each school. I actually don’t know this for UW. Would be good to know. Cal Poly is 85% from California, 15% out of state. UIUC is 75% from IL, 23% international, and 2% from out of state.
1 Like
UW is 42% OOS
1 Like
@momofboiler1 @Stephanie_Embree_Rob @curious47
If i am reading the posts correctly, our kids are in the similar boat - BME. Agree that BME seems to in high-demand within engineering. For example, I believe that JHU state in their application portal about BME being the most difficult major to get into and that applicants most probably will be given second major option. Fortunately, there are a lot of great schools that have good BME programs. I think the challenge is to find a school that is great in Engineering and Medical programs as BME spans across both.
My D22 has been passionate about BME since her sophomore year in HS (credit to her AP biology and Engineering teachers). Her HS Senior project is making a “hand structure” mimic actions of a human hand with a glove (with sensors). As CA residents, UCs are our first preference, but are also looking at OOS in case top tier UCs reject her. We currently have Purdue and UIUC in the play with Univ. of Washington Seattle in the backup list.
Can’t wait for the end of this month to narrow down our choices 
2 Likes
UCSD probably has the best BME program in the state and I know it gets a ton of applicants. Wouldn’t be surprised if BME is as competitive as CS in UCSD.
Agree on UCSD. UCSD is my D22’s top choice - but she will not say it as she doesn’t want to be disappointed if she doesn’t get in (lessons learned from S19’s experience). We will be looking outside CA if she doesn’t get into UCSD/UCB/UCLA/USC/Stanford (verrrrrrry loooong Shot).
3% OOS for Engineering
We missed the admitted student event. Did they discuss engineering branch specific course details? Anything for ME that my kid got into?
Yes, they did. There would be some testing done for placement, I recall them mentioning Math. Our student guides said the tests were easy. They said once you commit, all those information would become available.
They had separate breakout sessions for each of the majors. My kid is CS+Econ so I can’t comment on ME.
1 Like