<p>I came thinking I was going to learn a lot from this Harvard of Midwest school. I studied biomedical engineering, supposedly the hardest major here. It was a very frustrating 4 years not because the learning material was challenging, rather because the professors absolutely do not care about teaching students; all they care is their research and bringing more grant money for the school. The biomedical engineering department is a mess on multiple levels. It is a very weak department in terms of the quality of research (if you check the faculties publications, very rarely do you see them publishing in the top journals). Except for a few professors, the majority of them are arrogant and treat students as scrubs. The department is ranked high because it is leeching onto the medical school's ranking. Another problem is the undergraduate curriculum. We are introduced to project design only for one semester during senior year! All the top BME programs in the country train their students to think creatively and design projects from freshman year. WashU BME grads face huge disadvantage when interviewing for jobs, because we have not gained any practical skills. We are very underprepared for the real world.
I really wanted to love this school but this is the honest image. I could've lied and described WashU as an idyllic paradise. </p>
<p>I took some time off after graduation to gain practical skills and thanks to it I am now doing my PhD at Stanford, which has a far superior BME department than WashU's. </p>
<p>Prospective students, do yourself a favor and run away from this school. </p>
<p>What you describe is very common for all degrees. The doctor in our family has told us that he probably only uses an 1/8th of what he has learned in college/med school in real practice. It’s frustrating but true. You have learned more than you think and congrats for getting into Stanford. I doubt they would have accepted you without your Wash U education. </p>
<p>They also recommended that you continue your studies at another university so you can see a different perspective and learn new things. No one university is perfect and I’m sure over time you’ll find Stanford isn’t perfect either. </p>
<p>In addition to your post here, hopefully over the course of those 4 years you made your experiences and feelings known to the university in the form of constructive feedback to allow for a review of the issues you raised.</p>
<p>What got me into Stanford was what I did after graduating from WashU because i didn’t learn much from this school aside that all the people there have huge egos. After graduating, I worked hard for two years in a research center and published two first author paper in top journals. That’s what got me into Stanford. Didn’t even bother to ask a washu professor to write me a recommendations letter.</p>
<p>So let’s see. Coming out of WUSTL BME you had an inferior educational experience, yet it allowed you to land a job at a research center and have the knowledge and skills to first author two papers in top journals in what would have been a junior position within the company, presumably. That seems like a contradiction.</p>
<p>I am really not trying to diminish your criticisms of what could be improved at WUSTL’s BME department. I don’t know nearly enough about it to comment one way or the other, but only to observe that apparently anomalous result from what your claim is. I second those that say you should use your observations of Stanford’s department and what you think is better there and, in a positive and constructive manner, suggest to WUSTL where you think things should be changed. Because warning students away from WUSTL strikes me as a less constructive approach, although if you truly believe they would receive an inferior education in this field, I could see doing both until things got fixed, as you see it. But to only complain seems like a less than best approach.</p>
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