<p>My god, I have never heard of anything so genius! Paying $200,000 for a major that involves an incredible amount of work, without the intent of ever using said work in a future career! BRILLIANT!</p>
<p>:|</p>
<p>Seriously, if all you want to do is medicine, why the hell would you spend four years of your life slaving away at EE/CS projects, and pay 200,000 for it? It’s a good backup, but that’s an entirely other issue.</p>
<p>Molliebatmit: maybe you can answer my original questions: how viable is it to major in EE/CS at MIT and simultaneously take all required courses for med school (i.e. one year of biology with lab, two years of chemistry including organic, etc.) ? How much extra academic load would be required and can a “normal” (average) MIT EECS student cope ? How many EECS majors (in percentage terms) actually apply to med school ?</p>
<p>Again, the OP’s question was what would be better in terms of med school application: a JHU BME degree or an MIT EECS degree (not any general MIT premed program) . What is your opinion ?</p>
<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses! </p>
<p>My friend has informed me that he ONLY applied to 2 schools–JHU and MIT–he said he was on the summer wait-list for one of them [JHU I think? not 100% sure though] and recently got an offer on the phone? So he DOES–AT THIS EXACT MOMENT IN TIME–have an offer from both school for matriculation for Fall 2009! He also DOES have an offer for BME, sorry if I confused some of you. He HAS BME AND EECS, from JHU and MIT respectively! He’s also enrolled at MIT I think? Like he put in a deposit, but now is being tempted by BME? lol</p>
<p>He said that Engineering really interests him and he would love to study it, but he really dislikes the idea of working in an Engineering context? I know it makes NO SENSE, lol, but he said he really enjoys learning about stuff like circuits, computers, and certain bio-medical instruments. He wants to know how they work, why they work, etc, etc. Basically all the things that drive an engineer, except he wants to be a Surgeon?</p>
<p>Also he has informed me that his parents recently revealed that money is NOT an issue [they have been saving up since he was 8], so $200K is no big deal for them right now, especially for college?</p>
<p>So I guess I’m saying, which will be a better school for him if he is hardcorely 100% Pre-Med, BUT with aspirations to take Engineering courses? </p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>
I don’t know how many EECS majors at MIT are among those applying to medical school – that information isn’t released by the Careers Office. On a personal level, most of the premeds I knew at MIT were biology and chemistry majors, but now I believe there are a substantial number of biological engineering majors who apply. Another common major for engineering premeds is mechanical engineering, which has a flexible major option allowing more space for premed classes.</p>
<p>I guess in the OP’s case I don’t see why, if he’s interested in BME at Hopkins, he wouldn’t be similarly interested in BE at MIT. The BE department requirements definitely overlap more with premed requirements, and he would, of course, be free to take any extra EECS classes that fit into his schedule.</p>
<p>It certainly wouldn’t be impossible to complete premed requirements and an EECS degree at MIT – it would be roughly similar to double-majoring, which about 15% of EECS students do. Obviously, it wouldn’t be easy. But the amount of extra work it would actually take depends on how much AP credit the OP comes in with. With a decent amount of AP or advanced standing credit, it becomes rather significantly easier.</p>
<p>IBClass, allow me to make some points. Firstly, statistically, Hopkins has stronger statistics…352 applicants in 2008 vs only 130 from MIT. So, actually, which number is more persuasive, 223/352, or 100/130? For example, MIT could fall flat on its sliderule for student applicants #101-130 ! In stats, there is something called a power analysis, which predicts the validity of the statistical statement based on the number of subjects tested based on the difference sought after. For example, if the Phillies won 2 out of 3 World series ( or whatever, this is just an ex ) yielding an efficiency of 66%, and the Yankees won 27 out of , hypothetically, I’m not a sports geek, 50, that’s less than the 66% of the Phillies, but which is the baseball dynasty here? </p>
<p>Secondly, this doesn’t tell us WHICH med school they got into. The quality of the MIT results vs JHU is not measured here, and it’s an important one. What if all the MIT grads got into UMass or BU ( ranked low) and JHU put its grads consistently into top 20 med schools? I say this , because I suspect this is the case. Being @ JHU, you have a lot of exposure to medical science, and research…the reputation of JHU far outshines MIT’s ( MIT doesn’t EVEN have a med school, JHU is #1 USNWR)…the quality of the med school, as we all know , is very important…it can determine what subspecialty (for ex. JHUSM gets 7-10 students into world renown opthalmology residencies each match year, whereas, BU gets 3-4, in lesser known programs. I don’t mean to be money conscious, but sought after specialties make more money, opth. around 600k- 1 million per annum, so the 500K outlay is paid back relatively faster than the BU family practitioner. More on JHU later…gotta go.</p>
<p>You actually don’t have to wildly speculate about which medical schools the MIT applicants got into – that information is provided in the link in post #16.</p>
<p>Furthermore, MIT actually does have a medical school – it’s called Harvard Medical School. Harvard and MIT run a joint MD program (Health Sciences and Technology), and MIT is the most common undergraduate origin of HST students, or at least so I have been told by a few HMS students. Being at MIT, students are exposed to a great deal of high-quality biological and medical research – there’s no deficiency there. It’s just that more students at MIT choose to pursue master’s degrees and PhDs than choose to pursue medical school. MIT is not a particularly pre-professional place.</p>
<p>Phony real: Oh, and I hear JHU Med doesn’t like taking its premeds…something about academic incest. That’s just the word on the street. Take it with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Take that with a LARGE grain of salt, folks. Bonanza is right, about 8-10 JHU undergrads get inot Hopkins Med yearly. The rumor got started back in the 70s, when JHUSM had something called a 2-5 program, a 7 year program that college sophomores applied to…they usually took 6-8 JHU sophomores, then , as a result would take less for the regular program ( 2-4 ) because they already took a whole bunch for 2-5. So shortsighted people would say, oh, you’re only taking 2 JHU undergrads? But they never really did the math, and the rumor got started. Now, thankfully, that program has been scrapped, and JHUSM is back to taking 10 -15% JHU undergrads. They couldn’t go wrong.</p>
<p>Another point, re: a BME major ( bioengineering ) I know with a 3.5 got into hopkins med last year. So they do take their own, they like the engineering majors, and JHU students can get into a school that usually sniffs at 3.7s.</p>
<p>
Agreed. I recently posted statistics about the number of fellowship winners produced by the top private universities.</p>
<p>For a university supposedly so strong in the sciences, Hopkins performed quite poorly in NSF fellow production, coming in second to last among the 17 elites. MIT came in second behind Harvard. MIT also vastly outperformed Hopkins in Goldwater production. </p>
<p>In fact, Hopkins performed poorly in producing any kind of fellowship winners, ranking dead last among the elite privates.</p>
<p>
Actually, I’d say the opposite. I strongly suspect that more Hopkins students end up at mediocre medical schools than do MIT graduates.</p>
<p>Doesn’t anyone find it rather intriguing that the mean gpa of MIT’s matriculants to med school is higher than the national average? At arguably one of the top science schools in the world with world-class students, why is MIT’s mean HIGHER than that of a grade-inflated school up the street?</p>
<p>hint: search cc for sakky’s posts…</p>
<p>There are several factors that can help account for this, although ultimately there is not much data one way or another.</p>
<p>One factor is that there are not very many premeds at MIT driving each other crazy in competition for top grades. Another is that most premeds at MIT are in life sciences majors (biology and brain and cognitive sciences), which are not terribly grade-deflated. A third is that most medical school applicants from MIT also have very high GPAs – the preprofessional office used to publish the mean GPA of applicants as well as admits, and the two numbers were always within 0.1 or 0.2 of each other: there is not much selection on the part of medical schools for high GPAs from MIT, it’s that everyone who applies has a high GPA already. Fourth is that MIT’s first semester freshman year (when most students take physics, chemistry, and calculus) is pass-no record, and is not factored into the student’s GPA.</p>