<p>I'm going to Rice this year and I'm really uncertain what to major in. I want to be a bioengineer. Biomedical engineering (i.e. building medical devices and prostheses) doesn't interest me as much; I want my career to be centered around things like synthetic biology, cell engineering, tissue engineering, etc. I know that to do so I will have to go to graduate school and possibly get a PhD. My first thought was to major in bioengineering, but then I heard from several people that this would be inferior when applying for postgraduate education because it makes you somewhat of a dilettante in several areas (biology, electrical engineering, etc.) rather than giving you real knowledge in one. Now I'm considering chemical engineering, but I don't think this would emphasize biology enough...do you guys have any advice?</p>
<p>All the stuff you are interested in is a part of bioengineering. It has a Tissue engineering etc focus(this is what Im thinking about studying)</p>
<p>I meant that those are the things that I’m interested in doing once I’m actually a bioengineer, but I don’t know if majoring in bioengineering itself is the best way to achieve that (i.e. to get into grad school etc.)</p>
<p>The various engineering majors are just about the only majors at Rice where what’s inside is exactly what it says on the tin. Except architecture. And music.</p>
<p>At any rate, you really don’t need to decide any of this until at least the end of your freshman year, since engineers all take the same classes their first year anyway.</p>
<p>Well, I’m not even sure whether I’m going to pursue an engineering major anymore. A couple people have told me that I should do biochemistry.</p>
<p>Assuming you want to go into the sciences side, take chemistry and math (whatever level you’re at) and try the intro BIOC course, I think it’s 201 to see if you like it. Honestly though, don’t worry about it. Oweek and after will give you plenty of time to think about your academic future.</p>
<p>Take chemical engineering with the bioengineering focus.</p>
<p>Its a lot of work and is hard, so be advised that it is challenging.</p>
<p>That being said, I took a graduate ‘metabolic engr’ course and had a great time and learned a lot</p>
<p>@Antarius Are you majoring/did you major in chemical engineering, or are you in grad school or what? Also how hard is it would you say? If you can think of a point of comparison</p>
<p>
Seconded. As someone with an interest in the cellular/genetic engineering side of bioengineering classes like bioinstrumentation and elec 243 are fairly unappealing. I would go through the two course listings and see which of the two has more courses that you think would be interesting/useful for what area of bioe you want to end up in.</p>
<p>@kaekae</p>
<p>I just graduated in Chemical Engineering (class of 2010). I now work for a consulting company. </p>
<p>I do have friends that are going to grad school (UT Austin, Stanford, MIT, WashU etc)</p>
<p>ChemE is hard, one of the harder majors at rice. People will argue which engineering is harder, but to me that is bs as they havent taken them all. It is def. one of the harder majors, both in terms of work load and general difficulty</p>
<p>It is challenging, and you will need to put in time. That being said, I had my fun and worked for the university for 20-30 hours a week</p>