bump
You’ll be fine. It’s a large school, like most public research unis, so find ways to take the road-less-travelled and make your academic experience “smaller”. The Honors College is a good start. Try to find a smaller department that interests you, get involved in research as soon as you’re comfortable with the workload, get as close to profs as possible.
There’s nothing wrong with giving engineering a whirl, if you’re worried about UA credibility or employability. Those programs are all ABET-accredited (except biomed) so there isn’t any perceived professional weakness with those majors. Just watch the GPA for med school.
Regarding a previous question of yours, about whether a minor in engineering would be enough to secure a job in engineering, the answer is no, if you’re referring to practicing as a licensed engineer. However, with med school in sight, a minor isn’t a bad plan initially to see if your GPA holds up.
I don’t know if a minor in engineering would be enough to get into a master’s degree in engineering. That’s potentially important to you because you might end up wanting to pursue engineering with only a minor, should med school not work out. Maybe @ucbalumnus knows the answer to that question. I know in other fields of study, a minor is often sufficient to get into a master’s program, providing you have all of the foundation courses under your belt, you have good recommendations, and you can persuade admissions of your interest. But in engineering, I’m not sure.
Re: minor to graduate study
It likely varies depending on the type of engineering and subspecialty. Try going to the graduate program pages of engineering departments of various universities to see what they expect of incoming graduate students.
For UT Austin, general pre-reqs for a master’s degree: http://www.utexas.edu/student/registrar/catalogs/grad05-07/ch3/ch3a.html
“He or she must also have taken at least twelve semester hours of upper-division undergraduate coursework in the area of the proposed graduate major or must have the consent of the graduate dean. Some areas may require more undergraduate preparation. Students who lack adequate preparation may be admitted to a graduate program on the condition that they complete additional preparatory coursework designated by the graduate adviser.”
This is typical. So that’s a minimum of 4 upper-division courses. It looks like Arizona’s engineering minors require ~3 upper-division courses, so you’d want to add a couple.
http://engineering.arizona.edu/academics/declare-minor
Then you’d have to consult each department for additional requirements. For UT Austin Biomed Engineering, for example: http://www.bme.utexas.edu/graduate-program/admissions/admission-criteria
“Recommended Prerequisite College-level Courses:
Calculus-based physics (two semesters), Differential equations, Statistics, Chemistry, Biology (cell or molecular), Physiology.”
You would have fulfilled these courses through your major/minor. Then it says: “Applicants should possess a B.S. or B.A. degree in an area compatible with our program.” If you had a B.S. in something like Molecular & Cellular Bio with a minor in Mechanical Eng, you’d probably meet the pre-reqs for a master’s program such as that.
Point being, an engineering minor would likely allow you to pursue an M.S. Engineering (that corresponds with your overall academic program), if you wanted to go in that direction, but you would have to be careful with the specific requirements of grad departments.
Awesome! I chose to attend U of A around April 30th, and I chose to major in biology. The first-year biology classes are the same as those for neuroscience or other more specified biological interests, so I can switch at the end of the first year if I wish. I investigated the biomedical engineering job market, but the growth seems to be rather illusory - the job growth percentages are high (usually above 20% on most sites), but the actual growth is relatively low (anywhere from 5,200 jobs from 2012-2022 to 15,000 jobs).
I was actually wondering, how much does college name actually matter in admissions to med school?
Be aware that if you choose to minor in mechanical engineering, you will need to take the more math heavy physics and math courses for engineering majors, rather than the less math heavy ones for biology majors.
That’s a good plan. You’ll have time to get a feel for the various departments and choose an academic program that works for you.
Other threads have dealt with undergrad “prestige” in med school admissions. This one is older: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/818574-prestige-of-undergrad-for-med-schools-esp-interested-in-hearing-from-curm-p1.html
This one is recent: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1751733-does-the-reputation-of-your-pre-med-program-affect-your-chances-of-admission-to-medical-schools-p1.html
The documents in post #11 (in the recent link) provided by @WayOutWestMom are useful. Here they are again:
1.) https://www.aamc.org/download/261106/data/aibvol11_no6.pdf Check out Figure 1 for a summary of the application data important to med school admission officers.
2.) https://www.aamc.org/students/download/267622/data/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf Look at Table 1 for a similar summary of the above. Table 2 will also be useful to you. It cross references GPA, MCAT, and med school admission success. You can see how significant MCAT and GPA will be to your success.
The threads above seem to indicate that undergrad prestige matters somewhat, but other factors matter much more. MCAT and GPA are probably paramount, then you can see that experience in healthcare/community/leadership, letters of rec/evaluation, and personal statements are also very important. Selectivity of undergrad institution seems to have more importance to private med schools.
Maybe you’re at a slight disadvantage in terms of undergrad prestige/selectivity, but there is no reason why you can’t make up for it in a number of other ways. Choosing a rigorous (enough) program of study to balance GPA/MCAT, earning a high GPA, preparing very well for the MCAT and scoring highly, are much more important than undergrad prestige. Look at those numbers in Table 2 above. If you have a GPA of 3.40 to 3.59 and an MCAT of 30 to 32, you have roughly a 50% shot at getting accepted to at least one med school. If you can somehow raise your GPA to 3.60 to 3.79 and your MCAT to 33 to 35, you’re now at a 77% success rate. An enormous difference.
Attending Princeton over U Arizona isn’t nearly as potent a factor as hard work (culminating in a higher GPA/MCAT) when it comes to med school application success. Not even close. Ahhh, but what if the Princeton student works as hard as you do? Well, fortunately, all things are never equal: there are dozens of ways to get the drop on the Princeton student and ensure that your admissions profile is as good as you can make it, and quite possibly better than vast numbers of applicants from more selective schools. If you want proof of that, check out the top right box in Table 2. As the commentary reads, “eight percent of applicants with UGPAs of 3.8 or higher and MCAT total scores of 39 or above were rejected by all of the medical schools to which they applied.” Wow. Those applicants must have serious deficiencies in their overall admissions profile if they can’t make it work out when they’re in the highest GPA/MCAT bracket. In other words, even some of the highest test performers – possibly at some of the nation’s most selective institutions – can be outplayed in a number of other ways.