Lauren Vrablik

so i've been accepted to UVA engineering, but the letter says that although ive been accepted into engineering, i'm not gauranteed the major i selected (biomed e). this is making me reaaally nervous... i don't want to spend a year or two and many thousands of dollars to get bumped from my major- it would really screw up my plans. does anyone know if this is a legitimate concern?

archrival

I got the same thing to. I read that for engineering, you have to apply for a major. Applying is not only for BioMed engineering, but for other engineering majors as well.

University of Virginia Department of Biomedical Engineering: Undergrad | Program

There it says engineers have to apply for a major in April. I don't know how competitive the getting in part is though for any major.

mef0006

I am a 2nd year in the E-School, so i can provide some intel on this. Basically you do have to apply for whatever major you want (Biomed, Mech, Chem... etc.), but only Biomed and Systems are capped. I believe last year Biomed was capped at 60 people and Systems was capped at 90. It seems that everyone comes here saying they want to do Biomed, but when it comes time to declare a major many people realize they don't want to anymore. That being said, if you are really sure you want to study Biomed, keep your grades up, as that is basically the only thing used to distinguish you from others who applied for the same major.

Protean

well actually more than just biomed and systems are capped, I believe CPE and CS are also capped. Few of these caps have been reached in the past but with the growth of the e-school these soft caps will probably become hard pretty soon.

archrival

Then what's the point of being admitted to the engineering school then if you have to possibly settle for a major you don't want?

Protean

it's really not as big of a deal as you might think. The only program that is having any sort of capacity issues is biomed. The issue is that if a lot of people come to UVA to do CS how can the CS department handle so many kids? If you keep up with your grades and don't have like a 2.5 (which if you do, you should be transferring over to the college) you will be placed where you want.

I personally don't know anyone that isn't majoring in what they wanted to do. As I said in my earlier post I think the hard caps will apply in the future but I believe it will definitely exist in biomed and possibly in systems/cs/cpe majors. The rest are well under capacity I believe.

MechWahoo

I'm not sure that 2.5 would get you in BME, but keep in mind that there are very few jobs for straight BME majors out of undergraduate school.

If you don't intend to go to grad school (the vast majority of BME majors intend to go to grad or med school), you are much better off majoring in CS or EE and taking BME courses as electives.

javaCombination

I am a 3rd year, and went through the application process not that long ago. Do not worry about applying, you will notice that most students will self weed out of the application process (meaning they self-elect not to apply based on gpa or what not). I applied for biomed and systems (which are both capped) and didn't think that I would get into biomed. Though the cap is set @ 60, roughly 88 people applied when I applied, and know that people do turn down biomed (which I did), allowing others to get their spot. Also, after your second year, if your class is not full, they will open up the application process to those who want to transfer into the biomed program. I took several biomed classes, and believe me those in the program have their minds set on biomed. There are other alternatives also, like most programs has a concentration sequence that will allow you to do biomed as your concentration/minor. Just keep your options open when you are applying, you never know you might find something else you like (like systems)