<p>Short version: Can anyone tell me about the bioengineering program at University Park? </p>
<p>Extended: I’m also looking at MIT as a reach and RPI as a match-to-safety: can Penn State engineering hold a candle to either one of these two? In a perfect world I would of course go to MIT or RPI for bioengineering over Penn State simply because of their emphasis on engineering, but I guess what I’m asking is: taking into consideration the tens of thousands of dollars price difference between a school like RPI and Penn State, is Penn State engineering good enough to make this option worth it?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Penn State’s engineering dept is generally excellent, however, the Bioengineering dept is brand new. This year had the first class to graduate with a BS degree is Bioengineering.
<a href=“http://www.bioe.psu.edu/[/url]”>http://www.bioe.psu.edu/</a>
My recommendation would be to contact someone in the dept for more info or better yet, some of the students. Since it is a new program and they are likely trying to get people, I bet the BioE people at PSU would find a way to help you contact the students.
Keep in mind that RPI does have a reputation for giving a decent amount of aid, especially if you are a girl(?) Also,does your school participate in the RPI medal program?</p>
<p>If your scores are good enough for MIT you should consider the honors program at Penn State. This combined with possible money from the engineering dept. may land you a good amount of merit aid. PSU and RPI are about equally excellent in engineering. The schools however are very different (size, m-f ratio, location,sports etc).PSU offers tremendous research possibilities due to the amount of money that comes in for that purpose.</p>
<p>Thanks both of you. rlm919, yes, I am a girl, but no, my school doesn’t participate in the medal program. However my father is an alum, and I think my numbers are high enough that I could probably get at least a decent amount of aid from RPI. </p>
<p>ConanFan314, I was indeed looking into SHC at Penn State. Research is definitely something in which I am interested, but I haven’t heard such good things about undergraduate research at really big universities like PSU–that the positions are harder to attain and that the work is more menial. I don’t know about this specifically at Penn State, though.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>well the benifit of SHC is that you must do a thesis paper which involves research so you deffinitly will be involved.</p>
<p>My son is going to PSU SHC for business but many of his classmates are going for Engineering and Science. Quite a few students from his class are attending SHC this year - all top 10% students in a very competitive high school. One of our friends has a son who is sophomore eng student there and he loves it - and has a internship at Boeing this summer. Go visit - it’s a terrific deal for instaters - especially if you like a busy “big campus” environment.</p>
<p>Toneranger,</p>
<p>Thanks for your input. I’m not really sure how I’m going to feel about the huge campus environment: the schools that I’ve visited so far haven’t been tiny, but also don’t come anywhere close to the volume of Penn State. I’m planning on visiting late this summer. We’ll see!</p>
<p>csc - yes we almost ruled out Penn State (without visiting) due to it’s size and the fact that so many students go there from my son’s high school. Turns out that my son loved it after the visit. It’s a much prettier campus than we imagined - lots of green spaces with mature elms and a great college town surrounding the area. We visited lots of schools and it didn’t seem much bigger than places like UNC, Cornell, and UVA. If you have good stats, the tuition can be almost free between the honors scholarship and departmental scholarship. My son just signed up for classes - 4 of his classes will be under 25 and one will be a large lecture hall. Not bad for a huge university! Good luck with the visit. Make sure you set up an individual interview at SHC. They’ll give you a tour and answer any questions you have about the program. They do a nice job!</p>
<p>The engineering departments are in a world of their own. So you dont have to worry about the size of PSU. Besides, when you stay at PSU for about 2 weeks, you reallize it realy isnt THAT huge. And you can always join the honors program-you automatcally get a 3500 dollar/per merit scholarship. If you want to be an engineer, you should DEFINITELY go to PSU over MIT and heres why-we all know that MIT is the best engineering school in the country but so what? PSU is ranked no.18. AND-an engineering graduate from MIT is not going to get paid more than a graduate from PSU(THIS IS ONLY FOR ‘ENGINEERING’).SO why waste 20,000 more dollars?</p>
<p>However, if you want to get into consulting/i banking-then you might wanna go to MIT because firms recruit heavily from the ivy league schools.</p>
<p>caa5042
Just wanted you to know that MIT is not an Ivy League school. The Ivy League schools are:
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Columbia
Cornell
Brown
U. Penn (University of Pennsylvania)
Dartmouth</p>
<p>EDITED(CHARACTERS)</p>