Ok but you chose two schools and claimed one was top. It may be tops for you but I see no third party rating it as such. You acted as if you must ED because it’s the creme de la creme. Yes BU and NU are hard admits RD period. But neither appears the leader for BME. Tufts would have been a better argument - again if reviewing third party.
If you said I want to go to school in Boston, that’s different. That I get.
How will you pay for undergrad and med school ? Do you have need ? Do you have access to $800k?
Rutgers and other NJ publics are fine for med school as would be other NE schools from URI to UNH which both have ABET accredited BME programs and merit aid. UNH has a train that goes directly to Boston. Ten schools in MA offer an ABET accredited biomed - have you checked them ? UMass Lowell, Wentworth, Tufts, WPI (not far).
Do you want to be a biomedical engineer vs say a Chem or mechanical or you are choosing it based on med school ? It’s one of the lower paying engineering fields. And you don’t need it as a major for med school - other engineering majors work too. So if engineering is a fallback, choose the one that interests you. If biomed, then great.
If you really want to go to school in Boston, I think you should apply to all schools in the Boston area with program that you like and that is affordable to you. Shoot your shot!
With respect to BU and NEU specifically - I think more relevant than grade deflation, or biomed ranking, is the difference between a school without a co-op and one with one. They will be vastly different undergraduate experiences.
There are so many factors in deciding on a school, and I think location is a totally reasonable way to narrow down your choices, again, if the cost is affordable to your family.
It seems that (despite the general statements to the contrary) It does matter where you go to undergrad for getting into med school, just not as much as some people think. But certainly prestige and rigor matter to admissions officers of medical schools. MCAT scores and grades matter the most, but perceived rigor of your undergraduate experience is definitely a very relevant factor.
Again, if getting into medical school is the absolute goal. Looking at list of schools that are feeders to medical school is probably a more relevant way to choose than how well ranked the particular biomed engineering program is.
Edited to add: here is a recent full list of med school feeders. For this to have relevance, you need to take the schools that matter to you and divide this by the undergraduate enrollment numbers, because a lot of this is a function of the size of the school, but there is a huge variability in med school acceptances from certain schools. And some small schools punch far above their weight class.
Rutgers is very good for a premed student, and is very good for multiple majors. So are some other very good universities in New Jersey. As one example I know someone very well who attended Seton Hall for undergrad with good merit aid and a health-care-related major, and then attended Columbia for her graduate degrees. She still speaks highly of the quality of the education that she got at Seton Hall.
Have you run the NPCs for BU and NEU? Can you afford to be full pay at either of these schools, and full pay for medical school and get through 8 years of university without taking on any debt? At least for us BU and NEU were the two most expensive schools that either daughter got accepted to (by quite a bit). Your results might differ.
I have been saying that medical school is likely to cost $100,000 per year by the time that you get there, but I think that this may be optimistic. It could very well be more expensive than this.
You might spend an extra $200,000 to attend university in Boston. This is wonderful if you or your parents have close to $1,000,000 to spend on 8 years of university (for you, don’t forget siblings if you have any). Otherwise I might be inclined to look at the budget, and definitely to carefully consider the budget before applying ED2 anywhere.
If you do not apply ED2 anywhere, they you can get offers from multiple schools, compare the offers, visit a few schools if you are undecided, and do all of this before you decide where to attend.
That list has been getting a lot of play lately. But it doesn’t do anything to sift out how much of the success of these colleges’ graduates has to do with the college they attended, and how much is simply the pre-filter of extremely competitive undergraduate admissions. If one specific student gets into Harvard but attends Rutgers (to arbitrarily name the OP’s in-state flagship), is that student foregoing an advantage, or is the advantage already identified by their acceptance?
Major-wise, if I were the OP and wanted to attend one of these Boston schools and keep both the medical and BME options open, I would strongly consider doing this major at NEU Biomedical Physics, BS | Northeastern University Academic Catalog and pursuing coops that provide relevant experience for both fields. With this undergrad degree, one could pursue BME in grad school if not attending med school.
Do you like boston 200k more? Because unless you qualify for fin aid, that is how much more a degree from BU or NEU is going to cost you, over rutgers.
I was just thinking about BME versus premed. Both are academically demanding and I am not sure that the overlap in classes is all that large. The requirements to get medical related experience is also a significant time sink for premed students. However, a student could start off freshman year of university planning to do both and see how it goes. Then pick one at some point part way through university. If the academic demands are too high doing both, then drop to one after a semester or after two semesters or sometime in the first two years.
And Rutgers does appear to have a good BME program.
Thus I do not think that the student needs to decide before they start university.
This of course comes up from time to time, both on this web site and in other discussions. For any one student, we might be comparing a student who would be in the middle 1/3 of the class at Harvard or the top 1/2 and possibly top 1/3 of the class at Rutgers. At either school there will be other exceptional students. The exceptional students might however be more common at Harvard. The level of competition in premed classes will be very high at either school, but might be even higher at Harvard. For any one student, I would expect that the chances of getting into medical school would be very close to the same either way.
Which is better for BME? I do not know, but I expect that they are both quite good (as would be BU and NEU). I have worked extensively with a very different type of engineer, and the “prestige” of where a person went to university never mattered at all.
Adding…a lot of undergrads also do not “count” the students who apply a couple of years after graduation from their undergrad. They simply don’t keep track of this stuff once a student has graduated.
With a first year medical school age of 25 or so, it’s clear that a good number of students are not counted in the undergrad numbers.
(1) It is your life, and I would not choose my major/career due to family pressure/expectations;
(2) Boston is arguably the most popular college market on the planet, and as a result the colleges in the Boston market tend to be both harder admits than peers in far less popular markets, and also far less likely to offer merit.
I am mentioning all this because if YOUR goal is attending med school and becoming a doctor, which is a very hard goal that most people end up failing to achieve from your position, then I think you are well-advised not to let your family force you to compromise on being completely focused on whatever is best for your pursuit of that goal, including cost issues.
And I also think you would be well-advised to not compromise yourself on things like a preference for Boston. Boston is nice but most college students spend most time on campus, and that is all the more true of pre-meds (or engineers, for that matter). Doesn’t mean you can’t apply to some suitable Boston schools, I just would make sure you are fully and fairly considering alternatives, including Rutgers which in fact would be an excellent choice for pre-med in-state.
Getting into medical school nowadays is very difficult. The two biggest factors will be your undergrad GPA (particularly science GPA) and MCAT score. Most students spend a 5th year (gap year) for MCAT and buffing up clinical hours.
It may sound counter intuitive, but your best chance of getting into medical school is going to a smaller college. You can get high GPA and graduate at the top of your class. This will impress medical school adcoms more than a 3.0 GPA with a BME degree from big Boston school.
Do you know your EFC/SAI and can your family afford it?
Recommendations will vary greatly depending on whether your EFC/SAI is low (say, 7k and under) or if it’s high (50k and higher) and/or depending on what your family can afford.
Have you run the NPC for BU and NEU? Are both within budget for your parents ?
Have you been admitted anywhere yet?
(Drew, Seton Hall, Stevens, plus NJ publics)?
Based on what you weite BTW it seems youvlike NEU better -and for premeds it allows them to build medical-related experiences easily. However it’s not for everyone to be on a campus where half your friends are gone any given semester.
High school is a lousy time to be deciding about premed. Only a select few of “premeds” coming out of high school actually go through with medical school. My advice, just go to an affordable school and explore your passions.