I would have to think this field is enhanced working in such close proximity to one of the world’s foremost medical research universities.
And the other types classes you could take there would be outstanding.
They are all sensational. But the birthplace of BME and the access to cutting edge medicine. Tough to beat imho.
@Greymeer I’d still say GT is a reach for even highly qualified in-state applicants (unless you’re Val or Sal). I know some extremely intelligent students in the Top 1% score ranges for testing and ranking in their classes that didn’t make it in. I thought GT was a match for me (34, Top 3% class, 3.9 UW) until I got deferred EA as well as some of my very qualified classmates. It’s brutal even in-state, and I would consider it a reach for pretty much all in-state students unless you’re a Val or Sal at one of the approved schools.
I have a son at GaTech, junior if anyone has questions on that school. Familiar with Baltimore and Atlanta and both
student bodies
GaTech by state law accepts over 50% Georgia students. All valedictorians in Georgia get automatically accepted at GaTech IF their high school meets some criteria set by the Georgia Legislature.
GaTech is more fun loving student body, and less intense workload than JHU. Gatech has an excellent collaboration with Emory and a shuttle bus for BME students who want to work with medical doctors.
I would choose GaTech over JHU for the social aspects of undergraduate education.
Remember a BME undergrad is going to either get a PhD or go to medical school, so getting plenty more education at least four more years of med school or six more years of research and classes for a PhD.
The rank difference is not that big between JHU and GaTech. GaTech is arguably better for the design aspects of BME, the mechanical engineering side of BME.
Systems biology, maybe a bit better at JHU, if you are looking for research work. GaTech is particularly good at imaging sciences, tissue research, see their materials science and chemical engineering department, and of course anything related to design is superb at GaTech.
Engineering overall is better at GaTech compared to JHU if thats your bent as well.
Caltech is in a class by itself, with mathematics thats way more advanced, so a student needs to have mastered Calculus 3, and even part of differential equations to be able to earn Bs at Caltech in freshman math. It starts with Analysis. Caltech freshman have typically passed a college level physics class and that is assumed knowledge to start beginning required physics at Caltech, required for every major there.
GaTech, if you score a 7/7 on IB Physics, you can place out of freshman physics, if you want to and take a more advanced physics class, or repeat as you see fit. Physics is not the hardest class you will take at GaTech,probably, if you are taking freshman physics.
JHU and GaTech are not as challenging (ball busting???) as Caltech in physics and mathematics.
@judgegregg My D was in the exact same position as your son 2 years ago when she had to decide where to study BME. She went to visit all 3 schools ( and a few others) and made a list about what she liked about them and where she could see herself over the next 4 years. She ultimately ended up choosing University of Maryland since they had given her a full ride and she knew she wanted to continue her studies in grad school when she finished undergrad and didn’t want a huge amount of debt. Each of the 3 programs are very strong and each campus has their strengths. Your son should try to choose where he feels will be the best fit for him not only academically but socially too. When your son visits I suggest he also tries to sit in on a class or 2 to see what the academics are like.
@KeepItFair Goldman Sachs comes to GaTech for the Hackathon, presents a problem to GaTech students and
hires students who solve it. GaTech has a very strong business analytics program and GaTech math, CS, and engineering students are in huge demand for west coast management consulting and Goldman Sachs type jobs.
FINRA also comes to Hack GT and offers many jobs to GAtech grads. I would say the students are recruited more
than JHU by far.
Caltech is Caltech. Cannot touch it. But remember its only 600 undergrads. Those kiddos almost all get PhDs.
Caltech is a school of geniuses and a few drop outs and a few that commit suicide as they cannot keep up.
GaTech is a regular school with great social life and amazing job options in business. Regular Division 1 football
games, regular fraternities and sororities. Hard but not ball busting classes, but still a very good reputation in the northeast and west coast.
See HackGT. Many west coast firms here are offering GATech and other students hard problems to solve
and recruiting them-
https://hack.gt
See GaTech Scheller College of Business
https://www.scheller.gatech.edu/index.html
also Tech Square in Atlanta is loaded with start ups. Better than Baltimore for jobs by far.
“Caltech is Caltech. Cannot touch it. But remember its only 600 undergrads. Those kiddos almost all get PhDs.
Caltech is a school of geniuses and a few drop outs and a few that commit suicide as they cannot keep up.”
This does not mean they will all be good engineers. In fact, when my son was looking, one of my patients (the manager of one of NASA’s most famous programs, dual PhD in Physics and Math, and Caltech prof) told me that some of the Caltech engineers he hired for that program were pretty pedestrian and that some of his best engineers were from Podunk U. Just because they teach brutally fast does not mean they are good at teaching students the art of solving practical engineering problems. Two retired Caltech profs told him that if his goal was to be a practicing engineer, not to consider Caltech.
Looking at JPLs Executive Council members with tech rolls (non-HR, etc.), none were educated at Caltech. Their schools in no particular order, representing both undergrad and graduate degrees are: Texas A&M, Sam Houston State, Cal Poly, Cal Poly Pomona, UCLA, Texas, MIT, Colorado, Washington, Toronto, USC and Purdue.
Engineering is VERY egalitarian. There are no magic schools where everyone is guaranteed success.
I guess I do think that some branches of engineering do require more math than others, such as fluid mechanics. So it really depends on exactly what type of engineer you want to become, as to whether Caltech is a good fit. Caltech is more of a chemistry, math and physics focused school, but the math will prepare students for a career in fluid mechanics for instance. Thats the science that describes how an airplane moves through the air , the air being a “fluid”.
For an undergrad in BME, the chemistry at Caltech, might be compelling, but I would say JHU, Caltech or GaTech are about the same for BME. Maybe GaTech a tad better, IF the student wants to design prosthesis, the best artificial heart, etc, because GaTech has such a tight relationship with Emory U Medical and has arguably very good mechanical engineering training.
All BMEs are going to get more education. So its also a personal preference, does the student want hot dry Pasadena, a small town, with great access to Los Angeles, or the big bustling city of Atlanta, with sports, hiking, rock climbing close by, or the sailing and crab cakes that Baltimore offers, with access to Washington DC?
@Coloradomama, my son is in his final quarter of his MS in ME at Cal Poly. His thesis is in boundary layer fluid mechanics. He took more math as an undergrad at Cal Poly than is required in a the aerospace focus of ME at Caltech. Their main distinguishing factor is not level, but pace. They go at a speed higher than any other institution probably in the world. It is debatable though whether or not that produces a better undergraduate product. As I said, engineering is very egalitarian. Much like music, you have the chops or you don’t. How you get than can be extremely variable.
I’m not so sure. It helps a great deal in one’s development in any field if s/he is surrounded and challenged constantly by people who are as smart or smarter. Engineering is no exception.
@1NJParent, Dale and Kruger blew that myth up long ago.
All you have to do is to look at the CEOs of top engineering firms to know that your thesis is patently false. Boeing’s current CEO, Dennis Muilenberg went to undergrad at Iowa State. United Launch Alliance…Tony Bruno…Cal Poly. Tim Cook…Apple…Auburn. Larry Page…Alphabet…Michigan. Larry Ellison…Oracle…Illinois (and didn’t graduate). Satya Nadella…Microsoft…first US degree, MS from Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I could go on and on.
Sure, you can find some, Jeff Bezos for example, that did go to a “top” institution, Princeton. Of the top 20 Fortune 500 CEOs though, he’s the only one that hails from the Ivy League. If your story were true all the top spots would be held by grads of “top” schools. They demonstrably are not.
Back to my previous post about JPL’s executive board. Here’s where they were educated: Texas A&M, Sam Houston State, Cal Poly, Cal Poly Pomona, UCLA, Texas, MIT, Colorado, Washington, Toronto, USC and Purdue. Caltech manages JPL, yet there isn’t a single Caltech grad in the top echelon of the organization and only one that hails from a “top” institution.
So, you might not be sure, but I am. Engineering is egalitarian and there’s LOTS of evidence proving it.
The Common Data Sets do not report suicide rates, but they do report 4 and 6 year graduation rates.
4 years
87.6% JHU
78.3% Caltech
39.2% Georgia Tech
6 years
93.9% JHU
89.3% Caltech
85.3% Georgia Tech
On the topic of student demographics, it’s perhaps worth noting that they differ in gender ratios in addition to geographic diversity. That matters to some and doesn’t bother others in the slightest, particularly when the schools of interest vary so greatly in size. YMMV.
Georgia Tech: 61.2% men, 38.8% women
Caltech: 54.6% men, 45.4% women
Johns Hopkins: 49% men, 51% women
The schools also differ markedly in class sizes. Unsurprisingly, Georgia Tech has more than a few large classes – a whopping 26% of its classes have more than 50 students, compared to 10% at JHU and Caltech.
Caltech and JHU report that 67% and 74% of their classes have fewer than 20 students, respectively; at Georgia Tech, 39% of classes have fewer than 20 students.
Of course, it is always best to check the enrollments in the departments of interest. It does a BME student no good if all of the small classes at his/her university are in departments like German and music.
@eyemgh I’m not sure what your list of tech CEOs prove. First of the all, these CEOs became CEOs not necessarily because of the engineering talent. Secondly, engineering talents can certainly come from any quality school. It’s just some schools have higher concentration of them. Anyway, a few anedotes aren’t proofs of anything.
However, care should be taken when comparing, since it looks like GT has a large percentage of students doing co-ops, which extend calendar time to graduation, but do not (by themselves) result in extra tuition-paying semesters.
Picking up on “eyemgh’s” point as to where engineering leaders come from: At one point back in the 1970’s, little WPI simultaneously had alumni as CEO’s of GM, Xerox and United Technologies (Prat & Whitney et al). The entire enrollment was only about 2,000 students. Once a University reaches the realm of “street talk” famous, exaggeration sets in and many assumptions lead to a mythology.
There are many remarkable colleges and universities out there! They did not all come from the Ivies, MIT and Cal Tech.
@1NJParent
Agree, it takes more than thermodynamics classes to develop an effective leader! In today’s engineering environment it takes more than courses to develop an effective research and design team.
A student with low inner motivation has higher chances of pushing his/her limits when put in an environment where others are either pushing themselves too or naturally motivated. I see these types of kids excelling in the highly reputed colleges than places where more partying is of the norm. Having said this, if a student has lot of inner motivation, school doesn’t matter much . This is they my theory!.
There are countless kids with top ACT scores of 34-36 and straight A students. Grade inflation is rampant, standardized tests such as the SAT are far easier than decades ago and there is a whole industry to package kids for college. Lastly tthere are brilliant kids with poor grades or lesser grades because they are not challenged. While grades are an indicator of success they are by no means necessarily correspond to brilliance.
Good cooks know how to put ingredients together. Having the fancy spices on the shelf does not assure a successful meal. It requires the right combination of genuine interest, experimentation and culinary dialogue to bring together in a great meal.
BUT
not all customers have the same taste.
We need to look beyond the sign over the restaurant door!
I beleive in the law of probabilities. If i have bad cooks, no matter how fancy the ingradients are, the recipe is most likely not going to taste great. 
Exactly my point!
You need good cooks, i.e., a quality teaching faculty, to make it happen In the age of modern marketing, the packaging takes over from the talented cook. You will never replace talented teachers and they are not always defined as the faculty with the most research.
There was a math teacher when I was in college who was so well known that students from other universities would seek him out for his skills as a private tutor. A family member who was a student at the state university would study calculus with him over the summer. She graduated as Valedictorian from her University and went on to head the technical division for Region I of the EPA while producing some fine research. This talented “cook” came to us by way of Hamilton College. He did not have a string of significant publications but always had yet another way of explaining a concept, Another math faculty educated at Bowdion gave up a few hours on a Sunday afternoon to go over questions I had collected. Perhaps these small LA colleges have a point!
How do you account for these “cooks” when selecting an undergraduate institution? This is not reflected in the USNEWS rankings as they are based largely on graduate school research.
@scubadive the college board posts results for 2018. 5100 or so out of 2.3mm test takers earned at 1560 or better last year.
That score translates to a 35 act. The middle of your 34 to 36 example. If you add in the 34s maybe another 30k. I’ve checked before but it’s not the exact number that matters. Top ten percent of any group is good company. Top five percent even better. Top two percent. That’s pretty close to rare.
That isn’t one in a million but pretty darn exceptional. There aren’t really “scores” of students in the 34 to 36 cohort as many suggest.
Only mentioning this as CC threads are filled with this small group of exceptional students and their parents. It can distort the reality of 2.25 million of the 2.3 million potential applicants.