I am so CONFUSED these days just for deciding a college.
Admitted to Carleton, UVA’s Arts&Sceiences college, UCI’s BME-Premedical
Future plans are varied with schools. If I went to UCI, I would be preparing to be a Biomed Engineer but the major is more focused on the Premed part, which is little bit hard for me as international student to get into Med schools.
But if I want to Carleton and UVA, I would go for PHD in the future. And my family would be more stressful for Carleton’s 96k costs per year and they said they cant offer FA afterwards.
Plus I think there’s no way to transfer from UVA’s Arts n Sci college to Engineering college.Would it be possible if I want to tranfer to UCLA?
Waitlists are UCI(now admitted), UCSD, Harvey Mudd
Also, can people find decent-paid job after Carleton or UVA’s BS in Bio??? The UVA website said the Average salary for bio-related graduate is around 25k which is shocking
Just so many confusions, Plzzz help me evaluate;) 
Pre med is not a major but rather an intention. And this makes your decision quite easy.
If you want to be a biomedical engineer or study biomedical engineering, you have one choice. This major is simply including the classes that will be needed for medical school are included or as UCI says: The curriculum is designed to meet the requirements for admission to medical schools, but is also suitable for those planning to enter graduate school in biomedical engineering, physiology, biology, neurosciences, or related fields. It has less engineering content and more biological sciences than the accompanying Biomedical Engineering major. It is one of many majors that can serve as preparation for further training in medical, veterinary, or allied health professions.
What concerns me is the less engineering content than the normal Biomedical Engineering major - because the normal one is ABET accredited and it’s important, although as an international you are likely going home. I would check and see if the pre med one is also ABET accredited - required for many jobs (in the US).
If you want to study bio or neuroscience, than you go to Carleton or UVA.
Now which between Carleton and UVA - do you want a small school in a small town in the tundra (cold) or a larger school - one with business, law and more (a complete university) in a small city. UVA is more comparable to UCI although UCI is more urban.
So your first cut is - do I want an engineering degree or not?
The second cut is small vs. large?
So it shouldn’t be that difficult a decision.
Sure, costs matter and transport matters, etc. but the gist of what matters is above (I think).
Thank you so much for your loving responce! That helped so much! And I just looked up, the uci’s major is not ABET accredited and I am not planning going home so that matters a lot. And the size of college is not a big factor for me but I do want more internship and research opportunities. Engineering degree sounds great but I think without the ABET accreditation, that option would be eliminated.
Minor point in school choice, but there is no tundra in the United States. In fact, there is no tundra in lower Canada either. For an international student who may not have visited campus, facts rather than hyperbole are important. Minnesota is northern United States, and according to the EPA, the ecoregion is temperate forest, much like most of the eastern parts of the country. https://gaftp.epa.gov/EPADataCommons/ORD/Ecoregions/cec_na/NA_LEVEL_I.pdf
Jobs in Bio for people with only an undergrad degree in Bio are very challenging. Most people who want a career in the field go on to graduate study, which can distort income statistics. And people also study Bio then go into other fields, including obviously medicine but also other health-related fields, law and policy careers, business, and so on.
The engineering degree is ABET - so you can do that and do the pre med and use your electives to do the pre med classes. They have two tracks - so do the full track, not pre med track. You can do pre med on your own and with the help of advising.
Biomedical Engineering Program | Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine
I agree that Minnesota shouldn’t be called tundra, but there’s definitely tundra in the US (Alaska) 
I also agree with those saying that the student should decide based on what they want their major to be. What major can get you a job in your home country?
You will have a lot of trouble getting a job in the US after you graduate, because your employer would have to sponsor your visa. Biomedical engineering jobs aren’t the easiest jobs to get here, and jobs will have so many applicants that they will likely have no reason to choose you, an international applicant, over a US citizen. Jobs also like to see internship experience, and it’s hard for international students to even get internships.
And yes, a degree in biology or neuroscience will get you nowhere here, because those jobs are scarce even for US citizens. And you’re correct that you won’t be able to study medicine here as an international student. You would probably be able to do a PhD here, but you’ll still be faced with the same problems once you’re done with the PhD. Visas start to get really complicated.
I’m guessing that the engineering degree will give you the most opportunities after graduation. And no matter what subject you study, you need to plan on leaving the US as soon as your education is complete.
I don’t want to discourage you, but I want you to know what is realistic. Congratulations on getting into some excellent schools. I hope you enjoy your time here!
ha ha - have you been there in the winter. I have - it’s a tundra 
But sorry if I got the academic description wrong. But it’s not hyperbole - it’s cold cold cold.
getting accepted to a US med school as an international is nearly impossible, so assume it will not happen. So, what is Plan B?
Bio majors are not in demand by employers, so they don’t pay much and are really just lab folks washing test tubes. More importantly, since there are thousands of domestic bio grads every year, no US employer is gonna hire an international on visa for a bio job.
Do not attend a liberal arts college with the intent of transferring Into the Eng school. It is extremely difficult. If you want to be an Eng, take any offer of a direct admit to Eng school.
If you want to remain in the US, engineering is your best chance. But even that may not be great in 4-5 years as we could be in a recession.
In sum, US Med schools are out. Carleton doesnt’ offer Eng, so I’d drop that one first. UVa is not an Eng direct admit, so I’d drop that one too.
I saw that it indicated online saying" The undergraduate major in Biomedical Engineering: Premedical is not designed to be accredited, therefore is not accredited by ABET."
Does that mean it requires further education(a master’s degree) to qualify to be an engineer?
What if I want to pursue a phd? I heard people saying Carleton has great resources for phd-preparation, and one of my contact of international student in Carleton got into schools like Mayo Clinic. And is Carleton a good school for tranfering to schools like UCLA not for engineering but also biotech majors? For the visa part, that might not a big concern for me. Still crossing my fingers for UCSD and HMC waitlists 
Carlton is a great undergrad college. But few transfer out. UCLA accepts a lot of transfers, but give priority to students who attend a two-year community college in CA. So, I have no idea on how large there transfer group is from other four-year colleges.
All top US grad schools are highly selective for PhD programs. You need to be involved in undergrad research.
Will that get better with a MS or PHD degree? One of my friend’s brother went to penn state for Biochem BS as an intl student. Now he’s working in sales or something with 150k salary, just shocked by that.
yeah, VISA can be extremely annoying factor, but most of the people I know got their pr really successfully after H1B in Biotech firms, and some of them even got married
Most of my friends from UG who went into a MS and/or PhD program in biological sciences got their education funded by NSF Grants which makes it “free.” But a quick search show that’s not available to international students which will probably make any PhD program in biological sciences cost prohibitive. Reason being there is no guarantee a specific time frame that you will finish… Some people have done it in 3 years, many will take 6-7 for a PhD.
your friends must be really exceptional as NSF grants are extremely competitive. btw: they don’t cover all 5-7 years.
It was 30 years ago. Most get the grant when they are accepted into the program: UCLA, MIT, Harvard…
Interviews went: If you get picked by us, we have $$ already set aside. Again, that was 30 years ago.
Possibly! Generally, though, there are way fewer core Bio job openings than Bio degrees being generated each year, pretty much at every level, so lots of Bio degree people end up doing something besides a core Bio job. Speaking of which . . . .
This really happens all the time, in the US at least.
In the US system, ANY Bachelors from Penn State means this person didn’t just study their major, they also had a generally well-rounded college education thanks to Penn State’s Gen Ed requirements:
And then Biochem is going to be good for building some math skills, some analytic skills, and so on.
OK, so then many US businesses happily hire many people with all sorts of seemingly-unrelated degrees into entry level positions in things like sales, because they are really just hiring a smart, disciplined person with a good general education and good fundamental skills.
Of course sometimes people who study something like Biochem may at least end up in sales for, say, a Pharma company. But way more often than some people seem to realize, they could end up doing something where their major seems totally unrelated.
As an international student, how do the job markets look for your subjects of interest in places where you have citizenship, residency, ability to work, or relative ease of getting a work visa?
In the US, it will be difficult to get a work visa, biomedical engineering is not the best of engineering for getting work, and biology tends to be worse.
No - they have two tracks.
The regular track is ABET I sent you a link to the accreditation before.
The pre-med is a light version. You need to do the full…and take the pre med classes with your electives.
Here it is again - it’s not talking about the pre med track.
The Biomedical Engineering program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.
Biomedical Engineering Program | Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine