<p>I’d like to apologize right out of the gate about the title of this thread; it’s a lie. What I have are not so much questions as they are a series of conceptions that I’d like some input tacked unto, and any misconceptions to be cleared up (an important nuance to indicate I’ve actually done <em>some</em> research beforehand). Being very brief on the details, I’ll say that I’m interested in enrolling for a B.Sc. in CompE and then moving onto an M.Sc. in BiomE so that I can contribute to neuroscience and leave it at that. Here are my “conceptions”:</p>
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<li><p>CompE to BiomE is a pretty clear-cut path. Some courses will better prepare me for certain BioME specializations, but in general I shouldn’t have much of a problem branching out into different specializations such as neural engineering, bionics, or biomechatronics during an M.Sc. in BiomE.</p></li>
<li><p>A non-prestigious undergraduate program doesn’t matter <em>too</em> much when being considered for a prestigious graduate program provided you took advantage of all the opportunities at your college and pulled pretty good grades (I’ll be attending UC in Ohio for CompE and hopefully the University of Tokyo for BiomE in Japan).</p></li>
<li><p>Research being done at UT in Japan may not be the best in the world, but it’s still pretty far up there (partial source: [Rankings</a> of University of Tokyo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankings_of_University_of_Tokyo]Rankings”>University of Tokyo - Wikipedia))</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That’s more or less it. I know I’ll get some comments asking about “why Japan?”, so I’ll go ahead and state that I’ve always been interested in spending time in Japan and with any luck I’ll get a co-op there (UC has really good co-op from what I’ve read), giving me an edge and some experience with the country beforehand. I’m not concerned with being at the absolute top since I believe as long as your environment isn’t prohibitively bad/stale, you should be able to do a great deal depending on the amount of work you put in.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>