My daughter is applying this year. She wants to study Bio and do research or work in Biotech, no interest in med school as of now (who knows if this will change). She is interested in BioMed engineering but is worried that she won’t get it.
SAT: 1540 (770 each)
Rank: 15% (school does not release rank below 10%)
Weighted GPA: 5.62 on 5 scale…? (I still don’t fully get how this works)
AP Bio/Precal/Human Geo/Psych: 5
AP English Lang: 4
AP Physics/Calc AB/Econ/Gov’t/Eng Lit : taking now in senior year
Marching band (percussion) + concert band (Oboe & English Horn) - this takes majority of her time outside of school
section leader and uniform crew co-captain in Marching band in senior year
Band is her life outside of academics
Summer jobs past 3 summers
Strongish essay (hard to say for sure)
summer class at UC Berkeley in Bio/Neuroscience: A
NO Engineering experiences, but loves bio
what are the chances to get accepted to TAMU Engineering and then get into BiomedE? The other option is just Bio.
Not TAMU, but my DD was a bioengineering major (then picked up a second major in biology) and had exactly zero ECs in high school related to engineering or biology. But she was a strong stem student.
Is your D a Texas resident? Regardless, being outside of the automatic acceptance (top 10%?) at A&M will mean that Texas A&M is likely going to be a low or lower probability school, despite your D’s strong background.
If your D gets into A&M’s engineering program, she would then be a general engineering student. Students in engineering declare their majors after the first year. If they want to be guaranteed their major of choice they need to have at least a 3.75 GPA at the end of that first year, which is a very high standard with an engineering curriculum.
That said, if your D is interested in biomedical engineering, there are 166 schools in the U.S. that are ABET-accredited for that field. Eight of them are in Texas and include:
U. of Houston
U. of North Texas
Rice
Texas A&M
UT-Arlington
UT
UT-Dallas
UT-San Antonio
I feel confident that your D would be accepted to the majority of those schools.
Does she like math and physics and do well in those courses? How would she feel about studying another branch of engineering but taking some BME courses to supplement? I’m asking because there are 2 issues I have in mind:
Getting into bioMEDical engineering can be tricky at some schools (such as A&M) because it’s super popular so there are space constraints. Getting into bioLOGical engineering is much easier (think agriculture and bioprocess).
Job openings for biomed engineering (BME) majors don’t exactly abound. While biomed/tech/pharma companies certainly hire BMEs, they also hire tons of folks who majored in other engineering fields (mechanical, electrical, materials, chemical, etc). BME curriculum by necessity has to sacrifice depth to provide breadth, and that limitation is reflected in the employer demand for BMEs. In contrast, MechE, EE, ChemE, MaterialE, etc. are all in-depth yet incredibly versatile majors that can work in a huge variety of fields, including biomed. I don’t want to turn your kid off of BME as a major, it’s just something to think about in the next couple of years.
That said, your kid is an excellent student and would probably get the freshman GPA she’d need for ETAM auto-admit to desired major at A&M. And she would for sure get into her choice of major at some other schools.
So she should feel confident that if she wants a career in biomed she can get there through studying at any school with engineering, and could do a variety of majors. Just make sure they’re ABET-accredited. If she wants to study engineering, do NOT settle for a biology major because the career prospects are so much worse. Best of luck to her!
So, why does she want to do biomedical engineering? What is the end goal? If the goal is to become an engineer then I would encourage looking into mechanical, which will bring many more opportunities. If the goal is medicine or some such, there are much easier paths.
Not answering your question here but trying to read the tea leaves.
Luckily she’ll have a year to try out the different engineering specialties. To know for sure what she wants as career i have found to be not as important at this point but of course knowing the area, to get a running start, is ideal.
No need to have engineering ECs. In fact, the music ECs may be appealing – I imagine the college would be happy to have students participate in its marching band and/or orchestra.