@bhopper797 The issue is not it really being so intensive (BTW, choosing BME at Tech AND being pre-med…may not be the best idea), but the fact that it generally takes 5 years and that is IF you don’t take full advantage of Tech (such as the awesome Co-ops that freshman admits have more time to accommodate). If anything, if you are that intense about science but want to keep pre-med AND engineering open, you may want to consider the new engineering sciences program/concentration at Emory or choose something like a physics biophysics or life sciences physics concentration which will basically have you fulfill pre-med requirements while also getting you the training you need if you do decide to try Tech dual degree or continue on to engineering for graduate school.
Also, as a warning…you kind of need to figure out things early on. Pre-med requires a kind of high GPA, yet handling Tech will require the strongest preparation, meaning that you will have to take on a rigorous courseload and ideally with the stronger professors (which are usually more demanding than weaker ones). It is hard to play the pre-med “choose teachers and classes that boost GPA” game while getting the correct prep for a Tech engineering curriculum. The best option is to take on the rigorous/good instruction and work as hard as possible at Emory to get a good GPA (or at least a salvageable one) for pre-med while also having the level of training necessary for if you want Tech. Many won’t pursue this option unless they have an extremely strong background and can test the waters from the very beginning by say…using AP credit in math to go straight to classes like Multi, Diff Eq., or Linear Algebra, and/or skipping a semester of gen. chem. However, Emory isn’t a horrible place to start. For those actually strong in STEM and want to consider something like BME…the chemistry courses are really strong and many new quantitatively oriented biology classes have popped up over the years including physical biology and computational modeling (taught by same instructor as physical biology) for scientists and engineers. And that teacher is really good in that you’ll be learning the MATLAB you would learn at Tech but his class is more project and problem based and not memorization based like the one at Tech. Taking him instead of the huge lectures at Tech for the MATLAB course may actually give you an edge. Taking even a mediocre general (or organic) chemistry instructor at Emory will also give you an edge. As long as you don’t take a weak instructor (such as Cafferty) the same can be said for general biology.
I believe the physics department made concentrations (and created engineering science track) to accommodate people like you: http://www.physics.emory.edu/home/academic/undergraduate/degree-programs.html