Master's in Biomedical Engineering <- which path?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>OK, so here’s my situation…
I’m a Canadian and wants to eventually earn a master’s degree in BME at US.</p>

<p>My choices now are:

  1. go to McGill and do a double degree in Biology and Music
  2. pay $50,000 a year to go to Cornell and do a Biological Engineering major + a Biomedical Engineering minor</p>

<p>(Although I don’t have a formal music theory training, I’m very interested in music composition and wish to take music as a major.)</p>

<p>I know that many master’s degree in BME accept applicants with a science degree (rather than engineering)</p>

<p>Which path should I take?</p>

2

<p>Would you like to do engineering for career and music for interest … or do music for career and engineering when need-a-break-from-music? :slight_smile: Seriously, get the priority straighten out first.</p>

<p>I think if you combine ME @ McGill with some bio classes, you can come up with a course of study that closely matches the biological engineering (BEE) program @ Cornell. Then come to Cornell (or elsewhere) to take a few more BEE classes during summer. See, you can have your cake and eat it too!</p>

3

<p>well…bioengineering is really what I want to do…
your plan sounds pretty complicated though, what is ME?</p>

4

<p>yeah i agree with dallas808… an engineering background, such as ME (mechanical engineering) will prepare you for a masters degree in bioengineering much more than a biology major (however, if you plan on studying genetics, DNA technologies, and stem cells, a biology major + biology grad school is better).</p>

<p>Here are your possibilities (what I would do for each of these is to also take some biology courses on the side, do a biology minor, or even a double major with biology):
Mechanical Engineering - to focus on biomechanical engineering, in everything from prosthetics, certain implants etc. it will give you a solid background in understanding the mechanical principles behind soft tissues, the Musculoskeletal system, hemodynamics etc
Electrical Engineering - neuroengineering, cardiac engineering
Chemical Engineering - biomaterials, bioprocess engineering, protein engineering</p>

<p>many say its easier to teach an engineer biology than it is to teach a biologist engineering. the tasks that you face as a bioengineer most commonly deal with a relatively small and specific area of biology (for instance, you can be absolutely clueless about the workings of the eye to try to create a prosthetic limb) that still require a very broad background in engineering.</p>

5

<p>Thx abhim for the details. </p>

<p>rocen, my reasoning is also financially motivated. Going to McGill (which is a fine place!) will save you at least $30K (assuming you are Canadian w/o any aid) a year. You could use that money to supplement you study with intl exchange program, seriously-self-funded research projects etc.</p>

6

<p>Thank you guys so much! I guess the bio+music option is out then :cry:
It’ll be too hard anyways for me to get all the required courses (computer programing, physics…etc) done and at the same time finish 2 majors in 4-5 years
I guess what I can do now is:

  1. go to UofToronto for Engineering Science (which I heard is very difficult and the campus extremely dull)
  2. go to McGill and then internally transfer to Engineering (are the engineering programs at McGill good?)
  3. go to Cornell for BioEngineering (which is the simplest yet most expensive way)</p>
7

<p>My impression has always been Toronto, Waterloo, McGill and Queen have the best engineering programs in Canada.</p>