These are in most cases very tough schools to transfer into as an undergraduate student. UC Berkeley does take a significant number of transfer students, but my understanding is that most of them are come in from community colleges in California. If you were turned down applying to these schools out of high school, you will probably be turned down again as an undergraduate transfer applicant.
Also, I do not think that most of these are likely to be any easier than Purdue in terms of maintaining a medical-school-worthy GPA. Premed classes are not going to be easy regardless of where you attend university. I also do not think that these are going to be any better for BME.
Perhaps I just do not see the point in transferring to a school on this list, and I do understand that there is a very significant cost of transferring.
In all of this I am missing what state you are from. Are any of the universities that you got accepted to already, or any of the schools that you are considering transferring to, in-state public universities?
In my opinion, for the list of schools you have provided, not realistic at all.
I tend to agree with this. From what I have consistently heard, premed classes are in may cases tough. Engineering classes are tough. These are often different classes. This seems like a tough way to maintain a medical-school-worthy GPA.
On the other hand, biomedical engineering to me seems like a reasonable thing to study. Certainly someone has to study this if we want good medical equipment to be made. Also, I would expect that biomedical engineering would require some of the same classes that premed students are taking. Also, however tough these classes are, there are at least some students who handle them well.
And I know at least one former pre-vet student (the required classes are the same as required premed classes) who thought of the required math and physics classes as solid A’s to make up for the B’s in chemistry. Different students will take to different classes. Some do take to the engineering and math and physics classes (maybe these are specifically the students who we really would want to have go into biomedical engineering).
To me this part makes good sense. It is entirely reasonable to show up as a freshman in university undecided between biomedical engineering versus premed.
At some point a student is going to need to decide which is the goal. The sooner this decision is made, the easier it might be to focus on the right classes. It is understandable and to be expected that a high school senior has not figured this out yet.
There may be some students who manage to graduate with their bachelor’s degree and still have not figured this out. While both engineering classes and premed classes are tough, I think that a few exceptional students can handle both. I expect that this probably requires all of exceptional academic ability, a lot of work, and a very strong determination to do it.
If you end up in biomedical engineering, then you do not really have to get a master’s degree and a doctorate is not needed. However a significant number of biomedical engineering students do end up getting a master’s degree at some point. Master’s degrees are usually not funded. If you end up going to medical school, then someone is going to need to find a way to pay for 8 years of university, and this is going to be expensive.
Generally it is easier to save money by being frugal and considering the cost of attendance in picking which university to attend for your bachelor’s degree. This means now is likely to be the easiest time to save money through careful choice of which university to attend.
If your family can spend a million dollars, or close to this, for your education, then you might not need to worry about the cost of education. If half a million is a stretch, then the time to find a relatively more affordable path is now.
“Prestige” is not important in engineering, and the prestige of your undergraduate university is not important in terms of getting accepted to medical school. We also are talking on this thread about a long list of very good universities.
Looking at all of the universities that you have been accepted to, can you tell us what each would cost total per year? I see that you have been accepted to multiple public universities. Are any of these in-state for you?
Also, have your parents made it clear whether they will be able to help you in a very significant way to pay for medical school, or other graduate program, and whether this will depend upon the cost of the undergraduate school that you select?
There are very significant costs of transferring. You have already been accepted to a relatively long list of universities that are very good overall, very good for a premed student, and some of them are very good for BME.
In my opinion, transferring as an undergraduate student into either Georgia Tech or Washington University in St. Louis is very unlikely to happen. I do not think that there is anything that you can do between now and the end of your freshman year of university that will make this likely to happen. Also, I do not think that there is any reason that I can see related to career growth or academics to justify this transfer.
Let’s suppose that you decide to go with BME as a career. In that case getting a bachelor’s degree at Purdue, and then getting a master’s degree somewhere else, is an entirely reasonable possibility. If you do very well in tough classes as an undergraduate student at Purdue, or at Pitt, or at U.Mass, or at Rutgers, or at most of the other schools that you have already been accepted to, and if you have very good associated work or internship experience, and you have great letters of reference from people who like the work that you have done, then pretty much any university in the US might be realistic for a master’s degree (WUSTL, GT, Stanford, … might be at least worth considering assuming that they offer the desired graduate degree).
And if you decide that you want to go with medical school, with exceptional grades in tough courses as Purdue, or Pitt, or any of the other schools that you were already accepted to, and with strong medical shadowing experience, and strong references, and a strong MCAT score, then again very good MD programs across the US are at least realistically possible.
I have had the good fortune of having met some very, very smart people in my life. For their bachelor’s degree they have attended a very, very wide range of universities. Where they have “switched up” to a higher ranked university has almost always been after they got their bachelor’s degree, when choosing a university to attend for some form of graduate degree. Changing university when going for any form of graduate degree is very common, and this does include in some cases switching to a higher ranked more “prestigious” university for a graduate degree.
