Hi All,
My child is planning to pursue BioMedical Engineering Major with Electrical and Computer Engineering minor for the undergraduate. Below are the college options:
UNC Chapel Hill (4 years tution waived)
NC State (4 years tution waived)
Georgia Tech (have to pay out of state tution)
Any guidance as to what her best option might be. What are the career opportunities in this field. Does a second major like Biostatistics help or any other suggestions.
Thanks!
Frank
Is the student admitted to the listed schools, or is considering applying to the listed schools?
UNC-CH has BME, but not other engineering majors if the student wants to do a different kind of engineering.
Both UNC-CH and NCSU have competitive secondary admission to the BME major (and other enginering majors at NCSU). You may want to find out how competitive they are.
UNC bme is combo program which has best of both NCSU and UNC , they get degree from both colleges and I heard chemistry classes are easy at NCSU than UNC
Being said that GTech is the NO 1 Program for BME , if you can afford it will 32 X 4 around 130 k more ,
Both options are good BME itself is pretty hard major and may not find to do minor , NCSU may allow for Electrical Computer minor , not sure of GTech , UNC has no option of that
Student is admitted to the listed schools.
What are the actual yearly prices for each including room and board, books, etc. after all aid?
NC state - 17k yearly cost (tuition waived)
Chapel Hill - 17k yearly cost (tuition waived)
Georgia Tech – 50k yearly total cost including tuition
Basically, the tradeoff is that UNC-CH and NCSU cost less but have competitive secondary admission to major (try to find out how competitive at each school), versus GT being more expensive but giving one unrestricted major change during frosh year. Choosing between GT and one of the NC options depends on how much the cost difference matters to your household finances relative to the value of greater assurance into the desired major.
Between UNC-CH and NCSU, it can matter if the student changes majors, since some other possible majors of interest may be available or better at one school versus the other (e.g. other engineering majors are available at NCSU but not UNC-CH, but it may be the other way around for some non-engineering majors).
Looks like admission to the BME major at UNC-CH and NCSU is described at Undergraduate and Transfer Student Admissions - Joint BME
14BMHBS - Google Sheets indicates that for the full 2022-2023 academic year at NCSU, 85 (63%) of 135 applicants were admitted to the major, including 73 (62%) out of 118 who started as Engineering First Year (EFY).
Of the EFY admits to the BME major, the middle 50% CODA (technical) GPA was 3.67-4.08, and the middle 50% overall GPA was 3.75-4.09. At NCSU, GPA > 4.0 is possible because A+ = 4.333 (+/- is +/- 0.333 from the base letter grade).
Given the GPA ranges, BME appears to be highly competitive (getting a 3.75 GPA in college is typically much harder than getting a 3.75 GPA in high school).
Admission statistics for other engineering majors at NCSU can be found at CODA Statistics | College of Engineering . Click on a major, then click on an academic year and term. Only the “overall” sheet for the academic year shows GPA ranges.
I can’t say it any better than that, except to add the bird in hand costs $132,000.
I’m generally not a fan of secondary admissions programs. The risk is too high. Paying $132K MORE to avoid that is pretty high though.
Are there any other options?
Financially NC State makes sense but…if your son has enough AP/DE credits GT could be doable in 3 years. You would need to research the BME graduation path. That’s $50k saved. Could also try to do a semester abroad at in-state rates. Most likely would be limited to completing one major but that’s not a bad thing.
Oldest son did ISyE in 3. His HS classmate did CS in 3. It worked out well. He had an internship and co-op so he essentially spent 4 years on campus and padded his bank account. It’s at least worth a discussion.
Did your oldest son get good job opportunities with ISyE? Is it worth pursuing that major at GT?
Yes. We’re happy with his experience but ISyE isn’t remotely similar to BME. I will add that most of his offers were in the same industry as his co-op.
I’m not sure GT is worth the extra cost. Especially if loans are necessary. For us, the 3 year cost wasn’t much more than our very good in-state options would’ve been for 4 years. And it was the best fit for him. No brainer.
Unfortunately there is no longer a cost savings for OOS students when doing a semester abroad at GT. Although it’s categorized a bit differently, semester abroad costs every penny as much as OOS tuition for OOS students. They made this change a few years ago - such a bummer!
Good to know. That’s too bad. Doesn’t make sense to me if you’re trying to promote study abroad.
We are in the same boat, my daughter has been accepted to both UNC-CH (IS) and GT BME (OOS), we are going with GT due to its reputation as the leader in the BME program; we don’t have tuition waived from UNC.
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