BioE!

As a senior in high school, I applied to numerous schools with Bioengineering (or Biomedical engineering, same thing) as my major. I really didn't understand what that meant...and I'm still not even completely sure about everything that is encapsulated within it! (I do, however, know that I love it and everyone else in my major.)

Because of my past experiences, I always aspired to become a doctor. I chose bioengineering over majoring in just plan biology because I've always really enjoyed math classes and I knew that as a bio major I probably wouldn't get to take many of those..Beyond that, I've always wanted to be an engineer, a creator of things. I remember when I was younger I would spend hours working on puzzles, now majoring in bioengineering I am working towards solving real like puzzles, ones that could potentially impact thousands of lives.

The BioE department at UIUC is still relatively new, I believe the first class graduated in 2008, and because of that the curriculum is still being finalized but last semester I took a few standard engineering classes (calc 3 and gen chem +lab) and then two more bioe specific classes bioe120 and mcb150. Both were absolutely great classes! Bioe120 is an intro class to bioengineering, you hear professors talking about their research, tour labs, design a bioengineering project, and learn about different tracks within bioengineering that you'd like to go into. Plus it's just a really great time to socialize and meet the other Bioes in your year. That becomes pretty important since the major is one of the smallest on campus, there are only 37 freshman bioengineers in my year. MCB150 is the intro biology class that pretty much everyone who is majoring in a biology related field has to take. (I think there were about 600 people in my lecture when I took it, I heard there are around 1000 taking it right now!!)

What has really surprised me is how much bioengineering relates to other fields. I've always felt that Bioe is kind of the odd man out in terms of the engineering school just because biology is so much different from most engineering sciences. That's not necessarily true. I have a few Bioe friends who'd like to major in computer science, but guess what? There's a Bioe track that relates to that! The Computation Systems Biology track is rich in CS and math classes. A few of my other Bioe friends kind of want to switch into mechanical engineering..well we also have a track for that: Biomechanics which is designing things such as prosthetics, pretty neat stuff! Personally, I'm probably going to choose the Cell and Tissue Engineering Track. Don't worry about not knowing the different tracks though, you'll get a very intimate introduction to each of them during Bioe120. You actually declare your track at the end of your sophomore year so you have time to mull it over.

I should probably make a note about how bioengineering doesn't accept transfer students. If you didn't get into the department before arriving on campus, you're not going to, sorry. So even if I decided I didn't like bioengineering and transferred into another major, then decided that I wanted to be a Bioe again, I couldn't even get back in. However, because of the varied tracks within bioengineering, that type of situation doesn't happen because chances are that one of the tracks fits your interest. Even if it doesn't, you can always do a self-defined track, but that's a whole other story, haha.

Oh! it just occurred to me that I should probably tell you what I'm taking this semester: MCB 252 (they're actually taking this off the curriculum, so the rest of the bioes in my grade are actually taking another class instead..), CS 101 (standard CS course that pretty much all engineers have to take unless you're a CS or ECE major), Phys 211 (probably my favorite class, even though I absolutely despised physics in high school), Chem 104/105 (gen chem II and lab), and Dance 100 (woo! for fun gen eds).

Alright, I'll stop babbling. Please let me know if I can clarify anything for you and I'll try my best to help!