Career Path Help for Biomedical Majors

[Ocasta]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to know if anybody could give me into any advice in the way of a career path. I'm having trouble wading through the literature and requirements, and I'd appreciate a bit of guidance.

I have a short laundry list of sleep disorders and I've decided that I'd like to pursue a career in the study of sleep, and I would love to engineering devices to further and treat sleep disorders.

Here's my conundrum:
My local university (Northern Arizona University) has a biomedical science major. I can attend this school in the fall.

Arizona State University (ASU) has a biomedical engineering major, but would render my current math and science courses moot as they only transfer as electives. ASU has a series of chemistry, physics, and calculus courses for engineers. I would have to wait a year to attend this school.

-I just took Calc 1 and General Chem 1 over the summer at the local community college.

-While I would be annoyed to retake these classes, I'm not so far dug in that it would be terribly discouraging to restart the sequences. I'm more concerned about forgetting the material in the meantime.

-I already have a degree from this university system and would not need to repeat my liberal studies requirements.

I'd like to pursue my Masters' degree, so I looked at the admissions criteria of the biomedical engineering program at a university with a school of sleep medicine (Stanford) and they said,

"[URL will be expected to enter with a series of core competencies in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, computing, and engineering.
... We will require that students have completed mathematics through multivariable calculus and differential equations, completed a series of undergraduate biology courses (equivalent to BIO 41, 42, 43 series) and completed physics, chemistry, and computer sciences courses required of all undergraduate majors in engineering.[/URL]

This is the site for the course requirements of the http://www.stanford.edu/dept/registrar/bulletin/5200.htm" .

So my question boils down to:

If I go to NAU, can I do something to supplement these classes which are not offered?

Or, would I just be wasting my time and should attend ASU next year?

Or should I pursue another degree, go to med school and pursue the study of sleep that way? Engineering MD's are not unheard of, I'm sure. I really want to study sleep therapies that don't involve pills.

Wow, sorry guys. I didn't mean to make this so long.

 

[Stengah]

May I ask what degree you already have?

I think you misunderstood what Stanford has on their site. The courses you listed are ones that you take once at Stanford, they aren't required before you're admitted. You just need to meet the requirements you listed first, the biology, physics, chem, and computer science stuff. So I think NAU would suffice for those. But ASU would be good too, since it does have the actual Bioengineering major.

As for whether or not this is the right path for you, I'm not sure. Biomedical science is a good undergraduate major for people who want to go to medical school. Biomedical engineering is for engineering school. I'm not sure if you would be able to do specifically what you want to do by going the engineering route. If you went the biomedical science route, I think that would give you more options to study what you want in med school. But all of this is pretty speculative because I don't know much about either engineering or med school.

 

[Ocasta]

Hi Stengah, thanks for helping me out!

My first bachelors is in Advertising (it's a very nice fire-starter, it's a short, but pointless story). I declared my major and graduated when the recession was in its infancy. It didn't have any mathematics requirements above College Algebra and I only took Geology 101 as my lab.

I think you misunderstood what Stanford has on their site.

I absolutely did mis-read the page on their site. Editing to fix...

I looked up the required BIO classes from the Stanford's course catalog:

http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/CourseSearch/search?filter-catalognumber-BIO=on&page=2&catalog=&q=BIO&filter-coursestatus-Active=on&view=catalog&collapse=

And their titles sounds similar to NAU's courses:

"[URL 344 CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Organization and function of biological molecules, cell diversity, cell structure and function, and cell interaction and differentiation.

BIO 425C ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY
Function and integration of animal tissues, organs, and organ systems in the maintenance of homeostasis.

BIO 326 ECOLOGY
Introduces ecological principles, including the distribution and abundance of organisms, population dynamics, community organization, energy flow, and nutrient cycling.[/URL]

I probably have to talk to a department adviser, but these courses sound roughly similar.

However, I still can't find a sheet laying out what, exactly, their engineering, computing, chemistry and physics requirements are.

Edit:
Found 'em. They really buried these things.