Almost Graduated.. Tips on Whats Next?
I’ve been a long term lurker on this subreddit, and now find myself graduating with a BME degree this fall. It hasn’t been a linear process at all. I quickly identified BME (at least my schools BME alone) wasn’t the best path (alone) to a career.
Since high school, biotech was always the field I wanted to work in. Especially health related biotech. I had always assumed BME was the best path for that since it married engineering principles with bio stuff. Our school was much more med device related and felt like mech E + bio. So many of my friends are solidly in the medtech world which I always felt out of place in. I kinda hated that stuff, but our degree was flexible enough to take a bunch of course work from other majors.. here I am with 200 credits (from multiple 25 credits semesters and summer terms) with a double major in BME and Microbiology, a minor in pharmaceutical sciences, and ~12 credits of fundamental coursework in chemE and ECE. Insane, I know. I guess I just felt the grind was worth it.
My best college experiences were in the Microbiology department where I felt I was finally doing what I came to school for. Pharm sci opened the door to a really good pharmacy position that’s helped me pay for all this (somehing that I would recommend other BMEs to look at). This work instantly got me working in a really cool BME lab at my school where I got to have a lot of freedom and ownership of experimental design and bioinformatics exposure.
My areas of expertise have culminated in gene therapy and delivery, nanotech, biosensor dev, bio/chemoinformatics, AI/ML, modeling, process dev, and digital and analog prototyping. I get to use these skills in student clubs here and have served as project manager for interdisciplinary projects 2 years now.
That said, since biotech was umm always my goal I guess, I still haven’t held an internship. Breaking into that field is impossible as an underclassmen without explicit connections to these companies let alone in our current political landscape :/ I still kick myself for not just sucking it up and applying to medtech or software oriented internships. I’ve delayed my graduation in efforts to at least collect one internship or coop experience before I walk. That said, I was really close to a dream internship this year in biotech being told I was the “2nd pick”, have a really good resume and should apply again next year. They opted to go with a PhD student.
I’m still interviewing with several biotech companies for a coop this fall, and I feel confident. I truly want to work in industry somewhere as R&D or process R&D. I’d love to get experience before considering grad school. Frankly, I’m burnt out. I’ve been operating as a grad student for 2 years now, and don’t want to rush down PhD programs yet. I think I
Will get a PhD, but likely in chemE, ECE, or some software adjacent role.
I guess I’m asking, if no coop.. what do I do for a gap year? Any PhD considerations? Anyone in a similar boat? I just feel overwhelmed with decisions.