Northeastern Bio PhD v. RPI BME PhD

[flylikeaneagle]

Choosing between a Bio PhD program at Northeastern and a BME PhD program at RPI.  Both fully funded with professors of interest, but I'm torn between what might be a more reputable school (RPI) further out of the way and further out of my comfort zone (coming from Boston College) and a school with more connections (NEU) but a less reputable program. 

I hope to specialize in regenerative medicine and eventually go into industry working in R & D or a biotech startup.  

My gut tells me NEU, but I also realize I'm heavily biased toward the familiarity of Boston.  Freaking out a bit sonce decision time is only days away!

Any thoughts?

[Bhu_It]

Being an RPI graduate and a biomaterials researcher in Boston, I guess I can provide some qualified opinion on this. For Regenerative medicine, I think NEU has much stronger research going on. Sure NEU is a less reputed college and their BioE has lower rankings, but that's all because it is a relatively newer program. If you just ignore the reputation for now, you'll see that NEU BioE has been pushing out some top notch research (at least in biomaterials). Plus, NEU has the Boston advantage, the city's a hotbed for pharma/Biomed companies, so you will have better chance at networking in the industry. Hence, if I were you, NEU would be a no-brainer for me, unless you had some particular preferences for certain profs at RPI or some personal reasons.