Talk:Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering

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This page needs a serious rewrite. The only information that wasn't specific to WUSTL on the page is largely copied from other wikipedia articles and isn't a good description.Cquan 18:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rankings of programs

I would like to pose a question on the value of putting rankings of specific programs on the article. Some of this has been discussed on the Biomedical engineering article, but it may be worth further discussion here. I would request that no additions of this sort be made until this discussion makes it somewhere.

IMHO: In particular, I don't see any special value in listing who US News and World Report ranks as the best since it's a single source, it's a yearly ranking (thus only reflecting a current status rather than a cummulative establishment) and it's an inherently subjective statement. Including such narrow statements merely opens the door for everyone to list rankings of specific programs as if they were valuable statements about the article's topic, which they are not.Cquan 06:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

and of course you decide what is "valuable statements" or not right? BEEP --RCSIRCSIRCSI 07:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to side with Cquan on this issue. The ranking cited is only listed for the US top school and only from one rankings source (which BTW is for graduate doctoral programs, not bachelor of science). Wikipedia is supposed to avoid a US bias and the Biomedical engineering article has already been labeled as having too much US bias. If we list the top US school we should list all top schools in other countries and where does it stop. Also I think it is unfair to only use the US News ranking and not from any other publications. Please check out College and university rankings to see the other sources for rankings.

I much prefer the use of other statistics, such as the first school with a BME degree, or a list of all of the schools with BME undergrad/doctoral programs. If you want to talk about the best, why not cite something more quantitative (biggest in size, biggest in grant support, biggest in number of publications, etc.)?

Top 3 US News Graduate BME rankings for citation purposes (if the consensus is to keep this info it needs to be cited per wikipedia standards and needs to be further clarified as being for graduate programs). If someone has a link to undergrad Bachelors BME programs please provide the link since it is more pertinant to the article. Also if someone has a link to the full list of grad BME programs can you post a link (since I can only find the top 3 without paying)? Biomedeng 03:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

actually that's a good point. since the ranking is not for a bachelor's program, but rather a graduate program, the inclusion is obviously not relevant to the article. I still think the discussion on this topic should continue though since stuff like this keeps popping up, but as to the immediate case here, I suggest removal of the ranking information if there are no compelling objections. Cquan 05:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

ok US news actually does rank undergrad programs in BME now, so I've put a separate rankings section in with some additional information since I don't think it belongs under professional status. I've also included other factors about rankings, reputation and their importance, but in general I think we should still refrain from putting specific rankings on the page instead of just linking to some lists. Cquan 14:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

since no one has made any sincere effort to produce arguments opposed to this, I've removed the U.S. news rankings, using the reference to illustrate ranking methodology rather than a specific ranking, changed the section from Rankings to Value of the degree and added content to that effect. Cquan 19:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)