What college courses should I take to become a bioengineer?

First: Bioengineering means many things to many people. People who design biocompatible electronic devices, people who genetically engineer cells, people who optimize conditions for monoclonal antibody production- all of these could be considered biological engineers. That said, it's difficult to recommend what you should focus on without knowing where you're planning on going with this- but fundamentally your undergrad years should be based around what classes are of genuine interest to you. Especially since you'll be getting a graduate degree, majors/minors are irrelevant, so definitely don't let requirements get in your way. Pick and choose. Depending on your interests, though, I would certainly recommend focusing on microbiology *and* making sure that you get a good foundation in mathematics/computer science. If your university hasn't taken strong strides in developing a sort-of "physics for biology" class, you'll probably want to avoid most physics classes, at least if you want the material to be immediately relevant to biological questions. I feel like an anatomy class would be less useful than just reading a few articles on the organ/tissue you're interested in. One thing I *will* say is that it's a much better idea to just get out of your undergrad in four years and move on to your graduate studies, if you're sure that's what you want to do. Introductory graduate classes are generally both more broad and deep than undergraduate classes, for one, and anything you could learn in an undergrad class you could certainly learn online / with the textbooks derived from similar classes. As far as employers go, I rather doubt they care about four years vs. four and a half or even five. But if you're interested in going straight into graduate school, you should think about becoming a research assistant rather than staying on as a super-senior. Graduate schools care most about research experience. Everything else is secondary.

Despite my Quora description, I'm essentially a biological engineer (as opposed to a biochemical engineer). To position myself as a "bio-engineer" during college I did the following. ABET Chemical Engineering Cell Biology Biochem I & II Biotechnology Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems Also lots of biotech internships. In hindsight, a microbio course and a molecular biophysics course would have been helpful but the above courseload is already ~25 courses. I had the option of majoring in biomedical engineering or biology-biotech but went with the chemical engineering route instead. As a more descriptive piece of advice, most of the applied math (ODEs/PDEs/Linear Algebra) comes as a byproduct of (or should be a byproduct of) the engineering sciences degree. While it is reasonable to take biology classes at a later time in your life, it is much easier to have breadth during college and forget about minors (in my humble opinion). As has suggested, bioengineer means a lot of things to a lot of people including myself. I went with the path of protein engineering aka biomacromolecular engineering / biophysics / synthetic biology. I have little to no exposure to biomedical engineering, biomechanics, biological imaging, and  biomimetics, all legitimate subtopics of "bioengineering"

Here's what biomedial engineering majors at Duke have to take, depending on the area of interest (Biomechanics, Imaging, Bioelectric Eng., Cell & Tissue Eng.): http://www.bme.duke.edu/sites/bme.duke.edu/files/handbook-F12.pdf You can similarly check out curricula at other schools with strong BME programs (JHU, MIT, GATech, etc). Find similarities among them - these would be the core subjects for biomedical engineers of 2012 to master. Overall, emphasis is on math, EE, core natural sciences, data-intensive CS/statistics, and soft skills (teamwork, management, communication).

I like a lot of the answers here already but have a few things to add. 1) You have "Bio" in your title for a reason.  Even if you are completely electrical in your interests, you are still doing something directly or indirectly with the human body.  Given that, you should really have at least one physiology course in your studies.  I am often appalled at how many of my grad students have never taken a single biology or physiology course, but still call themselves "bio" engineers. 2) Shy away from non-thesis Master's degrees.  The extra courses you get may be helpful, but you miss out on the research experience gained from writing a thesis, and this will be invaluable in everything you do in the real world.  Does not matter what your specialty is; you need to be able to design and run an experiment.  If you absolutely must go non-thesis, make sure you take a design of experiments course and a statistics course. 3) Seek out and take courses that deal with the real world, or do a co-op.  On my first day out of school with an MS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering (24 years of school by that point), the VP of Clinical & Regulatory said to me, "I need you to run the Design Controls on this project.", and I said, "Design whatsit?"  Academic courses give you academic information.  They do not prepare you at all for your actual day-to-day job out there. That is why I teach courses on Medical Device Development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, precisely so this does not happen to our grads.  Anyone outside the university can take the courses if they go here: http://medicaldevicecourses.com/2015/03/medical-device-development/ http://medicaldevicecourses.com/2015/03/advanced-medical-device-development/ http://medicaldevicecourses.com/2015/06/clinical-research-for-medical-devices/ http://medicaldevicecourses.com/2015/04/european-medical-device-regulatory-basics/

Basic engineering courses: Programming Linear Algebra Multivariable Calculus Differential Equations Complex Variables Engineering Physics Statistics Basic biology courses: Biochemistry Cell Biology Physiology Assuming an electrical focus: Medical Imaging Signal Processing Image Processing Electromagnetics Ultrasound MRI Photonics Instrumentation Control Systems Assuming a mechanical focus: Biomaterials Biomechanics Molecular Biomechanics Fluid Mechanics Heat Transfer Transport Phenomena Dynamics and Control Tissue Engineering Nanotechnology Assuming a chemical focus: Absolutely no idea. Sorry. Projects: 1 full year long research project or thesis 2 semesters or 1 year of design project Don't forget to take your humanities electives!