Hi my name's Carter Chain
I am a sophomore and I'm studying biological engineering in the college agriculture
And so I'm from Knoxville Tennessee
and I guess when I was applying to schools
I, there were a couple things I was considering
I didn't want to be right next to my hometown,
but I also didn't want to be you know extremely far away
It's kind of a nice bubble where I could have feel like I was going somewhere
but you know not completely abandoning everything.
I knew I wanted to do engineering
I guess the stereotypical like good in math good in science I should be an engineer.
And so after you know considering what Purdue had to offer
I feel, I felt like biological engineering had a lot to offer
and as far as you know future applications very
being very immediate to people on a personal level
You know whether or not you're developing pharmaceuticals or biofuels
I felt like these are all things that you know could help people everywhere.
What you would hear hear over and over
is like oh this feels just like you know summer camp.
Like you don't feel like your living here
You don't feel like your going to a university yet.
But then of course over time you kind of get you know acclimated to everything
and, and then after a point I'm in my 4th semester now
and it's almost strange you can't imagine yourself being where you were before.
You know just being here feels so natural
that it's almost you know strange that you weren't used to it initially.
I was part of SURF last summer
which is Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships with Purdue
and so with that undergraduate students apply for research positions here over the summer
typically connecting with a professor before they apply
and so I applied with the, in the lab that I'm currently in.
So I started last summer
and so I feel like Purdue definitely did a great job of
you know stimulating undergraduate research
and opportunities for undergraduates
and opportunities that might not exist to other colleges.
I know research is often too typically viewed as a lofty thing
that you can only do if you have a PhD
or are in grad school
and I think it's very important to get exposure to that
if you know you want to maybe do it some day
or even if you're not sure what you wanna do you as your career
to be exposed to that early on i think is very important.
And so right now in in Doctor Deng's lab
you know I'm currently doing research with
we're trying to regenerate muscle tissue
you know in cases of volumetric muscle loss, things like that
and something that really cool to me about this
is that in the lab I'm a biological engineer
and there's a graduate student in biological engineering,
but there's another student from animal sciences who's a postdoc,
there is an undergraduate from the veterinary school
and so and all of us you know working together
in our individual kinda specializations
to achieve this grand unified sort of result is exciting to me.
You know we finally got to see you know cells grow in the desired pattern
on these you know scaffolds that we made
and we've been working on for months and months
and so to see agriculture and engineering
and all these different disciplines combine to a very specific goal
that we've been working for for a long time is, is very exciting
Yeah I know a lot of students want to apply to a very prestigious university is
to go where program is is highly ranked
and at Purdue that's certainly the case.
And I think it's uniformly the case.
I feel like every program in agriculture and engineering is very strong.
Which is important because maybe you know come in
and you're set on like I know I want to do entomology
but maybe after awhile you know you're like oh I wanna do animal science instead
and I feel like having a very firm background
of strong programs in many different areas and
is is a great reason to to consider Purdue
and and then rankings aside I mean maybe you want to look at those,
but you shouldn't just you know you know rank the best colleges in your major
and then just apply to those.
You know getting a feel for the campus is important
and I definitely feel like I fit in at Purdue.
I know at a lot of places you hear like you know you know it's really competitive
you know you're going to be like hating your classmates
and I feel like at Purdue it's been very warm, very collaborative.
Everyone's kind of on the same page willing to help each other.