Mentorship, research and first principles: Why more than 60 percent of Herff College of Engineering’s biomedical engineering students who apply for medical school get accepted
November 11, 2026
A degree in biomedical engineering can prepare students for many different professions, like being an R&D engineer, a quality engineer, a regulatory affairs specialist, a tissue engineer or a biomedical equipment technician.
But some students acquire a biomedical engineering education to enter a completely different, though closely related, field: Medicine.
Paula Meier, who recently graduated from Herff College of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and works as a medical assistant at Semmes Murphey Clinic, knew medical school was her goal even before she chose to study biomedical engineering.
“I knew that I wanted to go into medicine, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to major in,” Meier said. “I didn’t really want to do biology or chemistry. Of course, those are very complicated degrees, but I wanted a fallback plan, something I could turn into a career. They tell you whenever you graduate high school that if you’re good in math and science you should look into the engineering route and that’s kind of where I fell. So, I realized I could do biomedical engineering, which has that medical side I love and the math and science I love. So, the degree was pretty much a simple decision for me, even though I wasn’t 100 percent sure what I was getting myself into to begin with.”
Most students who enroll in Herff’s biomedical engineering program with their sights set on medical school don’t need a fallback option. Over 60 percent of Herff’s biomedical engineering students who apply for medical school get accepted, well above the 44 percent acceptance rate of all engineering applicants, including those who majored in biomedical engineering.
Dr. Hunter King, who earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from the Herff College of Engineering with his PhD in biomedical engineering and is currently completing his radiology residency at the University of Washington, said biomedical engineering gave him a leg up when applying to medical school.
“Medicine is, at its core, a lot of pattern recognition and being able to see those patterns as far as how certain disease processes appear and the treatments associated with them. That’s all well and good, but it’s easier if you can understand basic principles. Not to say that someone with a biology background can’t. You can, for sure. But I think slugging it out in engineering with everything and understanding mechanisms and first principles gives you a better framework to approach that versus just brute memorization,” King said.
While that may be true of any biomedical engineering program, King said the faculty in the biomedical engineering department at the Herff College of Engineering made that education particularly beneficial.
“It was just like solid, foundational, rigorous first principles exposure,” King said. “For me, it wasn’t just the classes that I took. It was more. It was the people. It was the mentorships I had as an undergrad. Dr. Pendley and Dr. Lindner were huge instrumental mentors and then obviously I got to spend my graduate education with Dr. Gary Bowlin. So, it was the opportunities and mentors that I had. The classes were, you know, some of them were excellent. Some of them were okay, but it was the mentorship and the opportunities and the research experiences that really made the difference for me.”
If mentorship is the secret sauce behind what makes Herff’s biomedical engineering students so successful at getting into medical school, then Dr. Bradford D. Pendley might just be the chef behind that old family recipe.
Dr. Pendley began his research career at Cornell, developing and using nanometer-sized amperometric electrochemical sensors. He continued this work as a Chemistry Professor at Rhodes College. In 1998, while he was on sabbatical leave in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Memphis, he became interested in medical applications of electrochemical sensors. In 2003, he resigned his tenured, endowed position at Rhodes and undertook seven years of training in medicine to better formulate research questions as well as augment his ability to teach chemistry, physics, math and biology through medical applications. He graduated from medical school and completed a residency in Internal Medicine, becoming a board-certified physician.
He works closely with many of Herff’s biomedical engineering students who are interested in medical school. He teaches The Science of Medicine, a class he describes as “unique” and believes is special to the University of Memphis, integrating physics, math and biology with medicine and engineering applications, and Medical Physiology, which he described as “effectively a first medical school, physiology class with engineering additions to it.”
He also helps those students examine their motives for wanting to go to medical school and emphasize those reasons during their application process.
“It's telling your story. Because ultimately, when you apply, the numbers- your MCAT, your GPA, those kinds of things- get you that secondary application; they get you into a medical school interview. But you get yourself into medical school,” Pendley said. “You have to have a story and a lot of these young adults, college majors and stuff, don’t know to do that. I think I’ve been very helpful in terms of that. You know, taking things that they might not see, and probably wouldn’t see, as being directly applicable or generalizable to medical school and showing them how that can actually fit into one of those three legs of the application process.”
With nearly four decades of teaching and medical practice, Pendley has built connections and a reputation that span the nation, giving weight to his name on a medical school application.
“Medical schools in this area not only have the advantage of saying, ‘Oh, this is a directly applicable course,’ but they know me. When my students go through the application process and they’ve taken my classes, (medical schools) know they do well. So, if you look at my classes, grades and all, that’s the advantage. I’ve had students take my class initially, for example Science of Medicine, get a D, come back, change some things and get a B. They have no problem getting into medical school. The folks in medical school locally know that when I write letters, I support that and that’s not been an issue,” Pendley said.
Pendley’s instruction doesn’t stop when his students leave Herff. During the pandemic, he began recording his lectures and posting them to YouTube on his channel “Science of Medicine.” His students, both current and former, were so appreciative that he’s continued the practice throughout the years. Through medical school, residency and careers, Dr. Pendley’s education is always just a link away.
“I’ve had many alums that have said, ‘Dr. Pendley, they just don’t teach it as clearly as you do,’…Sometimes folks in medical school that are teaching aren’t necessarily making it easy for the students. Sometimes they may not understand that. So, even after the fact, my students will go back and find the videos really useful,” Pendley said.
A trusted voice like Pendley’s supporting a student’s application can make a big difference, especially for students in biomedical engineering, often considered one of the more challenging routes into medical school.
James Huang entered medical school in 2024 promptly after graduating from Herff’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, carrying with him minors in biology, chemistry and Spanish. He chose the biomedical engineering route on a whim after seeing a sign at freshman orientation stating that engineers are twice as likely to get into medical school. That sign didn’t say it would be a more challenging path toward Huang’s goal of becoming a doctor, but the Herff alum said that, given the opportunity, it’s a path he’d gladly take again.
"I'm incredibly grateful that I chose biomedical engineering, and looking back, I would absolutely choose that path again,” Huang said. “It was certainly challenging, but those challenges pushed me to grow as a student and become a more adaptable learner. One of the unique aspects of biomedical engineering is the breadth and depth of the material. You're constantly learning concepts from different disciplines and figuring out how they connect. That experience taught me to move beyond simply memorizing information and instead focus on understanding underlying principles and working through complex problems. I think that approach to learning has been incredibly valuable in medical school, where we're constantly integrating information from different fields to better understand the human body."
Huang said the research opportunities he experienced and the community of researchers he joined at Herff also played a key role in preparing him for medical school.
"Looking back, one of the most valuable aspects of my experience at Herff was the opportunity to get involved in research,” Huang said. “There's an incredible amount of research happening within the college, and I was fortunate to work in Dr. Gary Bowlin's lab alongside Evan Main. Both of them were fantastic mentors who invested in my growth as a student and researcher. Our work focused on immunology, which gave me a much deeper understanding of concepts that are directly applicable to medicine. I also had the opportunity to contribute to several publications, including a couple as second author, which was an incredibly rewarding experience. Beyond the academic knowledge, being involved in research taught me how to think critically, ask meaningful questions, and approach problems from different perspectives."
Grayson Kendall, who entered Herff’s biomedical engineering program with a background in software development, is currently benefiting from those research opportunities, something he knows medical schools will value.
“There are so many great faculty running research projects and they’re always open to accepting new students with zero experience so that they can get those formative skills and experience in a lab,” Kendall said. “Medical schools expect a good amount of research experience, and I can see why now. It really changes how you think about medicine.”
Because of Kendall’s computational experience and background in machine learning and data-driven models, Dr. Steve Strain recommended that Kendall join a research project with Dr. Penny Asbell, an external professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and previous chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and director of the Hamilton Eye Institute at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
“She wanted to find patterns in clinical trial data that could lead to better treatment for her patients. So, Dr. Strain recommended me to her and we got connected. For over a year now, we’ve been working on this research project and I presented at multiple professional meetings, including one in New York this summer. Our focus is dry eye phenotyping, which means sorting patients into more meaningful subgroups, and it's been a rewarding experience to use engineering to tackle a clinical problem that affects so many people,” Kendall said.
Kendall now helps other students pursue their own research ideas through the Environmental & Campus Health Organization (ECHO), which he co-founded with fellow Herff biomedical engineering student Hafsa Khan.
With the research, specific curriculum that needs to be followed and all of the boxes that need to be checked for a successful medical school application, the path forward could look daunting for a college freshman with dreams of being a doctor. Huang encouraged students taking the first step toward that goal not to look too far into the future or get caught up in comparing their process to their peers'.
“I would say, don’t miss out on what’s in front of you because you’re looking too far ahead,” Huang said. “It was good for me to have those big goals and ambitions, which I think you have to have as a medical student applying, especially in engineering. But also knowing that the lessons and the information that I was learning, although not directly applicable to my end goal of being a family physician, was invaluable in the experience. Get the most out of every experience, whether it’s exactly what you think you want to do or not. And, know that everyone’s path and everyone’s journey is different. We’re all individuals. No two people’s paths to medical school are the same. Sometimes you can miss out on really finding and embracing your strengths because you’re trying to mimic somebody else’s.”