advise for pre-med school

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I'm taking a year off and recommitting to studying neuroscience (pre-med). I am 100% confident in this choice, but I am having trouble narrowing down schools to transfer to. Would you be able to give me any advice on the following universities?</p>

<p>Columbia, Standford, Yale, U Chicago, Duke - reaches
Boston U, JHU, GWU, NYU, Northeastern, UT Austin - other possibilities</p>

<p>I am trying to figure out which school would make me a better applicant for a medical school. I know that the school name doesn't matter and what matters is how you can excell at your chosen school, but I keep thinking that the big name schools (Columbia vs UT Austin, for ex), would simply prepare me better, or is that not true? </p>

<p>Any suggestions are appreciated! Thank you.</p>

<p>If you are keen on studying Neuroscience, the best schools are -
WashU (has a terrific NS group! If I were your age, I would apply here today. When I review their research articles, I can assure you there is more envelope pushing research ongoing in WashU and UCLA these days than Harvard. Ann Fagan, Holtzman, Mike Mintun etc come to mind)</p>

<p>MIT has a pretty good CNS group
BU- also has a pretty good NS group (Many NYAS speakers work there - Benjamin Wolozin comes to mind)</p>

<p>NYU has pretty good researchers also</p>

<p>Northeastern is lowest on the NS totem pole in CNS…I am not impressed by this school in terms of research (of course, this is a neuroresearcher’s point of view)</p>

<p>How does UCSD fare in neuroscience and pre-med in general? Is it up to par with UCLA?</p>

<p>I worked in a neuroscience lab, and UT is supposed to have a pretty good neuroscience program according to them.</p>

<p>I think if you gave us some stats we might also be able to advise you which of these switches are realistic.</p>

<p>D’s minor is Neuroscience. Classes specific to neuroscience are much easier than general Bio classes in her major (Zoology). She enjoys them a lot and basically having lots of fun. She is even planning to keep some of neuroscience textbooks just because they are interesting. You will have no problem to excell in these classes at any place, IMO. Good luck.</p>

<p>

UCSD is the best UC for biology.</p>

<p>I’m a neuro major at northeastern… compared to the other schools you’re looking at NU would be (like mentioned above), probably the weakest as far as neuroscience goes. The academics are pretty standard and we don’t have that much neuro research going on in the university. I’ve had some great professors and courses, and have some graduated friends who are in neuro phD programs right now. I also have friends at medical school, but like you said, it’s more about the applicant–they were all good students who got good things accomplished in undergrad, and that’s how they got into med school.</p>

<p>The major perk of the program at NU is co-op and their connections. Brigham & Women’s (Harvard med) is a huge employer of NU co-op students and I have a lot of friends who have gotten pretty impressive research done there (neuroscience and otherwise). I’ve also heard of students getting co-op jobs at JHU and Stanford, so opportunities are pretty good if you’re a top student here.</p>

<p>But, that doesn’t change the fact that (most of) the other schools you listed are going to be stronger academically, and have more neuro research going on within the actual school. As far as I know, we’re fairly comparable to BU and GWU, but your reaches are in an entirely different league.</p>

<p>thanks a lot for all the input so far. I think I’m just going to apply to those schools and see what happens.</p>