<p>Amherst and UPenn are my top 2 choices…but i can’t decide!
I’m planning to go to med school so i was thinking that it would be better to study at a small liberal arts college like Amherst and have a better chance of getting into med school. but then again im from a small town stuck in the middle of a bunch of farms and can’t wait to get out to a place like UPenn. and UPenn is Ivy League…but because its larger it might be harder to get into med school (recommendations, getting over 3.5 gpa, etc). where would u go?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegejournal.com/special/top50feeder.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegejournal.com/special/top50feeder.pdf</a>
From 2003, still relevant.</p>
<p>As for size and all...well, Amherst is not rural like Williams is rural. There's a nice town with UMass right near. Plenty of concerts, thousands of college kids in the area, regardless of size, it's a great atmosphere.
And don't be fooled by the "Ivy League" designation...those in higher education know which school has students of highest quality. Amherst is universally respected.</p>
<p>Hey I have to decide b/w those two, too!</p>
<p>Penn has an 80% med school admit rate for its students. Also a lot of research opportunities in a large university with so many grad schools and more than 500 labs. Situated in Philly- lots of volunteering opps. I've chosen Penn because it's closer to home (down the street..), gave me no loans and set me up in a really cool Vagelos Scholars Science program. </p>
<p>So it's the battle b/w LAC and univ. Good luck!</p>
<p>yeah i can't decide >.< but is research really that important to get into medical school? and another thing...there's no hospital near Amherst huh? how am i supposed to get hospital volunteer experience? its wierd because apparently Amherst premeds have about a 90% acceptance rate into med schools.</p>
<p>There have been so many medicos that have stated the following (summarizing): These threads have confirmed that med schools love kids who have done so much more outside of just medicine. Makes them well-rounded, perhaps more understanding of others and their interests and lifestyles, if they have experienced them. (There's that bedside thing!) Also, doing well in the LAC environment makes for a terrific, creative, thinking, analytical person, a great precursor to success in med school. Also, if you want to volunteer over the summer, Amherst has grants, etc., where you can receive costs, etc., and perhaps some money for your volunteerism.</p>
<p>Amherst has a 96% med school acceptance rate first try.</p>
<p>Amherst is arguably the #1 liberal arts college there is. I think it's probably your best choice.</p>
<p>I'd hesitate with choosing a big school in a big city just because it is different. There may be a huge culture shock there.</p>
<p>I'm an Amherst sophomore; I just visited my friend who goes to UPenn over spring break, and though I obviously don't know what being a UPenn student is like as much as an Amherst student, I'll try to comment for both sides. I think you should take a moment and really think what you want in a college, because they are very different. </p>
<p>The obvious ones comes from location and size. UPenn, being an urban campus, has a lot of stuff going on both on campus and off campus. On the other hand, it definitely doesn't feel as cohesive and familiar as Amherst does. For example, a lot of the dorms at Amherst barely feel like dorms; they feel like oversized, cozy houses. The ones at UPenn are rather sterile and lonely, in my opinion. On the other hand, most of the things you do at Amherst for fun/outside of class will be mostly on campus. It's not in the middle of nowhere, but you won't end up going off campus nearly as much as you think. That makes things very convenient and close, but it could feel a bit stifling at times.</p>
<p>Also consider things like extracurriculars. Both UPenn and Amherst have tons of clubs, but the clubs are definitely going to be much more effective/professional/organized at a place at UPenn just because they have the student numbers to fill and run them, whereas we don't always. On the other hand, almost all the clubs here are extremely accesible, and I'm not sure if that's the case at a larger school at UPenn.</p>
<p>Finally, what kind of educational atmosphere are you looking for? My friend complained to me that UPenn has a very preprofessional atmosphere. She sees that as a negative, but if that's the type of education you are looking for, it might be better to go there. Not saying that there aren't preprofessionally driven people at Amherst, but general spirit among the administration, faculty, and students is a much more liberal artsy, take things as they come, explore and experiment kind of thing. Of course, you can be somewhat liberal artsy (like my friend) and still enjoy UPenn and vice versa, but it's definitely something to consider.</p>
<p>Anyway, my advice is to visit both of the schools, ask a lot of questions, get a feel for them, then think really carefully about what you want. They're both great schools, but they are definitely much more different than say, Amherst and Williams or Amherst and Swarthmore. </p>
<p>Hope that helped.</p>
<p>"My friend complained to me that UPenn has a very preprofessional atmosphere. She sees that as a negative.."</p>
<p>I heard that too from the one guy I know who went to UPenn...</p>
<p>I am a current student at Penn. Penn's incoming class size is roughly 2400 students. Of this no. approx. 1500 are enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences, 500 in Wharton, and the remaining 400 split between Nursing and Engineering. The Nursing, Engineering and Wharton Schools are what contribute to the preprofessional atmosphere at Penn because that is the purpose behind these schools. However, as you can see by the no.s, the overwhelming majority of students at Penn are in the College which is a pure liberal arts program. That is not to say there aren't preprofessional people in the College, many are (such as the Econ grads), but since the school is so large no one particular kind of "atmosphere" dominates. If you look purely at the numbers the no. of "liberal artsy" people you will find at Penn (say at least 75% of the College?), that no. alone outnumbers the entire size of the freshman class at Amherst. The result--Penn has a mixed atmosphere where you will find all kinds of people, some preprofessional, others committed to a broad liberal arts education. None of these attitudes overbears the other simply because Penn is too large for that to happen. If anything, simply because there are more people studying the liberal arts than anything else at Penn (and undergraduates from all schools take almost half their classes there with perhaps the exception of Engineering), a "liberal arts atmosphere" is definitely present.
You can always make a big school like Penn smaller once you find your niche there.
Amherst and Penn are both great schools--go with where you find yourself being more comfortable because they're both equally great.</p>
<p>hey thanks for all your input guys. ^<em>^
i won't be able to visit either schools because of financial reasons...so i'm gonna have to decide without seeing either.
but wht percentage of a class at Amherst recieve A's? Because I just met a junior at Wharton who has a 4.0...and he says at Wharton (which im assuming is harder than CAS) the top 20% of a class recieves A's.
At a small place like Amherst doesn't that mean only the top 2 or 3 kids in a class get teh A's? ^</em>^ i kno..im too obsessed about gpa...but im premed so it matters a lot (wish it didnt)
oh yeah and i also heard from a friend that UPenn's surrounding area is really dirty, noisy, etc. and she didn't like it one bit. true?</p>
<p>Penn is not located in the best of neighbourhoods but there's nothing particularly wrong with the immediate area--there are plenty of shops, restaurants etc. The campus itself is very beautiful, and nice and big so the surrounding neighbourhood has less of an impact. Only a couple of blocks west of Penn's campus does the neighbourhood REALLY get bad...Penn is also only a 10-15 walk from center city which is the heart of Philly and a lot of fun with anything most big cities can offer available there.</p>
<p>I am in Penn's CAS and the grading varies by subject and the whims of individual professors. Sometimes there is 'no curve' and the professor is free to hand out as many (or as few) A's as he or she likes. Usually when there is a curve the top 15-25% recieve an A or an A-. Most science and math classes are usually graded on curves though, the exceptions are sometimes made for the humanities/social sciences. However, given Penn's outstanding placement of premeds in their top choice med-schools (more than 80% get into their top 3 choices: source Penn Career Services website) I doubt the GPA system worked to their disadvantage.</p>