I’m a Canadian student who just graduated from a NE boarding school this past spring. I’m currently taking a gap year and will be applying to college in a month’s time.
I’m a competitive swimmer and I’m being recruited to Amherst College & Harvey Mudd College. I haven’t decided yet what I’d like to focus on in college, though I’ve narrowed it down to either medicine or engineering.
I know these two LACs are pretty different, so I’d appreciate opinions on where I should apply ED.
Amherst: I’m especially attracted to the Open Curriculum and research opportunities in the Consortium. Given my experience at my high school, I think I’d enjoy the social scene a bit more, too. I talked to the swim coach and he offered to support my application (he said that in his time at Amherst, only one student who’s had his support & applied ED hasn’t been admitted… basically if I decide to apply ED, I should be accepted). If I go to Amherst, I’d start on a premed track with med school admission the ultimate goal.
Harvey Mudd: my parents and I feel that having an engineering degree from here is valuable, and it’s nice that I’ll be able to start working right after undergrad rather than having to go to grad school. I’m also interested in Mudd’s Clinic Program, the Claremont Consortium and the supposedly collaborative environment. I’m still waiting to hear back from my pre read, but I had the coach’s support last year when I considered applying ED, so I’m assuming I’ll have his support again this year, should I apply ED.
Does anyone have advice for me, given that I’m still unsure of what career I’d like to have? I’ve always been attracted to medicine, but I know the road’s long and expensive. STEM was my strong suit in high school, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle the rigorous engineering program at Mudd. Any other things I should consider, apart from cost (Amherst will likely be a bit cheaper, but I think a Harvey Mudd degree will “pay back” quicker, so my parents aren’t too concerned with the tuition fees)?
If you think you want to go to med school, I’d skip Mudd. Being an athlete on top of the need for a very high GPA is almost impossible there. My kid just graduated from there. She mostly loved it, but the workload is grueling, and they don’t really have grade inflation.
Why is swimming an issue if you’re not getting an athletic scholarship?
I agree that if you’re interested in med school, forget about engineering at Mudd. But if you’re more interested in engineering than medicine, it’s hard to beat Mudd.
Amherst is great for pre-med, but maybe not so good for engineering. The only way to get an engineering degree at Amherst would be through a 5-year program, where you spend years 3 and 5 at Dartmouth. Such programs are commonly offered by liberal arts colleges, but rarely utilized in practice;. Amherst says that only one or two students per class go that route. http://www3.amherst.edu/~waloinaz/engineering.html
HMC is great for engineering, but maybe not so good for pre-med. HMC does offer common pre-med majors, like biology and chemistry, although they are less popular than engineering. However, it may be difficult to maintain a high GPA at Mudd, as noted above, especially if you also want to swim competitively:
So while both paths are theoretically possible at both institutions, you should assume that Amherst sends far more students to med school than into engineering, while HMC sends far more students into engineering than to med school. So in practice, these two schools may not be the best choices if you are truly undecided and want to keep both options open.
There are few LACs that are good for both pre-med and engineering. Swarthmore would be an obvious pick, or Smith if you are female. If you can swim competitivelly at a low Division I level, then Bucknell or Lafayette. If you want to stick to Division III, then maybe consider small DIII universities, like Tufts or Rochester, as well as LACs.
Lots of students want to continue their sport in college, and compete at the DIII level because it is something they love and are good at. I think it is perfectly legitimate to want to swim in college. BUT… I do agree that having it as a driver for where to apply is maybe short sighted. As @Corbett says, neither is ideal for what the OP wants. Honestly, I suspect it would be grueling to keep the needed GPA for med school at Amherst as well (not quite as much as Mudd, but still super challenging – not much time for anything but sport and studying). I also think Swarthmore is a risky choice – again, VERY difficult academically (my kid picked Mudd over Swat, but liked both because she wanted the highest level of academic intensity she could find). I wouldn’t pick a top 5 LAC in general to do a sport and pre-med – stiff competition for the grades you need there.
Harvey Mudd has a core curriculum that covers many of the pre-med course requirements; the remaining ones can be taken as electives, regardless of major. However, the academic intensity is high (regardless of major), and the large core curriculum (including HSA requirements) means that cherry picking courses that you are most likely to get A grades in is more difficult.
In contrast, Amherst has no general education requirements, which means that you can cherry pick courses that you are most likely to get A grades in to boost your GPA for pre-med purposes. But there is no native engineering degree program.
You can do pre-med as an engineering major at many schools, but the high volume of non-overlapping requirements for most types of engineering and pre-med course requirements can make it difficult to fit all of the course work into four academic years of normal course loads. Adding intercollegiate athletic workload makes that even more difficult.
You might wish to consider a small D1 schools that would offer both and provide flexibility like Lehigh or Lafayette. They are very challenging academically, but just a bit less intense than the most difficult schools. There is real value to attending a school where you can change your mind later, should you decide to switch, or even do both.
Also, a bio engineering major would not need many added courses to meet the pre-med requirements.
If you are torn between medicine and engineering, then biomedical engineering seems like a possible fit. You could start in a BioE program to see how it goes. If you liked the engineering part more, you could stay in BioE, or you could switch to a more traditional engineering discipline. If you liked the biomedical part more, you could switch to a traditional pre-medical program.
You would find both biomedical engineering and DIII swimming at at smaller universities like Tufts, Rochester, Case Western, RPI, or WPI. Bucknell would be a LAC option, but they have DI swimming. Tufts competes in NESCAC, the same DIII league as Amherst.
Well, just based on your post here, it sounds like you actually like specific features of Amherst. The only things that seem to attract you to HMC are the fact that you can have an engineering degree and the Claremont Consortium - but Amherst is in the Five College Consortium.
You can also start working right after undergrad from Amherst - you don’t need a graduate degree just because you don’t go into engineering. Most college students do start working right after college, especially from a college like Amherst.
Reading your post, I don’t see any indication that you WANT to be an engineer. If you actually do, then don’t go to Amherst. It’s a fantastic school for everything that it offers, and opens doors to graduate schools, professional schools, Wall Street, and other careers at the level of the Ivies, but it does not offer engineering. If you want to be an engineer, go to Mudd.
You need to make that decision first. The rest will fall into place.
@intparent One of the key reasons to pursue swimming at Amherst and HM is because it’s the coaches who will get him admitted. Otherwise both schools are a reach for just about anyone. Of course, once he’s admmitted and given the swimming thing a fair effort (say, for one year) he could quit.
I would just advise the OP that a promise of support from Coach Nichols at Amherst is worth a heck of a lot more than a promise of support at HM. As you point out, Nichols gets his guys admitted. HM and the other Claremont McKenna colleges have a reputation for over-promising to prospective athletes on occasion — the process of athletic support has been in place much longer and is more established in the NESCAC. And, of the five schools in the consortium, Harvey Mudd is the one LEAST interested in sports and in supporting athletes at admission. If you were truly driven to study Engineering, then I’d encourage you to assume a bit more risk and apply ED to Harvey Mudd. But given your ambivalence, I think you have to factor in the difference in coach support between the two schools (and more generally between the NESCACs and the five colleges of the consortium) and go with the bird-in-the-hand, Amherst. I’d hate to see you lose the nearly certain ED admission at Amherst and then fail to secure admission at HM. After the ED round, you’d be SOL at Amherst. Coach support in the NESCAC works only in the ED round.
If you do decide to apply ED at HM, I’d encourage you to line up support for EDII. Middlebury could help you there. And you’d really like Coach Rueppel.
Good luck!
p.s. You might also grow your short list to include Pomona, CMC, Williams, and Swarthmore.
What is your safety? None of the schools discussed here are safety schools, not even matches, other than you are a recruited athletes. As a premed, you should not go to a school if your stats are not at least top 25% of the entering class. To me, you should work on some thing much lower to survive the premed weed out. Perhaps some thing like your IS public, they should have swimming as recruits.
Getting into a college where your admission is questionable to start with, and adding the pressure of athletics in top of that is not a recipe for getting the necessary grades for me school. Although international student admissions to med school in the US are a whole different kettle of fish that someone else may be able to speak to.
“Getting into a college where your admission is questionable to start with, and adding the pressure of athletics in top of that is not a recipe for getting the necessary grades for me school.”
I’m surprised that an experienced CC poster would make that statement in reference to top LACs, @intparent. Admission to Amherst or HM is “questionable” for virtually everyone. The admission rates at those schools are in the mid-to-low teens, and even extraordinarily well prepared students are rejected by the hundreds every year. Additionally, nearly half of the students at these top LACs are varsity athletes. Are you really suggesting that these talented young people can’t handle sports and a pre-med major? Most would find that proposition laughable – my own son among them.
Now if you’re talking about DI athletics at the Big Ten or SEC level, then you may have a point. But these are D3 programs that work extraordinarily hard to create an environment where student athletes can flourish. And they do – often while juggling pre-med courses.
I agree that admissions to those schools are very selective, and the OP may be as qualified as any other applicant. But SOMETIMES athletic recruits are in the lower end of the applicant pool in terms of test scores and or grades. They are hooked, so can get a slight edge there. If the OP falls in that category, honestly, and wants to get the grades needed for med school, it might not be the best choice to be competing against (1) students with somewhat higher academic qualifications, and (2) students who don’t have the same commitment to a time intensive EC.
This isn’t an exaggeration. My kid worked insanely hard just to pass her classes there. No way could she have stacked a sport on top of it (and her GPA was still not med-school worthy). Her friends who were athletes really struggled to keep up, too. Mudd is a great school. But it is not a great place for pre-meds to start with.
Most schools have some students in premed who don’t do much but study. There is something to be said for going to a slightly easier school if that is you chosen path so you can keep the needed GPA.
@intparent – Yes, that all makes sense. I"m sure there are special cases – even at D3 – where it would be very difficult for a student athlete to juggle their sport plus pre-med (or Engineering). And it doesn’t surprise me that Harvey Mudd might be one of those special cases. It’s exceptionally rigorous. But Williams, Amherst, CMC, Pomona, Middlebury – these are schools where the large pluralities of the students are varsity athletes, and most chose D3 just so that they could find the right balance between sport and school. And, by all accounts, most do that very well.
@intparent, yeah if I go to Mudd I won’t be doing anything pre-med related. I’d be do engineering there. That’s why I need to decide between pursuing medicine or just doing engineering.
@simba9 it’s not an issue per say; I just included it in my post since it’s my “hook” for admission into these selective schools. Both schools in my opinion have a good balance of academics and athletics, and I’m hoping to swim all 4 years in college.
@Corbett thanks for the info. Yeah, I read into that 3-2 engineering program a bit but it doesn’t seem very popular. I’m actually in contact with Swarthmore’s swim coach right now, but it’s not need blind compared to Amherst, so it’d be more expensive. I’ve also heard it’s extremely academically rigorous, which turns me off - if you have any opinions about that, I’d love to hear them.