Ok, our DD didn’t get into any of her true stretches, including Bowdoin, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Williams (she was waitlisted at Middlebury and Wesleyan and will take at shot at both, but knows it’s a slim chance).
So, of the five great LAC’s that she was accepted at, which ones (top 2-3) are best for her intended path of neuroscience? She was also accepted at Kenyon and Oberlin, but she doesn’t see them as fits.
Culturally, she’s a small school kid (thus the LAC selections) who is politically liberal (a Bernie kid, but not a crazy activist), socially down the middle (not preppy at all, but not alternative either), and was a student athlete in HS and will stay active with intramural sports, or club if they have it, in college.
Go to their websites… look at their course offerings. It is unlikely neuroscience will be its own separate major at a small LAC, so look in biology and psychology departments.
Thanks. Yes, neuroscience is a major at each of these colleges, but as they are much smaller than a research university, which has its pluses and minuses, I was interested in hearing feedback as to which are known as being stronger in the STEM fields.
My suggestion would be to look at the faculty bios closely. Many neuroscience departments at small schools are staffed by professors with degrees in biology and psychology, and not neuroscience. Whether this matters depends on your D’s interests and goals. I’d also look into student research. My D looked at most of these programs and concluded that Oberlin had the strongest department.
@Hellofagal, thx for reminding me of that thread. I dug into Hamilton’s major distribution data via the Common Data Set as I knew the math # was way off.
Hamilton actually has a large % as well at 28.17%:
Computer Science - 2.07%
Biological Sciences - 11.38%
Math - 8.17%
Physical Sciences - 6.55%
I’ll need to do the same at the other choices as that’s certainly one indicator.
That said, qualitative insight is appreciated as well.
Carleton would be an excellent LAC for STEM. However, unlike some of their peers, they have yet to produce, as far as I know, a Nobel laureate or an Apker recipient.
Colgate and Hamilton appear to be “wired” campuses, for whatever implications this may have for technological innovation:
@Chembiodad: The STEM students I’ve overlapped with from Carleton were excellent and, in my opinion, would have fallen among the top compared to any students nationally. The best at Hamilton would also be comparably very, very good.
Regarding the broader topic, beyond prominence in STEM, I’d consider – even for a STEM student – curricular balance among sciences and math, fine arts and humanities and social sciences. Not incidentally, your daughter should like the actual science building in which she will be spending a lot of time.