Bates, Carleton, Colby, Colgate, Hamilton - Best for Neuroscience?

@bookworm, agree that Carleton would be a great choice, but she does t want to go that far away… Yea, she wants to pursue the computational/AI side of Neuro which made Hamilton a good fit as both are strengths there.

That’s great. Nothing against Hamilton, just that my son dated a Carleton grad while in grad school, so met many alum. He went back with her to visit the campus.

Most important is that your DD has great choices, so all a question of what she likes.

DD2 update: so she deposited at Hamilton, but is still holding out for a little while to see if she gets off the waitlist at either Middlebury or Wesleyan.

Question: of the three (Hamilton, Middlebury or Wesleyan) which has the best neuroscience program, understanding that math and comp science could come into the mix as well? Or is it a jump ball so overall fit should matter most?

My bias (as someone in the computing industry) is that I would encourage your daughter to include CS in the mix because of the career opportunities. One area that sits at the intersection of neuroscience and computer science is relatively new field called HCI. Although the CS department at Hamilton is rather small, it turns out that one of their top CS professors (there are only four of them -with two more to be hired, though) is active in this area. He has links to Tufts (via some research he did a few years ago using a technology that Tufts invented) and his daughter-in-law got her Phd in this area at Tufts. She has now joined Hamilton (along with her research funding) to help form a research lab in this area (which is unusual for a LAC). The senior professor is on sabbatical this spring, so he should not be going on sabbatical for a while.

So, if your daughter finds this area interesting, and if her sister will allow her to collaborate with a school which is a competitor in the athletic domain, then Hamilton could offer a small LAC experience with a near direct linkage to a another school that is a leader in the field.

Here are some links to explore:

http://usabilitylab.hamilton.edu/Staff.html
http://hci.cs.tufts.edu/people.html
http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/chi11.hirshfield.pdf
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/2014/101038/

@Mastadon, very helpful as this is definitely her area of focus as she’s not a psychology person.