Better for a Pre-med: Harvard or Stanford?

<p>I'm a pre-med and am deciding between Harvard and Stanford for college. Money is not a factor - both are offering the same financial aid. I visited Harvard last weekend and loved it, and in a couple days, I'll be visiting Stanford. I'm pretty sure I'll like Stanford as well since I love CA in general. I'm nervous that I'll end up loving both schools and not knowing what to do. </p>

<p>Is one better than the other for a pre-med or are they pretty much equal? Which one has better advising/opportunities/rate of students getting accepted to med school?</p>

<p>Where are you from?</p>

<p>the midwest - so either school would be a big change in terms of location</p>

<p>For now wait and see how the visits go. The differences will be very small relative to any environmental differences.</p>

<p>Neither school has a particularly strong advising team, but Harvard’s is less bad than Stanford’s.</p>

<p>If you change your mind about medicine, you might hit the job market. Both schools do excellently there, although Harvard probably does somewhat better on Wall Street while Stanford does (obviously) better in Silicon Valley.</p>

<p>Hmm alright - well another thing is that I’ll have to make my decision while I’m at Stanford since the Admit Weekend is the day before the deadline the respond. There won’t be any time at home to reflect - which is unfortunate. Oh but do you think Stanford is better at biology for undergrads than Harvard?</p>

<p>The strength of any particular department doesn’t matter at the undergraduate level. (“Strength” is usually measured by things like how influential the papers written by a school’s faculty are, which just doesn’t matter in the least for an undergrad.) Both schools are fine.</p>

<p>They are equal, go for fit or geography at the very least.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t quite call them equal, but they’re certainly very close.</p>

<p>oh - so which one do you think is better? and why?</p>

<p>All the thoughts I have (there aren’t many) were expressed in #4.</p>

<p>Agree with bdm. Wait until you visit The Farm. Some love it, others don’t. One’s urban, one is not.</p>