<p>What are the best liberal arts colleges for biology? By "best" I mean that it should have several research opportunities and be well-known for getting students into good schools after undergrad. I want to go on to medical school or graduate school. I am looking for a school that has less than 3,000 students, is fairly liberal, and has many research opportunities. Here are a few of my stats: </p>
<p>GPA: 3.94 UW and 4.17 W
Rank: 3 of 490
SAT: 2350
ECs: pretty good, including current employment as a research intern in a biomed lab</p>
<p>Any of the top 20 or so LACs could work, you seem to have the stats, they all have decent biology programs, it’s more a matter of finding the best fit for you.</p>
<p>However, biology is a rather broad field; if you have specific subarea interests, you may want to check the faculty rosters and junior/senior level course offerings to see if the subareas of your interest are well represented.</p>
<p>Pre-med is common enough that the pre-med course work should be readily available (most or all of it is common frosh/soph level general biology, general chemistry, general physics, organic chemistry, calculus, statistics, psychology, sociology, English composition).</p>
<p>I’m interested in microbiology and pathology, although these are rarely offered as majors at LACs. Many of my lab mentors who are microbiologists say that taking general cell biology at the undergraduate level is good enough, and then I should “specialize” in grad school. So I would prefer a biology program that is focused on cell biology, not organismal biology. :)</p>
<p>University of Richmond has been great for my 2 daughters majoring in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology. DD1 is a Junior and has been doing research in a lab since freshman year and also paid summer internships. UR hosts research symposiums for students where they get experience presenting. </p>
<p>Look at Swarthmore and Haverford. Both good programs, plus their cross-registration agreement with U Penn might be advantageous for course selection and research. </p>
<p>Agree on Swarthmore and Haverford. Liberal arts colleges are great in the biology classes that they offer, but the course selection is going to be limited because of the size of the schools. Swat and Haverford get around that by allowing you to take courses elsewhere that they don’t offer. Amherst provides the same advantage as part of the 5 college consortium in Mass, as do Pomona and Harvey Mudd as part of the Claremont Colleges. Other LACs might have similar arrangements, but I’m not sure which ones. </p>
And MANY more besides. Allegheny, Hope, and Rhodes are just a few examples of less selective LACs with great biology programs. </p>
<p>This is really a very impractical way of creating a good college list. The list of colleges with viable biology programs is simply much too long.</p>
<p>
This. Start with location, campus setting (rural/suburban/urban), finances/cost, and other factors you deem personally important. </p>
<p>^^ Definitely Reed. Bio is like the most popular major here, and 12-15 Reed grads get their PhDs in biology every year.</p>
<p>In terms of med school though, I think it would serve you well to avoid schools like Reed that aren’t very generous in terms of grading. Going to med school isn’t big here, but Reed biology is superb and if you are truly passionate about it, getting into med school is still fully possible.</p>
<h1>10 <em>might</em> be a list of degree recipients divided by everyone graduating from an institution, regardless of their major, aptitude, interest, and alternative opportunities. Larger schools often have wider ranges of all of these, hence are guaranteed to have smaller proportions for this reason alone. But the data shows they produce more future life sciences Phds, derived obviously from the subset of their populations that are so qualified and disposed.</h1>
<p>IMO it’s ok to post lists as a pecentage. But if you do so you should say that, because it isn’t obvious. And identify the denominator specifically (Biology majors at the school? Or just anybody in the whole place!). Lest you mislead.</p>
<h1>10 is biology majors to PHD numbers and is a ratio (ie., a very large school would produce more students, but does it produce more students in PHD programs in relation to the number of students enrolled in a biology program?)</h1>
<p>If a school has 45,000 students, you wouldn’t expect the same number as from a school that has 2,300.
Producing 10 PHDs for 25 majors is better than producing 20 PHDs for 70 majors… even if the raw number is double. It reflects the composition of the student body and their goals, but also affects those.</p>
<p>That’s fine, if it’s a ratio, but #10 didn’t say it was a ratio.In fact, the top ten schools where future Life sciences PhDs got their start are those I identified in # 12, not #10s list.</p>
<p>Moreover, is the denominator really biology majors, as you claim?</p>
<p>Or rather is it # degrees an institution awards in ALL fields? Because usually the lists I see use the latter, not the former. Which obviously pollutes whatever information value such list otherwise might have, since some institutions are far more diverse than others.</p>
<p>If something is listed as a percentage, the identity of the denominator should be explicitly stated. Because this may affect how one views the information.
Without stating it, there is room for ambiguity. I don’t think even you or I know for sure what #10s denominator is!</p>
<p>I’m not saying the information shouldn’t be presented or doesn;t have some value. But just that people should know what is being presented, so they can decide how much credence to give it.</p>
<p>monydad: HS students typically don’t care about the source and many parents know that list, but it’s from the NSF
No,this ranking is for biology/life science only. There are lists for most PHD specialties, with a specific focus on science (it’s from the National Science Foundation after all). The full title, that Brownparent didn’t give as most HS kids don’t care, is “Undergraduate origins of PHDs- percentage ranking of PHDs, by academic field, conferred upon graduates of listed institutions”.
Another reference is for all sciences.
<a href=“Top 50 Schools That Produce Science PhDs - CBS News”>http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-50-schools-that-produce-science-phds/</a>
These schools all have excellent biology programs AND a student body that is more research-oriented than average, with learning conditions that make it easy to conduct research as an undergraduate and excellent graduate advising.
Note that Brownparent did say it was a good place to START so clearly combining your list and the NSF list + the “top 50” list would elicit some institutions OP could look into, since s/he has stats that let the choice pretty open. This way, OP can start thinking about fit, which in his/her case is going to be paramount, along with costs, which are essential for all but the luckiest applicants.</p>
<p>Your link identifies the denominator as “per capita”. NOT per capita biology majors.
In MY NSF link in #12 above there is a similar chart to #10, Table 4, with some different ordering of schools. Possibly due to data from different years. It explicitly states that the denominator is everybody that graduated from the school, in any major. ie NOT just biology majors.</p>
<p>To quote:
“The “institutional-yield ratio” for a baccalaureate-origin institution for a given year is expressed as the number of S&E doctorate recipients per 100 bachelor’s degrees awarded in ALL FIELDS* 9 years earlier”
(* caps are mine)</p>
<p>Perhaps you can find a specific link to some different nsf data that explicitly states the the denominator is just biology majors, and not “degrees awarded in ALL FIELDS”??
.</p>
<p>A long time ago, an LAC advocate posted a per capita table like this for engineering only. Then he immediately pulled it. Because, lo and behold, a bunch of schools of not that high repute but with the word “tech” in their name appeared higher in that ranking than places like Stanford. Even the most cursory analysis would indicate that this had something to do with the fact that those schools offered very little but engineering, whereas Stanford grads pursued a wider range of majors and were offered a wide range of other opportunities. Stanford engineers who want it are not impeded from pursuing a Phd in engineering merely because lots of other people who are also studying there want to go to law school, and also employers are throwing lucrative tech startup jobs at them.</p>