<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm an international and I'm going to take premed. Both schools have about the same difficulty in getting a high GPA. I guess I will make my final decision on reputation, since this is personally importannt for me. Anyone willing to share their knowledge?</p>
<p>I also have Macalester and Baylor, but I think Brandeis and Davidson dominate in academics and reputation...</p>
<p>dash</p>
<p>P.S
I will be happy to study in any of these colleges so please help me out here! :)</p>
<p>I would say that Davidson has the better reputation, but also I am located in North Carolina so that may skew my perception. However, I do firmly believe as an academic institute Davidson is superior (plus they should have a pretty nasty basketball team next year :) )</p>
<p>I would say Davidson may be considered a little stronger, although not by enough to base your decision on this.</p>
<p>Davidson by a small margin. Both socially conservative, but I think that Brandeis is more political and more liberal politically.</p>
<p>I would say that Brandeis is internationally more recognized because it's in new england. Am I correct?</p>
<p>Brandeis is famous, because it is the largest secular Jewish university in the US (maybe the only one). If you like or at least feel comfortable in a Jewish environment, I would choose it. The name recognition and location are better than Davidson's. The location is far better, near Boston. Davidson is great academically, but it is for people who want a liberal arts college atmosphere. Since you are an international, being near Boston may be a lot better for you. You probably want opportunities to visit big cities, and to easily travel around the US.</p>
<p>Why does everyone always assume that anyone international would like an urban environment better than a rural one?</p>
<p>DASH is korean and you can count the asians at Davidson on one hand with fingers left over and he has stated in other threads that being around other asians is important to him as well as a cosmopolitian atmosphere. As big a fan of Davidson as I am, and soon to be a alumnus, for DASH, I would recommend Brandeis, I think he would be happier there.</p>
<p>I love Davidson. Like a Southern version of Amherst or Swarthmore.</p>
<p>hubbell:</p>
<p>On the other hand, Davidson is a much better undergrad school than Brandeis, IMO...thanks in large part to double the per student endowment.</p>
<p>That's why asking strangers on CC which college to choose is so pointless. It's all about listing your own priorities...which are going to be different than anyone else's priorities. For example, Davidson's lack of diversity would be a negative for me. However, its outstanding undergrad education might well trump that negative, depending on my choices.</p>
<p>Macalaster might be a serious contender. It has the same percentage of Asian Americans as Brandeis (7%), a very large international enrollment, and an even bigger per student endowment than Davidson.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why does everyone always assume that anyone international would like an urban environment better than a rural one?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think there are several reasons:</p>
<p>a) Logistics of arranging international air travel and the likelihood of not having a car on campus. Thus, urban transportation and proximity to international airports is a plus. Also consider the ease of travel to other places of interest in the United States, especially since going home for Thanksgiving, or even Winter break, may not be feasible.</p>
<p>b) Larger cities are more likely than Podunkville to have ethnic neighborhoods and some ability to connect with a comfortable ethic culture, should the student desire that.</p>
<p>c) Most, but certainly not all, of the locations sending international students to the US these day are major, major urban areas. Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, etc. Many of these are among the largest urban areas on the planet.</p>
<p>Guys,</p>
<p>I really don't care about diversity, because I'm sure every good colleges have at least 1 korean :)
I've been in a Turkish privated school, and I was the only Korean.. trust me I have overcome a lot of cultural barriers. The reason I would like to go to Brandeis is because it's in Boston! After watching all those American dramas, it was a wish for me to visit there sometime (especially seeing how delicious the pizzas looked!!). I guess I have an opportunity now...</p>
<p>However, I've heard that Davidson girls are HOT. I've seen some of them and they are incredible. Brandeis... not soo good looking overall. Plus Davidson has great athletics, and I myself am pretty active in sports. But I bet I will be totally doomed if I don't study like a nerd in Uni now... Enough messing around in highschool, there's more after undergrad and I need to draw the map realistically as possible.</p>
<p>in the northeast, brandeis is definitely more known.</p>
<p>
Good grief, you'd be in Boston. Considering the sheer number of schools in the area, I should think you'd have plenty of options.</p>
<p>In any case, with over 1.5 million people in the metro area, Davidson is hardly rural.</p>
<p>Davidson is far and away the better school and stands out as the South's premier liberal arts college while Brandeis is lost in the Boston backwaters. It's a fine school, but runs well behind its immediate local competition. By the way, there are several other largely Jewish schools in this country, including Yeshiva in New York.</p>
<p>Yeah, but you pretty much have to be Jewish if you want to go to Yeshiva. For Brandeis it doesnt matter that much, as long as you like Jewish people.</p>
<p>You seem very concerned with Med School. Brandeis ranked either 38th or 39th in the Wall Street Journal Top Feeder School rankings, while Davidson didn't even make the cut (the top 50 schools were listed). For a preprofessional student such as yourselfl, Brandeis seems to be a great fit.</p>
<p>That should make things a bit more balanced.</p>
<p>The methodology used by the Wall Street Journal was a total joke. It only looked at a handul of professional schools, concentrated in the northeast. It only looked at ONE year of data. The whole survey was essentially asking, where do students at prof schools in the northeast come from? The northeast, duh!</p>
<p>Davidson is known as a pre-professional, and especially pre-med, factory. It is one of the schools where sons and daughers of lawyers and doctors go to college to become lawyers and doctors.</p>
<p>Going to college in Boston is a legitimate reason for choosing Brandeis over Davidson or Macalaster. Academics and/or pre-med preparation is not.</p>
<p>Davidson, Brandeis, Macalester, and Baylor? That is one bizarre combination.</p>
<p>For premed - Davidson-Brandeis-Baylor-Macalester</p>
<p>For welcoming of internationals - Macalester-Brandeis-Davidson-Baylor</p>
<p>Overall, I would say Brandeis, but that's just my opinion.</p>
<p>interesteddad - firstly, I'd just like to establish that the top professional schools are actually in the norteast. Sorry, but that's just true. I didn't know that UChicago and Michigan were in the northeast (both featured among the elite professional schools "concentrated in the northeast"). Why are UM and UVA on the feeder list? Why is Emory (Southern) so high on the list? What's Duke doing there? What about Caltech, Stanford, and UCB (I don't recall if UCLA made the cut, though I know for a fact it is highly rated on the publics list)? UChicago and Northwestern are both high on the list as well. It appears as though the whole northeastern bias argument of yours is shot, because there is geographic diversity on that list. Moreover, did you ever consider that the reason for there being so many northeastern schools on the feeder list is that these are the top schools in the country? Most believe that they are. I mean you have the Ivies, MIT, most of the top LACs (Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Swathmore, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Trinity, Vassar, etc.), and others (eg. Carnegie Mellon, NYU, Notre Dame, Tufts, Brandeis).</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong, Davidson is a great school. The only thing is that the top professional schools are in the Northeast (with some exceptions: UCB, UM, UVA, UChicago, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Emory --- several of which are featured in the WSJ assessment of top schools), and Davidson falls short of Brandeis in getting its students into these schools.</p>