<p>Don't worry, I was referring to bball.</p>
<p>Yeah I agree, you can't just use greater than signs when comparing schools, it's all 'bout personal fit. Perception is reality!</p>
<p>As a transfer I got into Harvard, Brown, Duke, Dartmouth. I chose Dartmouth and never looked back. These are all awesome schools, choose on where you want to be. I have NEVER ever regretted my decision for a second.</p>
<p>med schools definitely take into account the difficulty of your curriculum (how many people get A's in a particular class) when considering GPA. For example, the orgo class at Princeton is notoriously hard. A "C" can represent perfectly good work and med schools, of course, know this</p>
<p>they can also identify a GUT. our pre-med advisor advised against a certain russian lit class at brown because it was a notorious GUT</p>
<p>I've finally made my decision. I've decided to go to Cornell. Thanks everybody for their opinions and thoughts. After much consideration, I realized that both Brown and Cornell are absolutely amazing schools, but Cornell's biomedical research department won me over. It will give me the chance to continue my summer research during the year. Again, I'm grateful for everyone's input, thank you so much!</p>
<p>I dont think if you want to be a doctor, that the department will really have any impact on your ability to get into med school. There will be plenty of opportunities at Brown. Look how when you ask the question on the brown board people talk about quality of life and how amazing the experience is, Cornell its only about academics. In the end the brown kids do just as well if not better, but love it while they are there too. That's not to say Cornell can't be an awesome time, I have personally found brown to be a much more welcoming environment.</p>
<p>I've spent a few years on an Ivy medical school admissions committee and so:</p>
<p>Harvard retains a bit of a cache over all other schools, probably because everyone assumes something great must be going on if the person got in. At the same time, it's only a small amount of aditional cache and will certainly not be enough to garner an acceptance.</p>
<p>All of the other top 25 schools have about equal standing. Yale or Princeton might have a bit more than Duke or Brown, but it is so small that it makes no real difference. As others have noted, however, if you hate cities, you'll hate Columbia and Penn, and your grades will likely suffer. Similarly, if you hate rural areas, you'll do better to avoid Cornell or Dartmouth. And if you find liberal politics wearing, avoid Brown or Wesleyan. Etc.... By the way, if you look at the roster for top med schools, you'll notice plenty of people from state schools and second tier private schools, especially when you leave the east coast.</p>
<p>By the way, admissions committees are made up of people who don't keep up with the latest gossip on campus. I never knew which organic courses were the hardest, for example, and would take it with a big grain of salt if someone told me that Princeton's was particularly hard. While Princeton's is probably harder than a community college's, I doubt if it's harder than the one that's taught at Duke or Hopkins. Similarly, no one would know if a Russian lit class were notoriously easy. You will hear different things from different people, but an A in a gut is better than a C in a very tough class. A transcript packed with A's is hard to argue with. If the interviewer doesn't like you, he/she might mention that the classes looked easy, whereas if he/she likes you, course selection won't be mentioned. And, if you take a bunch of courses that are extremely hard and you get a 2.7 gpa, you just won't get interviewed. This goes even for organic. If you take it at the local U. over the summer and make an A, and you do well on your MCAT, then most interviewers won't even flinch (again, unless they don't like you). And that's true even if you obviously dodged the Ivy organic because you know you're weak at chemistry. Beware med school advisors who say that you should take all of the hardest courses at your own school. That person may well have mixed allegiances and a mandate to scare off below average science students from applying. You job is to have fun in college but truly navigate your own course, and a lot of that is compiling good enough grades to get an interview. </p>
<p>By the way, the easiest class I ever took in college was stats. I'm good in math and made an A+ on every test. My friends in the class struggled and many made C's. It was considered hard but not by me. The other best grade I made in college was a psychoanalytic literature and film class, where I made one of two A's in a class of 70; it was very hard, but I loved the material. Meanwhile, I made a C+ in organic chem one semester despite working quite hard; I'd picked that particular teacher because my hallmate said he (the teacher) was the best but hadn't mentioned that he (my friend) was on track to finish first at my college and had just finished a year's worth of organic without missing a point (while the mean on each test averaged around 55). Point being: retain skepticism when anyone tells you a class is easy since the grading and teacher and the person's individual talent will vary. Take what you most like and certainly don't shy away from something that has a reputation for being too easy...</p>
<p>whaaa? Cornell is clearly the choice if you want to do research that will get noticed by top M-schools, who are looking for more than another 3.8 Bio major. If you are transferring in, and can get into low-level grad courses at Cornell, and get a rec from a top professor, that will be worth more than another .1/.2 GPA and all the attractions of Providence RI or Hanover NH. btw, Ithaca is a classic college town, 30K students between Cornell and Ithaca Col, all kinds of cultural stuff going on. </p>
<p>And you will be in great shape from walking up and down the hill every day!</p>
<p>You can do research at any top school. A Dartmouth/ Brown prof is more likely to let you do it than a Cornell one though.</p>
<p>hey kipling, just out of curiosity, what school are you in now?</p>
<p>about Cornell. Please refrain from your constant and unsubstantiated dissing of Cornell... Cornell people are happy, have a strong sense of community and love their fair alma mater just as much as Dartmouth and Brown. I have no problem with you pointing out the strengths of Brown, Dartmouth, or any other school, but your incessant speculation about supposed weaknesses of the Cornell experience have really begun to get on my nerves. I think Brown and Dartmouth are fabulous schools, but I also KNOW that Cornell is a spectacular place to get an education because I actually went there.</p>
<p>As for undergraduate research it is a HALLMARK of Cornell's offerings. For more info, see here:</p>
<p>and I quote:</p>
<p>"All professors at Cornell regularly guide undergraduates in research projects. They are all internationally recognized leaders in their fields of study"</p>
<p>I was a history major and did a research project in underwater archeology for credit. Many, many research projects go unfilled because there are so many offerings.</p>
<p>Wharf</p>
<p>don't expect to many people to cheer for Cornell on a Brown thread....</p>
<p>Carl Sagan and Hans Bethe taught at Cornell...w00t!!!</p>
<p>Blythe89,</p>
<p>I completely agree with you and would never expect to see a lot of Cornell cheering here on the Brown Board. (Brown is AWESOME by the way, but you knew that already). What I do object to is baseless Cornell bashing particularly by a third party (i.e. non-Brown stakeholder). Seems like said third party likes to surf around CC and take potshots at our humble university while promoting a certain college in New Hampshire. As you can tell it started to bug me and I couldn't let it slide.</p>
<p>Wharf</p>
<p>Re. Brown v. Cornell:</p>
<p>the narcissism of small differences...</p>
<p>what he said...consider yourself a success so far if you have this choice to make.</p>
<p>Don't sweat it. Slipper is always bashing Cornell. You just have to get used to it. He/She does it on almost on every thread about Cornell. I don't know what the beef is that slipper has against Cornell. Maybe they rejected Slipper back in the day. Who knows. It's amazing that a person who has already graduated college has nothing better to do than to come on this board and bash Cornell. Is time to move on.</p>
<p>i agree....about the research thing..i am a presidential research scholar, i have research at my fingertips if i want it, the problem is that i am not sure if i really want to do research. I have been invited to so many confierences, fellowship conferences meetings, grad fairs through this Cornell tradition program, so idk what he is talking about research at cornell. There is by far more cutting edge research going on at cornell than dartmouth and brown combined.</p>
<p>I actually really don't bash Cornell at all, if I did it was only in regards to it being less selective than the other Ivies. At Dartmouth or Brown research is more accessible, as are professors, etc. They have relatively large endowments to spend on fewer students. Its the difference between LACish schools and big research ones. Also Brown and Dartmouth are much tighter in terms of community, they have far fewer schools and are much smaller. The focus is on the undergrad as opposed to grad. Some people prefer the bigger campus and top grad research, others prefer a more intimate environment with the focus being on undergrads. None is a wrong choice, both are top schools. Cornell does have tough grade deflation, which is a legitimate issue.</p>
<p>well...u can go take a look at the median GPA for any class at cornell, and you will find that most of the humanity classes even intro ones except for econ have B+ median GPAs, which is around a 3.3, and the upper-level ones sometimes are A-.</p>