<p>Even though BU and Dickinson seem like complete opposites since Dickinson is a liberal arts school, they have been my two first choices throughout the college admissions process. I’ve been accepted to both with the same financial award- $20k/year with the presidential scholarship at BU and $20k/year with the John Dickinson scholarship at Dickinson. I did not receive any need-based aid.</p>
<p>BU is slightly more expensive than Dickinson (by a few thousand dollars), but I feel like there could be more opportunities for research and internships in Boston. Even with the scholarships, my family will have to struggle to pay the remaining cost–is BU worth it for its location? I’d be happy at either school, and I need to keep grad school costs in mind.</p>
<p>Congrats on your acceptances and awards! Boston is a great place for science. At BU alone, you can do research with a professor either on the main campus in biology or you can perhaps find something at the BU med school. And then in addition to that, there are a lot of biotechs, pharmaceutical companies, other universities, and hospitals where you could do an internship. Boston is well-known for health care and life science.</p>
<p>But you also might get a lot of great experience from working in a lab at Dickinson. You could also maybe do just a summer internship in the Boston area or somewhere else in the country. I think either place would be a great choice.</p>
<p>Also, are you looking to do a neuroscience PhD eventually? If so, your grad school will be pretty much paid for (tuition plus stipend for living expenses) and will not be huge. If you end up in an expensive city like New York, San Francisco, or Boston, you may have to take out some supplemental loans for rent. If you plan to go to med school, well then your costs will be significantly higher, because med school won’t offer the tuition waivers and stipends.</p>
<p>I’m also looking to do neuroscience at university. I’m torn between BU (my FA package covers everything), UMich (OOS, still waiting for FA), UPitt (OOS, still waiting for FA) and UWisconsin-Madison (OOS, still waiting for FA). I don’t know which one to choose from! I’ll be doing pre-med. Any help? :)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend going to BU as premed. For BIO 108 there average grade in the class is curved to a C+ so essentially 2/3 at least of the BU premed students aren’t getting high enough grades to be able to get into med school with. Chem 101 and 102 are also a lot of work and the workload for that class tends to consume about 15 hours a week and more for a test week. In addition to have a letter written by the BU preprofessional committee for med school you need a 3.5 which is pretty hard to do at BU.</p>