I want to know these characteristics:
Cutthroat, Competitive, or Laid-Back in Terms of Academics
A lot of partying Vs. Little to no partying
Personal Professor Interaction Vs. Little to no interaction
Preppy Vs. Far from it
Impossible to get in, Extremely hard to get in, Hard to get in, Moderately hard to get in, Easy to get in, Really easy to get in
Great Chemistry/Science Department Vs. Crappy Departments in these areas
Feel safe and at ease around campus Vs. Constantly watching your back
Nice dorms Vs. Crappy dorms
Good food Vs. Bad food
Just want the general perspective of students who go to these schools that I am currently interested in:
Chatham (Definitely Applying)
Temple (Definitely Applying)
Drexel (Interested In)
Pitt Main (Definitely Applying)
Rensselaer (Definitely Applying)
Rochester (Really Interested In)
Richmond (Interested In)
George Washington (Interested In)
Loyola University Maryland (On the fence about)
UConn (On the fence about)
Johns Hopkins (Definitely Applying)
Vanderbilt (Definitely Applying)
Northeastern (Really Interested In)
Yale (Interested In)
UNC-CH (Interested In)
Cornell (Interested In)
Emory (Really Interested In)
Bowdoin (On the fence about)
Harvard (On the fence about)
Northwestern (On the fence about)
UVA (Interested In)
University of Chicago (On the fence about)
Bowdoin appears in “15 Best Value Small Colleges for a Chemistry Degree,” an online article that describes a range of excellent programs (as well as some dubious choices).
With respect to most of the schools you have listed above, URochester would seem to fit your central theme.
As an opinion on your entire list, many of the schools appear suitable only for students with the highest academic credentials. Be sure this applies to you before proceeding further with this group.
I’ll answer your questions based on my experiences at Cornell.
Competitive.
Lots of partying.
I had loads of professor interaction but it’s up to the student to seek it out. I did paid work with profs over the summer, during the school year for credit, and did an undergrad thesis.
Diverse student population. Easy to find your tribe.
Competitive to be accepted.
My chem profs were some of the very best. Super strong science department. We would go to chem lab demos on Friday nights because they were so awesome.
Very safe campus! Not that I would recommend this, but I walked home plenty of times from the library alone at 1 or 2 am.
Loved my dorm but that was many years ago. All freshmen live on North Campus now. Big variety of accommodations to chose from.
@worrymole007 I would suggest you look at the Fiske Guide to Colleges. It has write-ups, based on surveys of current students, of several hundred colleges discussing the sorts of things you’re asking about.
Also, how competitive a school is to get into is information that is widely available. This is research that you can do for yourself. Google a school’s name and “common data set.” Look at the most recent year. Section C will provide admit rates and average GPA’s and SAT/ACT scores for enrolled freshman.
I talk about my experience at UNC, which has been nothing but amazing.
Definitely laid back in terms of competitiveness among students. However, academics in general, especial in sciences like bio and chem, are very hard. UNC has something like a 90% admit rate for med school applicants, but this is partly due to the premed classes being super difficult, causing people who can’t make it to drop. A smart move that some people make is to avoid the super difficult bio/chem majors by doing a major in the school of public health (#2 in the country) --which is generally easier and has smaller class sizes – and also taking the classes for premed.
Social scene is incredible. Lot’s of partying with greek life, house parties, and clubs. However, this is definitely something you can avoid if you want.
Lots of professor interaction, maybe not in large intro bio/chem classes but in upper level classes and the smaller honors classes.
Beautiful campus (you should visit), pretty good dorms, and a very very safe place overall – Chapel Hill is a “bubble” college town with a super low crime rate. Only the frats and the business school are preppy, so not the majority of students. On campus food varies from day to day and is usually decent but not incredible. However, Franklin Street (the main street of Chapel Hill) has tons of really good restaurants.
If you apply, good luck! UNC has a 13% OOS acceptance rate.
University of Rochester is pretty much the kind of school you make it, at least based on what I’ve observed. It’s not a school where they will do a lot of hand-holding, but they also don’t stand in students’ way, either. The flexible curriculum seems almost like a metaphor for the general approach there—find what you want to do and do it. There are opportunities, but the student is in charge of taking advantage of them for the most part.
I characterize UR’s academics as cooperative but rigorous. It’s not unusual later in the semester for students to spend at least one weekend evening studying rather than going out. But if you want a party, I reckon you can find one. Professors are open to students, but they expect the students to approach them first. Science departments are well-respected, and the school itself fairly selective and becoming more so. Like others have said, that’s easy info to look up for more objective measures.
People pretty much dress and act the way they want to; some people are preppy, but there’s no one “style” that seems to predominate. The campus feels safe, but there are off-campus areas that are more sketchy. I’ve never felt ill-at-ease walking around there myself. The dorms and food are fine…but you won’t be living in a palace or eating chef-inspired cuisine for four years if you go there. My daughter doesn’t complain, but, then again, I was never a great cook so she doesn’t have high standards.
Yeah, everything I have heard about Rochester so far has been good besides for the professor sex scandal that has been happening recently. But, that’s not really affecting my view of the university, so…
“But, that’s not really affecting my view of the university, so…” As well it shouldn’t. One, these things happen everywhere. Two, the school is probably very aware of and sensitive to these kinds of issues, and therefore probably they’re for the time being less prevalent there.
“Feel safe and at ease around campus Vs. Constantly watching your back.”
Depending on your tolerance for somewhat grittier urban environments, some due diligence on Chicago, Temple, and JHU might be warranted. The neighborhoods have improved around all of these in recent years. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that you’d “constantly be watching your back.” However, some basic street smarts would be helpful in the immediate environs of these campuses.
Nearly all of these are reaches, especially if you are out of state for the public universities like UNC-CH and UVA.
Depending on your stats, the lesser reaches/targets on your list would be Chatham, Temple, Drexel, Pitt, GW, Loyola Maryland, U Conn, and Emory. JHU, Vandy, Northeastern, Yale, UNC-CH, Cornell,
Bowdoin, Harvard, Northwestern, UVA, and Chicago are reaches for everyone, IMO.
One of my friends visited Temple, and described it as being “Half city, half ghetto”. But, that was her view. I don’t want to base my decision in applying there based off of that. I am planning on visiting Temple and Drexel in November and Pitt in the next few weeks. I visited Chatham yesterday and loved it, especially the campus and tight-knit community vibe of the school. So, I’m not sure if I would like to go to a school with a campus more like Chatham’s or more like Pitt’s. After I visit Pitt soon, hopefully I’ll have a clearer idea. Which of the schools that I mentioned in my original post would you guys consider to be more like Chatham in terms of their campus and which ones have a campus more like Pitt’s? Obviously, Temple and Drexel are more like Pitt.
Here is a tip on good food/bad food, think of the best restaurant you ever ate at and then imagine eating there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for four years…after a couple of months (at most) you’ll hate it.
I concur with @mamaedefamilia’s assessment that “JHU, Vandy, Northeastern, Yale, UNC-CH, Cornell,
Bowdoin, Harvard, Northwestern, UVA, and Chicago are reaches for everyone.” I would look at Part C of the Common Data Set for each of these schools, and see how your statistics compare with the ones listed; that may give you some idea how competitive (or not) you might be for those schools, which may in turn inform your decision on which schools you apply to.
From other posts you have a 25 ACT, 1100 SAT, and a 3.6-3.8 / 4.25 UW/W GPA (with a dip Junior year). W/o a strong hook, imo:
Johns Hopkins (Definitely Applying)
Vanderbilt (Definitely Applying)
Yale (Interested In)
UNC-CH (Interested In)
Cornell (Interested In)
Emory (Really Interested In)
Harvard (On the fence about)
Northwestern (On the fence about)
UVA (Interested In)
are seriously unrealistic.
You may be thinking that
University of Chicago (On the fence about)
Bowdoin (On the fence about)
are better bets b/c they are test-optional & you have good grades- but I think that they are still improbable reaches. Just 12% of accepted UChic applicants had GPAs in your range (83% had higher ones, 5% had lower). At Bowdoin, 80% of admitted students are from the top 10% of their class.
Moreover, imo your list doesn’t really hang together, and your mix of basic, easy to answer for yourself questions* with higher order finishing-touch questions** makes me wonder how much you have thought through what is likely to suit you as an environment. This matters for every student, but for a student with a very recent history of mental health issues it matters even more. This is not something you can outsource or crowd source: you need to focus hard on ‘what kind of environments do I do really well in?’ ‘what kinds of environments make things that are hard for me even harder?’ ‘what resources should be available to make sure that I can get what I need when I need it?’ etc.
eg, difficulty of admission, preppy
*eg, dorms, food, etc.
Suggest you pick up “The Best 384 Colleges” 2019 Edition. Lots of info in there about environment and how students rank them based on factors like party/preppy/social scene/town life (tons of categories), and not just academic rankings.
And based on above post ^^^ pick schools that align best with your stats.