Can I be happy without humanities?

College Search & Selection
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<p>

Not particularly, no. My boyfriend majored in biology at a very good (but not “elite”) LAC – he got a fantastic education, had plenty of great research experience under his belt by graduation, and had his pick of several excellent grad programs. He never regretted his decision in the slightest. He is far from unusual; science students at LACs do extremely well every year in winning NSF and Goldwater scholarships and getting into good PhD programs. You would be perfectly fine at most of the top liberal arts colleges, especially in a program like biology, which tends to be both popular and strong at most decent colleges these days. </p>

<p>As for Stanford, it is certainly a good place to combine the sciences and humanities, but it is not unusual or notable in that respect. Brown’s open curriculum is the most amenable to such a combination, but places like Penn, Yale, WUStL, and many others encourage interdisciplinary studies. I doubled majored in the sciences and humanities at Duke and found it both enjoyable and rewarding.</p>

<p>BeanTownGirl is correct. Your list is composed almost entirely of highly selective colleges at this point. You should spend at least as much time (and arguably more) picking out safeties. Each April students come on CC to complain about their rejections from top-notch colleges and how they don’t want to attend their safeties…don’t be one of those students.</p>

<p>Here’s a possible way of organizing a list:
[ul][li]Reach universities (1-2): MIT. Possibly JHU (very strong molecular bio and humanities, good dance through Goucher) or a university with similar strengths (e.g. Cornell, Duke, Emory, WUStL). Dartmouth is about as LAC-like as a top university gets, though it does have PhD students in the sciences.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Reach LACs (2): Pomona + another (Haverford? Carleton? Wesleyan? Middlebury?)</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Matches (3): Kenyon on your list could work, but Oberlin is larger and fits your interests like a glove. Some of the great but not insanely selective universities (e.g. Rochester, Brandeis, Wake Forest, and U Miami) and liberal arts colleges (e.g. Franklin & Marshall, Bucknell, and Conn College) would fall into this category. Assuming you’re female, also check out Smith.</p>[/li]
<p>[*]Safeties (2): A SUNY/CUNY + any other school you can get into, can afford, and are totally okay with attending (possibly a [guaranteed</a> merit aid college](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html]guaranteed”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html))[/ul]</p>

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<p>While Hopkins is known for premed, it also has top-notch hume/lit programs. But it too is extremely competitive, particularly in the sciences. Suggest you drop it.</p>

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<p>Nope. I went to a small LAC and I’m at Columbia now for a PhD. Professors at small LACs do research, too, especially at top LACs like Pomona and Barnard. The other thing is that since LACs don’t have grad students, you often do more intensive tasks as an undergrad: LAC professors are required to show how they would use undergrads in their research before they get hired. In my Ivy lab the undergrad research assistants (typically juniors) start off doing lit searches and mundane tasks; at my LAC I started off (as a sophomore) analyzing data and helping my mentor pilot a study. Of course they aren’t doing world-class research like at MIT, but the truth is, the majority of times undergrad students don’t really get to participate as fully in those world-class projects. The top professors can attract top postdocs and grad students, and they do the majority of the work; most likely, you will be directly mentored by one of them instead of the professor himself.</p>

<p>The other thing is that if you attend an LAC that is in a city with other universities, you can have the best of both worlds. I went to a small LAC in Atlanta, and in addition to doing research with professors at my own LAC a lot of my peers did research with professors at Emory, Georgia Tech and Georgia State, as well as some hospitals in the area. There are also summer research programs at large universities, which give you a chance to get a taste of that world-class stuff.</p>

<p>I am of course biased because I loved, and believe in, LAC education - I had small classes, close relationships with my professors, and an intimate campus environment that felt like a family.</p>

<p>Also keep in mind that since you said you love science and the humanities, the job of a liberal arts college is to integrate the fields. Liberal arts education is centered on the belief that the liberal arts fields are intertwined and inextricable from one another, and a well-rounded education produces better scholars in all fields. It’s really the perfect place for a scientist who loves English and history, too, as it encourages that kind of exploration. If you like Pomona, check out other top LACs - Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Haverford, Carleton, Bowdoin, etc. Although they are small LACs, professors there are expected to keep up a competitive research portfolio and win grants and awards. It seems like you might me a young woman with the interest of Barnard - obviously Barnard is a great choice because of the proximity of Columbia, a large research university. But also consider places like Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Wellesley. Wellesley has the obvious advantage of being a SLAC while still being close enough to Harvard and MIT that you could get involved in research there simply by hopping a bus. Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore are also relatively close to Penn, and have a relationship with Penn, so you can go there for research. But all of those schools have great researchers in their own right who are itching to teach you how to do research and get you into grad school!</p>

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<p>You don’t have to go to a LAC to get a liberal arts education…</p>

<p>However, as noted, Barnard is a great way for a female student to get the benefits of a LAC with the very convenient access to an adjacent research university to avoid the usual limitations that LACs have. Not all cross-registration situations are as convenient.</p>

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<p>Here are per-capita rates of PhD completions in 2006-2010 for biology/life science majors only from several LACs and research universities:</p>

<p>Institution …5 yr. BioPhDs …Est. Annual BioGrads …Est.PerCapita
Carleton College… 79…43…37%
Reed College…62…35…35%
Swarthmore College…65…48…27%
Harvard University…222…202… …22%
Cornell University…412…432…19%
Berkeley…477…971…10%
Michigan…228…534…9%</p>

<p>Sources & Calculation Methods</p>

<p>Column 2 contains NSF-compiled numbers of PhD completions in 2006-10 for the biological sciences (<a href=“https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/[/url]”>https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

<p>Column 3, for all but Reed College, is calculated from the percentage of degrees conferred in “biological/life sciences” shown in a recent Common Data Set for each school (Section J), multiplied by the total number of undergraduate degrees conferred (as reported in individual college announcements). For Reed College, “35” is the actual number of biology degrees conferred in 2011-12 according to [REED</a> COLLEGE BACCALAUREATE DEGREES BY DEPARTMENT](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/gradbydept.html]REED”>Baccalaureate Degrees by Department - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>

<p>Column 4 shows the 5-year number of BioPhDs divided by 5 times the estimated annual number of BioGrads.</p>

<p>These numbers will of course fluctuate from year to year. However, if this small slice of data is any indication, the comparatively high PhD production rates of LACs would not be attributable to their lack of pre-professional majors (since it’s a head-to-head comparison only of biology majors). It does appear that biology majors tend to have much higher rates of PhD completions than the overall averages.</p>

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<p>Probably because they do not have a lot of choices. Major-specific job prospects for biology at the bachelor’s degree level are poor.</p>

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<p>I just wanted to interject that I am not only looking specifically at pure Biology programs. I also like engineering, chemistry, physics, and computer science. However, in the end, I would like to go to a grad program that at the very least emphasizes the use of these disciplines within Biology. (Biochemistry/Biophysics and Computational Biology are the bomb!)</p>

<p>However, I do want Biology to be the main focus of my undergraduate and graduate education.</p>

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<p>^^ I don’t see why prospects for terminal biology majors would be any worse than the prospects for many other liberal arts majors. Consider the payscale data. Terminal undergraduate biology degrees command the same average starting salaries as terminal undergraduate marketing degrees (and higher salaries than degrees in history, philosophy, english, linguistics, sociology, anthro, classics, etc.) Terminal undergraduate biochemistry degrees get higher average starting salaries than plain old biology degrees (and higher than terminal undergraduate degrees in government, architecture, business, IR, or hotel management). </p>

<p>What may be going on is that the incremental value of a graduate degree in life sciences is greater than the incremental value of graduate degrees in many other arts & science fields. Over the same 5-year period (2006-2010), graduates of Carleton, Reed, and Swarthmore altogether earned 206 PhDs in biological sciences, compared to only 70 in history.</p>

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<p>To be honest, I don’t really care about getting rich. If I could go to school for the rest of my life I would. I am even considering getting an MD/Phd, but it really depends on my GPA and such when I am in college (I would never only want an MD though…).
I personally value the humanities as well as sciences, regardless of pay or what not.</p>

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<p>Check out what Wesleyan University has to offer in bioinformatics.
[Integrative</a> Genomics Sciences pathway (IGS), Informatics and Modeling - Wesleyan University](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/imcp/igs.html]Integrative”>Integrative Genomics Sciences pathway (IGS), Informatics and Modeling - Wesleyan University)</p>

<p>Wesleyan is a little larger than the average LAC. It has one of the highest levels of annual research expenditures of any LAC. Wikipedia describes it as “the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and sciences, also provides graduate research in many academic disciplines, and grants PhD degrees primarily in the sciences and mathematics.”
([Wesleyan</a> University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_University]Wesleyan”>Wesleyan University - Wikipedia))</p>

<p>Wesleyan is very artsy, too. It has strong programs in film studies and world music (ethnomusicology).
<a href=“https://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/ccp/student-and-alumni-musicians-bring-wesleyan-wave-to-the-national-scene[/url]”>https://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/ccp/student-and-alumni-musicians-bring-wesleyan-wave-to-the-national-scene&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I think that you strongly consider Wellesley and Wesleyan. Both would enable you to combine top-notch humanities with the sciences. Wellesley has cross-registration with MIT, which would enable you to actually take courses there if you wish. Wesleyan has the strengths mentioned above.</p>

<p>Pomona is another excellent choice, especially given the consortium with Harvey Mudd. It seems to me that Brown would appeal to you, as would many of the other elite LACs, such as Williams, Amherst, Smith, and Carleton.</p>

<p>I noticed you said you are a dancer. We’ve discussed this before, and Barnard does offer access to the dance resources of NYC, which are probably unparalleled. It depends whether you need that level of dance, though.</p>