<p>My son was luckily accepted to those schools.
How do you compare those schools, especially the chemistry major.
At the moment, he's planning to go to medical school ? </p>
<p>quality, chance to do research, getting pre-med support,
faculty interaction/mentoring, volunteering chance to work with
health related positions, chance to get help from alumni, etc...</p>
<p>He's o.k with the other things like weather, student body, social life,
harder classes, as he is easy going and can adapt to any circumstance
and like to do challenge himself. </p>
<p>From what I've heard, chemistry 20 is good for a strong chemistry student, 30 for an even stronger one. Or, you can do a more biology based sequence in 17/27 (steve, correct me if I'm wrong)</p>
<p>Well Princeton is going to afford your son less opportunities to get into serious research as an undergrad, just by virtue of their more limited graduate programs. </p>
<p>Harvard and MIT are virtual ties in terms of Chemistry departments (MIT has a slightly better synthetic organic chem, we have slightly better p-chem, etc), and the opportunities to do research are excellent at both. I've heard that pre-med at MIT is pretty rough, since MIT has very hard workloads (significantly more volume of work, if not a harder curve) which leads students who want to keep a high GPA to not be able to branch out as much as they can at Harvard (especially in hard sciences). Additionally, the pre-med advising at MIT is not nearly as good as at Harvard, in fact if you google a little bit you can probably find an MIT editorial about the fact that some kids don't even get advisors for the cycle they want to apply in. This is supported by the acceptance rates to medical school. Harvard's is in the upper 90s, MIT's is not (despite their both being excellent, academically rigorous schools that more than prepare their students for medical school).</p>
<p>mollie, could you reference that? MIT's overall acceptance rate to medical schools is around 75%, correct? If nothing else, this indicates that a large number of students don't use prehealth advising. What is the reason for this?</p>
<p>First, I'll concede that Harvard and MIT have better chemistry departments, based on the caliber of the faculty and the quality of research being conducted. If you know that you want to go to grad school in chemistry, then one of these two schools is a better choice. If on the other hand, you plan on majoring in chemistry but want to go to medical school afterwards, the differences in the departments won't really affect you that much. The research you can do at Princeton is both exciting and worthwhile, and you will get more one on one time with the faculty. For a premed student, it's basically a wash. Harvard and Princeton definitely lend more institutional support to premeds, so I would choose one of these two. I would then make my decision based on other factors. If you really like Boston, go to Harvard; if you think Princeton is a better fit, got there; etc. Hope this has been helpful and reasonably unbiased. ;)</p>
<p>The overall undergraduate acceptance rate is 83.6%, and the rate for undergrads who use prehealth advising is 89.7%.</p>
<p>The overall acceptance rate (undergrads, grad students, alums) is 74%, though the overall rate for students who use the advising service is 86.7%. This says to me that there are a substantial number of grad students and alums applying without having a clue what they're doing.</p>
<p>I would indeed say Harvard and MIT are virtually ties in terms of opportunities, but their programs are completely distinct. Harvard focuses more on an organic chemistry and chemical biology approach, good preparation for a career in organic research or drug discovery or something similar. MIT seems to focus more on inorganic chemistry, such as materials, physical chemistry , and chemical engineering. Either way if you go to one you can cross register at the other for individual courses, but I would choose a school based on your interest within the field of chemistry.</p>
<p>When I was volunteering at Brigham and Woman's, I met some disillusioned MIT premeds (actually - the two had graduated, but didn't do well with med school, and were doing a postgrad year in an attempt to get into better schools)... they felt that they were getting punished for their MIT GPAs.</p>
<p>With regards to Harvard, a lot of students grumble about the integrated, intro chem/bio sequence (Life Sci 1a/1b, Physical Sciences 1). They're definitely interesting classes, but can be frustrating because they're sort of blazing a new path (don't align very well with a textbook, if they have a textbook... sometimes the organization can be confusing). I didn't think they were the best classes I've taken here, but they were fine, and manageable.</p>
<p>Also, what's the final word on Jacobsen - is he staying? If he is, it's worth coming to Harvard just to take Chem 17 from him...</p>