<p>Hi
Two great schools. One would make me owe around 60k at the end of 4 years the other would be around 10k.
The question is should I attend the more prestigious one and go into debt or choose the less prestigious one??
I will be a science/bio possibly pre-med. Does undergrad degree school really matter? Should I save the money for grad school?
Thanks for the help</p>
<p>My vote would be for Johns Hopkins… and not just because JHU tends to be more prestigious than Colgate in terms of rankings.</p>
<p>JHU has one of the best medical schools in the world. As an undergraduate, you may find opportunities to do bio-medical research work or internships that gets you some early exposure to the medical school.</p>
<p>For a person considering bio-medical research, or become a medical doctor… I think Johns Hopkins is hard to beat.</p>
<p>That is not to say that you cannot do this going to some other school. I just think the JHU is ideally suited, given its top-class facilities.</p>
<p>Since the two are both great schools, normally, I’d say save the money – a no-brainer.</p>
<p>But these are two significantly different college experiences: rural vs. urban. LAC vs. major research Uni.</p>
<p>btw: since The Hop is known for its med school, it has a HUGE contingent of matriculating Frosh who are premed – much larger than many other colleges. </p>
<p>If you’re pre-med, the cost of the school is everything, as med schools don’t give a crap about prestige of undergrad, merely GPA and MCAT scores.</p>
<p>AmaranthineD has it right. In fact, John Hopkins can be a real pain when it comes to pre-med, because the difficulty of the curriculum makes it much more difficult to maintain the GPA you’ll need for med school. Many people are ‘weeded out’ in the first two years. </p>
<p>If you’re premed, you should choose the school with the lowest debt. Med schools only care about GPA (both overall and in the science core), MCAT score;n then, research/professional experience and letters of recommendation. They do not care where you went to school for undergrad.</p>
<p>So here you are in the enviable position of making a choice between 2 excellent schools, one choice of many ahead of you but a most important one. And with the deposit deadline approaching in 10 days.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the choice is yours and yours alone. Why? Ultimately you will be living with that choice while striving for disinction. Not your parents, friends or anonymous/unconnected-to-you posters on this site. And rest assured that it’s NOT about what some posters say about rankings or “prestige” which in their terms are subjective and personal. Those are their opinions at best and are hardly scientific relative to your circumstances, current and future. That said you will include the financial element in your deliberations, naturally so.</p>
<p>Colgate and Hopkins are very different places as I am sure you sensed and know in terms of their settings and programs. If you did your homework during and after your campus visits with their pre-med advising faculty and other faculty, staff and students you may well know already where YOU fit in now. You also know their placement outcomes and how current students relate to their programs. </p>
<p>What’s it going to be? It’s entirely up to you.</p>
<p>Best of luck with what follows your choice!</p>
<p>Hopkins will be a more stressful pre med environment and will offer no advantage in med school applications. Those telling you otherwise are either ignorant of the facts of med school admissions or partisan or both. Colgate at a $50k discount is a relative bargain. </p>
<p>^she also indicated possibly premed. Hopkins would far and away be the better choice if she chooses something else like bio grad school or for job prospects coming out of college. </p>
<p>Blah2009,</p>
<p>Not sure about that… Please make your case with specifics.</p>
<p>That would be interesting and no doubt encourage more feedback participation.</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
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<p>You can find the number of PhDs awarded in biological/life sciences for each school on the NSF webcaspar site. You can then find the number of biological science majors graduating from each school on the IPEDS site. From these numbers, we can calculate PhD production rates adjusted for the number of graduating bio majors. </p>
<p>According to the NSF data, from 2007-2011, 50 Colgate alumni earned PhDs in the biological sciences. According to the IPEDS Data Center, Colgate granted 91 Bachelor’s degrees to biological science majors in 2011-12. Let’s assume the same number was granted for each of 5 years corresponding to the years the 50 Colgate PhDs graduated. Based on that assumption, Colgate’s PhD production rate, adjusted for the number of biology majors over a 5 year period, would be 50/(91*5) = 11%. </p>
<p>According to the NSF data, from 2007-2011, 139 JHU alumni earned PhDs in the biological sciences. According to the IPEDS Data Center, JHU granted 219 Bachelor’s degrees to biological science majors in 2011-12. Let’s assume again that the same number was granted for each of 5 years corresponding to the years the 139 JHU PhDs graduated. Based on that assumption, JHUs PhD production rate, adjusted for the number of biology majors over a 5 year period, would be 139/(219*5) = 13%. </p>
<p>Alternately, we could adjust the number of earned doctorates not by the number of majors, but by the undergraduate enrollment size. This is how the Washington Monthly college rankings calculate a “bachelors to PhD rank”. Dividing Colgate’s 50 earned doctorates by 2927 current undergraduates (per Wikipedia) equals approximately 2%. Dividing JHU’s 139 earned doctorates by 6023 current undergraduates equals approximately 2%. </p>
<p>So, based only on these numbers, I don’t see that JHU would be “far and away” the better choice for graduate school outcomes. Maybe a tiny wee bit better. Although of course, we don’t know from this data where all these students are earning their doctorates… and maybe we’re way wrong to assume a constant number of bio majors each year. Given how hard it is to tease out these numbers, one should hesitate to draw overly confident conclusions from them. </p>
<p>As for job prospects, what data is available to support a fair, apples-to-apples comparison?
According to the Payscale 2013-14 full salary support, for mid-career salaries Colgate ranks 12th (tied with Yale). JHU ranks 79th. (<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/full-list-of-schools”>http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/full-list-of-schools</a>). Would I trust these numbers? Nope. They depend on self-reported data and exclude all alumni with graduate degrees. However, what better basis exists for comparing job prospects? </p>
<p>JHU certainly has a wonderful reputation for research in the biological and biomedical sciences. However, I don’t think we can assume that that necessarily results in vastly better outcomes for JHU undergraduates in those fields.</p>
<p>For a premed applicant, the lower cost option is the best option when the two choices are academically strong, which they are here. You will NOT suffer any drawbacks from attending Colgate as a premed… and you may even enjoy college more :)</p>
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<p>The primary factor in grad school is undergrad research. Yes, Hopkins has/offers a lot of those opportunities, but so does 'Gate.</p>
<p>re: jobs…uh, no. Bio majors have relatively high unemployment prospects. There are literally hundreds of thousands of premed bio majors who do not make it to med school.</p>
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<p>Actually, that is an ignorant statement. For similar GPA’s, prestige does count for bonus points. For perspective, dig through WashU’s premed numbers. A surprisingly number of low 3’s are accepted into med school from WashU undergrad (which doesn’t happen at most colleges). While Hopkins doesn’t publish its numbers (at least that I know of), I have to believe that their results would be similar to WashU.</p>
<p>tk, </p>
<p>as you well know, those career data salaries only count alumni without graduate degrees (a precise reason why I didn’t cite that overly spammed data point on these forums). Using that basis, Colgate grads also make as much as Yale? Not sure their metrics are that reliable given their “database” - more reputed numbers should come from the schools themselves. If graduate degrees were counted, I’m pretty sure Mike Bloomberg’s wealth alone divided by all the JHU undergraduate living alumni would dwarf Colgate’s average as a whole. JHU’s annual donations also equate to about 40% of Colgate’s endowment on an annual basis. It would be more interesting to do a wealth assessment. </p>
<p>And you’re right, Colgate does produce the same <em>percentage</em> of Bio Ph.Ds. maybe - but again as you noted, you don’t know where people are getting their degrees. Unfortunately, graduate schools care about where you get your undergraduate degree in the sense that your recommendation writers need to be excellent researchers for you to get that push. As someone who was on the selection committee for the Stanford graduate fellowship (most selective fully funded fellowship across the university), colgate applicants were at a very very distinct disadvantage compared to the more reputed research powerhouses. </p>
<p>Perhaps we can get more on here who actually have first hand experience with graduate admissions to debate this point</p>
<p>If Colgate is the ‘less prestigious one,’ then that’s what I’d choose. The price difference is simply too hard to justify.</p>
<p>Blah’s probably right though on his PHD comments. (anecdotally) one of my TAs went to Colgate, and he had to go to a separate masters program before he was admitted into the PHD program. Same thing happened to another TA who went to Brandeis. The close interaction that LACs / small Private Us give its students is valuable. But its far less valuable, imo, than being taught by respected researchers in the field and having the ability to take advanced classes. </p>
<p>In some classes at UCLA, I was expected to read current papers, from leading researchers, just a few months after they were published; in others, I was reading texts that some of my professors admitted they didn’t read until they were graduate students. Things like that are harder to do with smaller faculty since there are less diverse interests; They’re also harder to do if the professors aren’t leading researchers or aren’t actively keeping up with the current research (which is very possible if they spend most of their time with undergraduates.)</p>
<p>The LAC vs University debate generally always goes the same way: LAC people prefer the close interaction they had with faculty, small classes, and (perhaps) the sense of community that they had; RU people generally prefer working with world-renown scholars, having diverse faculty, and having diverse course offerings. There really is no right or wrong answer here. It all falls down to preference.</p>
<p>Here’s some more interesting data - where the Colgate biology professors received their research training</p>
<p><a href=“Faculty and Staff — Biology | Colgate University”>http://www.colgate.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/biology/faculty-and-staff</a></p>
<p>You see institutions like UConn, Michigan State, Indiana, etc and just one Harvard Ph.D within the entire faculty. The head has a Ph.D. from Duke. </p>
<p>Compare this to Hopkins:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bio.jhu.edu/Directory/TenuredPlusTenureTrack.aspx”>http://www.bio.jhu.edu/Directory/TenuredPlusTenureTrack.aspx</a></p>
<p>The Chair went to Stanford and is more renowned than the Colgate faculty based on citations alone.</p>
<p>The director of undergraduate studies also went to Harvard </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bio.jhu.edu/Faculty/Schildbach/Default.html”>http://www.bio.jhu.edu/Faculty/Schildbach/Default.html</a></p>
<p>You see faculty from Berkeley, Yale, Chicago, and Hopkins (of course) with a minority from lesser known Bio schools like UVa or Indiana or Houston.</p>
<p>While there’s nothing wrong with going to a school with a large amount of faculty without top ranked departmental degrees, if you wish to get into the top graduate schools - it helps to have professors that graduated from the top bio schools that still have connections to faculty there. </p>
<p>It’s a tremendous boost to have a professor with a Ph.D. from Harvard or Stanford or MIT state you would thrive there as they are putting their reputation on the line for the applicant.</p>
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<p>This would only be true if she can keep a very good GPA at JHU, which is very difficult. It is going to be hard work at either school, but she will burn a lot more midnight oil at Hopkins. There are some advantages at JHU in research opportunities, but the stress level will be much higher. Some students are fine for that (and actually crave it). So it depends on what the OP wants and thinks she can sustain over four years.</p>
<p>^JHU’s average GPA is a 3.34. Higher than a lot of schools. Your argument is not that great.</p>
<p>^bio majors have a notorious hard time at JHU. It’s like the APBio5 course at UChicago - definitely not for everyone. That’s just a fact.
But some students crave the competition so that’s a matter of personal preference.</p>
<p>The issue I have is 60k in debt for undergrad when a student wants to go to med school. It’s not higher costs that the family can pay - it’s A LOT of debt, probably as PLUS loans, or co-signed loans (even worse), that the parents would have to take on. With med school debt, it’d be unmanageable. And if OP doesn’t get into med school (as is the case for many premeds) with the poor job prospects for bio majors, that 60k debt will be crippling.</p>
<p>OP: where would all that debt money come from? Is it on top of your federal loans or does it include your federal loans? How likely are your parents to be approved for all 4 years (since the loan has to be approved every year?)
Can we have a profile of your HS performance? </p>
<p>^If OP doesn’t get into med school, debt would be crippling? That’s a bit farfetched wouldn’t you say? </p>
<p>If the OP chooses Bio graduate school, he/she would graduate with zero debt after saving about 12k annually from the graduate school stipend after living expenses.</p>
<p>She might find bio is not her cup of tea and that engineering is - at which point Colgate doesn’t offer the major.</p>
<p>He/She could also choose to go into consulting (just one data point and not a recommendation he/she does) and start at 60-70k easy from Hopkins (Deloitte and Accenture hire a ton from there from all majors, Some of the upper echelon consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are opportunities too if the OP networks and works hard). After 3-4 years, he/she would be making 130k+ in take home (50k debt could be covered in one year at that salary). These firms do not recruit at Colgate. </p>
<p>It would only be crippling if he/she is adamant about sticking in the bio industry with just a bio undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>You never know what might happen in college. Hopkins does offer more options, however in case she changes her mind.</p>