<p>Well, I agree with both. As you know, it is temporally hard for a person who once had a firm goal to admit the idea which undermines the meaning of the goal. In this case, I took a while to understand that the education in British schools of my choice, in fact, don’t give me any “significant” advantage in spite of its demanding qualifications such as getting 7 in all subsections of IELTS. </p>
<p>The PhD programs most frequently attended by Reed are such as UChicago, UCB, Stanford, U of Washington, and Harvard, and these are mostly all the universities with programs which are the strongest in the area of my interest in the world. Carleton has even better performance, and Grinnell and Wesleyan should have similar results. But for UCL&ICL, the most frequently attended programs should be limited to be in the UK. That’s a huge uncertain variable, and it’s not wise to try this Russian roulette. I will try to forget about the British schools. </p>
<p>In reply to Conformist1688’s post:</p>
<p>Yeah, that is what I was trying to refer to. Doing research at UCL might not be possible until your final year. Freshmen here can jump into research and remain with it for all 4 years, both in school and during summer. While it’s obvious that seniors at LACs would be more prepared, the freshmen contribute significant work as well. And you get more time to explore and learn about the research field that interests you directly. I would think that UCL emphasizes focusing on one topic (with knowledge from multiple labs about what their work entails), while LACs emphasize looking around until you can find one you want to specialize in for your final year.</p>
<p>Studying abroad at UCL might make finding research very difficult there, however. Pomona’s UCL study abroad is one of the only ones I know that has an active research component in it. I wouldn’t have considered the program otherwise. </p>
<p>In reply to your post (after mines):
Actually, there is a research dissertation requirement for science majors in LACs as well. All molecular biology students at Pomona, for instance, must do an experimental theses, and those interested in a career in research must do experimental theses for biology. </p>
<p>Then, it sounds like UCL&ICL are just like many American research universities, where profs cannot afford to help Freshman&Sophomore to conduct their research. If this is true for many British universities, they will put me at a huge disadvantage in research experience, since I can only spend three years in the undergrad and have shorter time to do research. Like Pomona, Reed and many other LACs encourage research, and we can theoretically begin the research from Freshman year.</p>
<p>I actually knew precisely which LACs have Senior thesis req and which don’t. Your comment helped me a lot!</p>