<p>I'm not gonna be able to visit far away colleges and I feel like research has only gotten me so far. Can any Emory students tell me about
- the general atmosphere (academic + social life, and whether the pendulum sways more toward one or the other)
- surrounding life + whether the school feels really isolated or integrated
- research opportunities--are they hard to get or can anyone start researching right away if they seek out opportunities?
- what are the students like? Is the college diverse or is there a "typical" student?
- history, anthropology, other social science majors--generally, are they amazing, good, okay, or subpar?
- the quality of the premed program or advising/whether it has much success or not</p>
<p>@jen123
1)More academically oriented because of D-3 (even many athletes are academically intense), but we love our social lives.
2)…not sure. Like many privates in suburban areas or neighboring towns of major cities, it’s kind of like a bubble, but many programs connect people to the city of Atlanta, and additionally, going into different areas of Atlanta is desirable.
3)Easy
4)Diverse
5)Amazing! I would choose social science majors and not anthro. to have the smaller classes and more engaged students though (no offense, but anthro. has amazing teachers, but the major is almost a catch all for pre-healths who want less engagement or rigor so as to keep high grades. The students in the social sciences and certain other non-NBB and biology science majors are typically much more interesting in my opinion and the atnosphere in courses, especially advanced ones reflects it. If you are considering anthro., try human health major instead. It’s more serious…and is still interdisciplinary).
6) Coursework advising blows so grow a mind of your own and choose courses you can handle (pre-health mentoring will always advise the easiest route, which is not typical among advisors at very top schools with large pre-health populations) but advice on other things such as opps and possible pathways is apparently solid. Success is up to you not advising…a lot of students take their advice to only do “easy” naively and end up screwed on the MCAT or less competitive for top programs (that actually value the ways of thought derived from thriving in courses with higher than normal intellectual rigor. And even if you have a 4.0, most will expose you as not having the type of thinking or curiosity associated with a person who actually consistently challenged themselves and did well in the interview). The reality is…regardless of how these students were advised, they were going to go down that road anyway (they really were just looking for someone to facilitate the implementation of their belief that pre-med is about getting high grades as smoothly as possible. These were the types who avoid doubling up science at all costs and would constantly underload or take fluff classes along with a single science course. Needless to say that doesn’t look good and certainly looks poor to top med. programs. Such students will likely not even get interviewed by those types of programs even if the GPA is decent). So given that we have lots of pre-med students like that (simply because we have lots of them), our admit success rate is okay. I don’t think the coursework filters enough of these sorts out (as a place like Hopkins does and it has the same amount of pre-healths) so the percentage number is lower than many top schools. </p>
<p>The way the Emory pre-health core is set up allows students to essentially choose any rigor they want for each course (except physics series which only have 1 instructor) and instructors in each course range from horrible but very easy to amazing, but challenging (bio, math, and general chemistry has these where you’ll sweat but can easily do well if you work hard) to extremely challenging (ochem has these where you must study deeply and very frequently to get anything beyond a solid B. The top 2 will push you past your limits and reveal skills you didn’t even think you had…surprisingly both are both feared and popular). The key is to gauge your abilities and always try for at least someone in the middle of those packs and if you’re strong, choose the very top instructors. And then, if you’re successful at those levels (where the grading is harsher), go forth and continue to challenge yourself in advanced courses in science or in your major because you’ve already proven you can challenge yourself while maintaining a high GPA in not so leniently grading courses. It’s just a matter of you choosing to optimize your Emory education. Typically those who do and don’t jump on the “pre-health mindset” bandwagon end up doing a bit better and enjoying the journey a bit more. The program is good, but many students choose to cheat themselves into the bad aspects that decrease their chances of success. </p>