Any thoughts/comments on choosing Emory over UC Berkeley, UCLA, or UCSD for premed?
@D4Mom : pre-med isn’t special hardly anywhere, but of course these are all selective schools and have lots of resources for STEM majors and pre-meds. Figure out if you or the person of interest prefers a public versus a private school, D1 versus D3. Do they want smaller classrooms that may use more “active” and collaborative learning (Emory has shifted heavily towards this) or do they prefer a traditional
and pure lecture style in their courses, as usually the former requires more “self-teaching” (you aren’t passively in-taking or being spoon-fed the content, but may instead be exposed to less lecture and then do activities/work-sheets for a decent chunk of some classes) and is associated with higher workloads (lecture courses at the intro. STEM level are usually almost purely exams and quizzes, whereas a lot of Emory professors grade components that must be completed outside of class even in something like biology). Is there no opportunity to visit these, meet faculty, sit in on classes, etc before committing somewhere. I feel they are so different (I would maybe argue that the atmospheres at UCSD and Emory may be more similar) that it isn’t worth ranking them based upon anything.
If Emory costs substantially more than any of those, I say pass Emory on by unless cost is not an issue at all and the student prefers a D-3 private school with more intimate STEM courses than the others. You’ll get good rigor and lots of opps from all of them. Ranking them would be kind of silly and most people would do it by splitting hairs based upon rankings or prestige which makes no sense if one is pre-med as the things influencing those often have little to do with the undergraduate academics and social life they’ll experience. In USNWR, UCLA, Berkeley, and Emory are essentially ranked the same, yet the schools and the average undergraduate experience at each couldn’t be anymore different from each other. Likewise, UCLA and Berkeley have way more global (and international I guess) level prestige because of their size and success over time in making insane research contributions, and Emory’s success and contributions her are relatively new (1990s).
The differences in prestige because of the latter would not, for example, effect an undergraduate students’ research opportunity access (in fact, smaller cohort size may make this easier at smaller research universities), and definitely doesn’t effect what happens in the classroom (in fact, sometimes having ultra heavy hitter faculty teaching can be bad, especially if for key large/medium intro. and intermediate courses. Emory actually tends towards heavy use of talented lecture track faculty that specifically focus on teaching and pedagogy. Research faculty are more prevalent for focused intermediate and upper division courses where their focused expertise is more helpful, fresh, and more likely to lead to an enthusiastic attitude towards teaching the content).
I can only give the vague opinion of: Based upon academic quality of life sciences programs at the undergraduate level as well as research/professional development opps, I wouldn’t worry about losing out if one were to choose Emory. There may be other reasons to choose or not choose it that have nothing to do with those (including location. Atlanta is obviously very different from those California cities).
@bernie12 Thank you! Your comments are very helpful.
Any thoughts on UC Irvine vs Emory for biology and premed track? BTW for Emory University I got off the waitlist for Oxford College recently but not Emory College so not sure if that really matters and how much for premed specifically and in general, would love to hear some thoughts!
@ac1234567 : Do you have any idea what your desires and expectations are for studying biology at a good school (both are great schools and have great biology programs) are? Is there a large price differential?
As for pre-med: Goal is to perform as well as possible while taking STEM courses that provide good training for the MCAT. Both places will eventually provide volunteer and research opps so that shouldn’t be a concern.
*Both UCI and Oxford and ECAS aim for a “good” type of rigor that trains students well for research careers and to do well on their MCAT, but size will make some differences. UCI has a whole school of biology which means they end up with a somewhat more diverse course selection in the biology department (Emory competes and overlaps if you start looking at psychology, NBB, and maybe some chem course options). Emory/Oxford being smaller sometimes means that they can do more with the courses they offer at an earlier time. At Oxford, you will have a few primary literature discussion projects in the introductory bio sequence, as well as case studies, and bunches of other assignments (as opposed to just sort of sitting in lecture, listening to an instructor, and taking notes) and then a lab section that is probably inquiry based (where you build your own research project, proposal, and experiments within certain boundaries).
Then when you get to ECAS, your courses will be larger, but not so large that the same approach to teaching is inhibited. Many of the intermediates require literature reading and may even use more of a problem based learning approach in lecture simply because it isn’t huge enrollment. And then there is a great selection of research based upper division and special topics as well. This will likely help for the MCAT and prep a little more for undergraduate research endeavors.
It is basically a choice between better variety of pretty well done biology courses for a larger crowd/larger enrollment environments at UCI versus technically less choice at Ox/ECAS, but a greater variety of teaching/course delivery formats as well as earlier exposure to primary literature/and more authentic research applications and scenarios in your biology classes. I think both of these are quality institutions to study biology at. Definitely do not spend an exorbitant amount on one versus another. And since they are both ultra serious about STEM education (you fell into the hands of too unusually strong schools with respect to this, so can’t really go wrong), especially in pre-health heavy areas, they have lots of resources to aid your success!
*Do note, Emory’s chem curriculum has changed and it is a lot “weirder” than UCI’s. You’ll need to take them towards pre-med and bio major goals so you may want to consider it. If you think you like chemistry/have the experience, do not worry, but if you are among the many pre-healths that worry about it or have bought into hype that gen. chem and ochem at selective schools are just evil (lol), then you should know that UCI has traditional chemistry curriculum which may give some time to adjust. Emory is spreading some of the “evil” organic chemistry concepts throughout the general chemistry courses (in fact, what used to be gen. chem 2 is basically using a mix of ochem 2 and ochem 1 reactions as the framework to present traditional gen. chem 2 concepts), so your exposure to some more advanced concepts and general organic will be accelerated at Emory. This could be exciting or scary depending on who you are (basically your attitudes towards learning. Many pre-healths let their expectations for what content a certain STEM course is expected to present versus what they have heard from parents and perhaps friends at other universities, sort of taint their own experience or reception to really anything out of the ordinary. Issue is, the ordinary didn’t work particularly well anyway) and perhaps your incoming background (no doubt IB HL chem students in particular will adjust better to this paradigm than those with high pass AP scores): http://news.emory.edu/stories/2017/09/er_chemistry_curriculum/campus.html
This curriculum design is more common at some liberal arts colleges (and somewhat at the very very top research universities, say like a top 5-10), than it is at research universities overall (as far as I know, outside of a top 5 or so USNWR school, only Michigan has something like this for its first 3-4 courses. These changes were inspired by a mixture of what Ann Arbor and LACs had done it seems), perhaps because it is easier with smaller enrollment (like LACs) or insane amounts of money (HYP level endowments). There are some amazing teachers, but the content will just be different (the 4th course, which replaces ochem 2 is more like a bio-organic/biochemistry/material sciences type of course that supposedly builds upon content in the previous 3 courses. It is apparently quite unusual to integrate a significant amount of material sciences content, but shifts towards the 4th course being bio-organic is becoming more common).
Thank you so much @bernie12! I was curious if you knew a bit more about Oxford College vs Emory College in terms of opportunities ? Like when looking for research and volunteering would you say like Oxford College of Emory University or just Emory University and if so would it make a difference in the way employers would see you?
@ac1234567 : Employers don’t care (I think prospective students think employers care about prestige and namesmore than they actually do. In something like healthcare and research, they don’t. They care about the quality of your opp. and what you can show for afterwards. Do you complete a project that gets documented, a thesis, some tangible product that can be shown to them?). A good experience is a good experience. Technically, ECAS has the benefit of being in a much larger city and having direct access to the bulk of the opps, but at Ox, there are opps course based and non as well as a lot of volunteer and leadership oppurtunities at Ox. If you want to do research within confines of a bigger research U, there is Emory’s SURE program and other REUs at other institutions and you can apply for that as early as summer going into sophomore year. Admittedly, ECAS/a research U is a better start for very accelerated students (students with lots of APs, previous research experience, and then plan to use and leverage it immediately to take advanced/honors and jump into research immediately), but it clearly makes no difference for others. In fact, it appears Oxford sends a disproportionate amount of STEM majors (versus ECAS) to say, graduate school (top programs at that). So the training and opp. access is more than sufficient to employers and grad/prof. school applicant reviewers.
good luck to you too!