I’m a rising senior whose been set on NU for a while. I’m planning on applying early decision and double majoring in bio and environmental sciences. the career path i’m interested in is animal field research with an emphasis on evolutionary biology. From my understanding the bio major requires you to pick a concentration and i’m wondering which would be the best for that field. Other universities i’ve been looking at have a specific evo bio tract but NU does not appear to have one. At this point i’m thinking i’ll do grad school where i can specialize more but who knows. if any one on here knows someone who went into animal research or conservation science and graduated from NU please tell me what they did. thank you
You’re correct, students doing the bio major pick a concentration. This concentration, however, is only three courses (though students must take another elective within the bio department, and I imagine that many would take a course connected to their concentration theme). However, you can take more bio courses that the minimum if you want. Again correct, it looks like NU does not have a specific evolutionary bio concentration.
I’m a current student, and a friend of mine is doing animal research on an island on one of the US coasts, so it definitely is possible to do research similar to what you’re interested in with the knowledge base you can get from NU bio. I do not, however, know if what she’s doing is related to animal evolution.
One good way to find out a few ways to go forward here would be to contact the biology department. The link is at the bottom of this message, in case you haven’t been to / found the website yet. In addition to finding out what you want to find out, contacting NU might earn you some expressed-interest points for admissions.
Something else I want to say: you say you’re set on NU, and plan on applying ED. Good that you’re applying ED if you think you like NU better than any other school. Remember though that the ED admission rate is only slightly higher than 33% - only a little more than one in three applicants get in, and there are probably athletes in there as well as legacy students, so your chances are lower than the number shows. By all means show interest in NU, but still apply to other schools and keep in mind that at many of them you would be just as happy and academically fulfilled there if not more so than at NU.
Bio department website: http://www.biosci.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/
Explore. Check out the “Research” tab as well. The departmental email address and phone number are in the purple banner at the bottom of the page.
@thatrunnerkid thank you for replying. my heart is set on NU because of its student culture as well as its academics. i know there are many great schools out there that can help me to succeed in my future field, but NU has really stood out for me. If i don’t get in it wouldn’t be life ruining by any means, I’d still do fine, but it would be my first choice by a mile to go to NU. Also, does your friend currently attend NU? is their research through the school or an internship?how did they find it?
Yes, my friend is currently a rising senior at Northwestern. The research is done through a lab of another university. I’m not exactly sure how she found it, but it is not difficult to find out about other institutions and labs that are doing work you are interested in (can be done by reading academic papers, word of mouth, using an internet search engine, etc.) or reach out to people at those places.