<p>Which of these institutions is the best overall pick for someone leaning towards pre-med, neuroscience and psychology, but open to exploring other areas? When asking “best pick overall”, I mean which has the best balance of academics, student body, social life, prestige, undergrad classroom experience, grading generosity, and successful placement for graduate/med school? Also waitlisted at Duke (first love), Penn and Harvard, but gotta believe low chances for these…..</p>
<p>All of them are great, well known, and top pre medical schools. I think the majority of your decision should come down to personal preference, and cost. By the way, I heard WUSTL has great dorms.</p>
<p>If it were up to me, i’d choose Cornell or Northwestern. I’d ultimately choose Northwestern because it is very easy to change majors there while at Cornell, if your major is at another college in Cornell, it is very hard for you to switch.</p>
<p>Wash U lets you change majors (and schools) also.</p>
<p>Wow recently I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about choosing schools with premed programs. Good news I guess, especially since the demand for docs will increase after the recent bill.</p>
<p>There’s a WashU Premed Questions and Answers on the WUSTL 2014 subforum that I started. </p>
<p>And as blackeyedsusan wrote, WashU is pretty flexible in letting you choose majors/ double majoring across schools / changing schools.</p>
<p>Premed is one of the toughest in the nation but it’s famous for being a strong and successful program. There are stats at that thread I mentioned above.</p>
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WashU has a great balance of academics with everything else (grading generosity depends on the class…intro classes are all on curves). You can read up on the student life and opportunities at the WashU forum and specifically the 2014 subforum.</p>
<p>Zenith: Thanks for the informative reply, and read through some of the other WUSTL threads you’ve suggested or posted. When you say that intro courses are all on a curve, do know what grade they curve to? I’ve heard a range from grading on a “C” centered curve all the way up to grading on a B+/A- curve, depending on the school. Also - and please don’t take this the wrong way - you have started so many threads on WUSTL, is this a job for you?</p>
<p>I hate to rain on this parade, but as an academic physician involved with admissions the idea that one top ranked college has a better “pre-med program” than another is pure marketing propaganda. </p>
<p>All four of these schools will provide a great education, prep you for your med school applications, and no more. Your success will be determined by the effort you put in, your innate abilities, and ultimately the grades and MCAT scores you produce. </p>
<p>There is no magic formula that one college has come upon that, Coke-like, is hidden away in some vault, unavailable to the competition. </p>
<p>Go where you think you’ll be happiest. It will probably be the place where you also will best perform.</p>
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<p>Not really. You file some paperwork indicating you have done well in coursework for your intended major. And you switch.</p>
<p>hopkins/washu would have the slight edge with regards to best pre-med but as an overall institution, i’d have to choose northwestern.</p>
<p>I don’t really know that it’s any easier to swtich between Northwestern’s four(?) colleges than it is to switch between Cornell’s seven colleges. But this is really a minor point in any event, beacuse most people who switch majors tend to do it within their own college. Cornell’s various specialty colleges contain majors/programs of study that do not exist altogether at most other schools.</p>
<p>Hopkins, but you should visit all the schools if possible.</p>
<p>Professor 101, why Hopkins? I’m curious.</p>
<p>@ bayvcroberts, why Northwestern?</p>
<p>Bala, thanks for the post. I’m sure there’s a lot of truth to your comments, but that doesn’t mean the experience is the same at each of these places. I’m planning to visit each this month.</p>
<p>while hopkins and washu are almost solely known for their incredible med programs and subsequent strengths in pre-med, northwestern’s strong academic reputation is more diffuse across a wider variety of professional/graduate programs. NU has a marvelous MBA program and a top-notch law school. They are ranked across the board for many social and hard sciences and are a leader in several fields. </p>
<p>I believe NU will afford you greater flexibility outside of merely pre-med…</p>
<p>Going to WUSTL tomorrow for a visit. It will be interesting to see how the visit looks and feels, as opposed to reading books and posts about it. Will also visit Northwestern, Cornell and JHU later this month.</p>