<p>My top choice schools are (Geneseo, Cornell & Union College), however i'm very doubtful about my acceptance into any of them.</p>
<p>If that is the case i'll have to choose from my safeties who have already accepted me. The problem is, that most of them were recommend by my counselor and I have little interest and know very little about them. </p>
<p>If anyone could suggest any of the colleges from the list, it would mean alot. I need help narrowing down which schools to look further into and which to choose since it will be hard to visit all of them in the next few weeks.</p>
<p>SUNY Stony Brook
SUNY Albany
Siena College
Alfred University
Wells College
Clarkson University
Ithaca College
Juniata College</p>
<p>I really liked Geneseo for it's small campus and rural location, so big schools i'm straying from a bit. I hope to major in biology and take the pre-med courses, so a good LAC that allows me to study those sciences and maybe get to know the teachers well is nice.</p>
<p>Any ideas guys?</p>
<p>Edit: Wells, Alfred and Juniata seems to offer that small campus atmosphere from what i've gathered so far.</p>
<p>You imply you’re not the strongest student so you really need to think about whether you want to go to Cornell if you get in. With the competition there and their famous grade deflation, Cornell could make it harder to get into med school than the others.</p>
<p>We visited Siena several times and really like the campus. It is outside Albany in a suburban area and they have an affiliation with SUNY Albany medical school. Their enrollment is about 3300 with class size average of 21 and science lab class sizes of 19. It might be worth a visit for you.</p>
<p>Hmm…Siena offered me a scholarship and it’s pretty close to home I really will need to check it out.</p>
<p>Stony Brook is also a favorite of my parents, a lot of kids from my school are going there but the acedemics looks great.</p>
<p>Anyhow just wanted to let you guys know, I just found out that Geneseo accepted me. So i’m pretty psyched. Right now it’s my first choice so i’ll probably go there but I heard it’s hard to maintain a high GPA at Geneseo, especially for a hard science major. </p>
<p>Since i’m looking at medical school, a good guidance system or one that will allow me to maintain a good GPA is nice. Union I think offers that but I don’t have a reply from them yet.</p>
<p>Overall though for a pre-med student who like small LAC Geneseo would be a a pretty good fit? I heard it’s challenging but the overall pre-medical is quite good.</p>
<p>Still considering Stony Brook but I think Geneseo would be a better fit, it’s that or Union College.</p>
<p>If you haven’t had a serious talk about how your family intends to pay for your college education, you need to do that now. Then you need to sit down with all of your acceptance letters, and the financial aid packages, and see which places truly are affordable for you. If there are several that are equivalent, you should try to arrange to visit the campuses in person during the week so that you can get a feel for what it would be like to actually live and study there.</p>
<p>You need to take the time to start researching the safeties that accepted you. Figure out what factors are most important to you in terms of what you want in your college education. Then, rank the schools in order of how closely they offer what you want.</p>
<p>This info is too late for you, but may help others who haven’t yet applied to college. It’s not necessary, and often is a waste of time to have a long list of safeties. Build your list from the bottom up. Take the time and effort to choose one or two safeties that you know would meet your needs and interests, and that you know you can afford.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Stony Brook is awesome but it does have some strength in certain areas of science eg. pharmacology, structural bio, developmental bio. They also offer a medical school which provides enormous benefit to individuals studying in the sciences (because it attracts biomedical professionals, patients, clinical research funding, basic science research funding etc). You might do well to put a little bit more research into Stony Brook before dismissing it. The others on that list of safeties, I am not familiar with.</p>
<p>I’m reposting this because the first one got messed up:</p>
<p>This is what I know about schools on your list:</p>
<p>SUNY Stony Brook–known for strong biological sciences
SUNY Geneseo–honors LAC of SUNY system, pretty rural area with one other nearby college
Siena College–big for a LAC at about 3K undergrad, pre-med area supposed to be its strongest, reportedly draws mostly regional Catholic kids. (Pleasant but not deluxe/atmospheric suburban campus with many prison-cell dorms. My S did CTY there for 4 years. reportedly the girls’ dorms were nicer. ) Emphasis on social service, socially fairly conservative.
Alfred University–known primarily for its very strong arts programs, especially ceramics (and good FA)
Wells College–really tiny school, recently went coed, mostly female
Clarkson University–rural, tech-oriented
Ithaca College–Artsy, diverse LAC with reputation in music/performing arts/communications. In same nice college town as Cornell, so lots of students around. Lovely area (Finger Lakes).
Juniata College–“vocational” or pre-professional focus more than classic LAC (they have a very limited English department, for example, judging by their course offerings and faculty).</p>
<p>Personally, if I were you with your interests, I’d be looking mostly at Stony Brook and Geneseo. Other than that, Ithaca sounds like a fun place to go to school. Don’t know about its bio offerings, though. If you really think you want to go to med school, I’d check into the acceptance rates of these schools, and into what kind of advising/support for prospective pre-meds they offer.</p>
<p>RML, the Nobel for the invention of the MRI was shared–one researcher was at Stony Brook, the other was at the University of Nottingham. I go to Stony Brook, and it’s pretty cool to walk by a display with the original MRI prototype on my way to chem lecture :)</p>
<p>OP, if you’re looking for a small school, LAC-type environment, Geneseo sounds like a good bet. However, it’s surprising how intimate a bigger university like Stony Brook can feel–I started my college search looking at small schools, ended up at Stony Brook as a fluke, and discovered that even a school with ~25,000 people can feel very homey and manageable once you’re settled in.</p>
<p>Pseudonym, thank you for sharing that. I’ve always thought Notts invented and pioneered the MRI. It appeared at one of Notts brochures a couple of years ago that I was reading and that somehow stuck in my mind. :)</p>
<p>RML, I think both universities like to claim that invention without mentioning the other school–seems neither particularly wants to share the credit :)</p>
) Emphasis on social service, socially fairly conservative.