<p>Sorry to bring this up again, but I wanted to get everyone’s opinions again since I have received all my decisions. In addition to the schools mentioned above, I am also considering Penn (w/ Vagelos Scholars Program), Princeton, and Stanford. I really like Princeton because of the community feel it has in comparison to other ivies. It seems that it would be a great place to earn research experience because there are also less undergrads. I would probably major in Molecular Biology with a concentration in Biophysics. Any opinions on these programs? Also, how do you think Princeton would compare to Stanford or Penn in these areas? </p>
<p>When my son was making a similar decision last year, he wanted the small community and commitment to teaching of a LAC, but lots of computer science. You seem to have the same interests. </p>
<p>If I were counseling my son between your choices, I’d recommend going through the LAC catalogs in detail to see if they REALLY offer all the science you want, and if there are enough choices in the upper-division courses to satisfy you. If so, pick your favorite LAC with <em>all</em> the science and variety and choices you want. If the LACs really don’t provide, then I’d recommend Princeton/Stanford/Caltech based on whichever best convinces you that they really love their undergrads. Loving their undergrads includes the quality of undergrad teaching, the living situation, the class sizes, and the research opportunities (at a minimum). Since any of those three schools will have all the research opportunities you could want, if I were recommending to my son I’d recommend based on teaching quality, class size, etc. (Full disclosure: He was accepted to Harvey Mudd, Caltech, Rice, Colorado College. Mudd has been his favorite for years so it was easy. Colorado College really didn’t have enough CS, and he was turned off Caltech by how many classes many of the students skip.)</p>
<p>In any case, you’ve got awesome choices - congratulations!!</p>
<p>I have to disagree, unless you mean fixated exclusively on a narrow portion of the human knowledge spectrum. My son is a math and science geek who absorbs subjects like calculus and physics effortlessly in one pass with no practice and no repetition, then proceeds to invent his own more-efficient ways to solve problems that save half to two-thirds of the time needed to do it the textbook way.</p>
<p>Yet this only defines part of him. He loves reading many of the classics and it takes him forever to finish a European history paper because he goes Google/Wikipedia hyperlink-jumping, each tangental and curious fact leading him to look up another tangental and curious fact.</p>
<p>He knows nothing about Star Trek trivia and has never IM’ed anyone, although he did teach himself html, along with some associated php, Ajax and Javascript. He did not apply to CalTech because he did not want to learn only science and math all the time. He’s deciding between Williams and Brown right now, and I think these schools are a much better fit for him than CalTech could ever be.</p>
<p>The world needs people who want to become experts in one tiny corner of human knowledge. But the world also needs people who have cross-disciplinary interests, and who may serve to tie that knowledge together into a bigger picture.</p>
<p>Japanoko, why would you define “seriously interested in the sciences” with as “only interested in the hard sciences”? One can’t be a “serious” dual math/physics major and also choose to explore history and archeology while in college?</p>