<p>I figured it might be helpful for prospective students (and maybe even current ones) to list some of Emory's outstanding programs that receive less attention than some of our more well known ones. Most applicants know about Emory's premed strengths, but are there any other programs you'd like to highlight? Maybe particular research opportunities, excellent classes, etc?</p>
<p>I'll start with Oxford:
-Pierce Leadership Certificate: A sort of concentration within Oxford College where students take a few courses on the various aspects of leadership and then work with businesses in the Covington area to develop new strategies and learn from people already established in various professions.</p>
<p>-Minerals, Resources, Energy, and Power: This interdisciplinary environmental science course discusses how things come about, the social, economic, and political consequences of using various materials, and the environmental costs associated with them. Dr. Henderson, Oxford's geology professor takes students on frequent field trips to things like North America's largest coal fired power plant, a kaolinite mine, and science museums. </p>
<p>-Sustainability Action Committee: students work directly with faculty to decrease Oxford's energy consumption and make it a more green campus. Very good program for anyone interested in problems of exurban areas.</p>
<p>Anyone want to add any?</p>
<p>Prelaw</p>
<p>Math - decent; gets you where you want to go. Definitely doable to finish it with a 3.8+, which will get you into any grad school for math. Some of the upper level teachers are really good - but you have to slave through the lower level ones.</p>
<p>Pre-law is well-known lol. It is way better than what people would believe it to be though. Pre-med seems to get all the attention. Again, don’t know why…there is a reason why there is now a committee for “enhancing the undergraduate science curriculum” (this basically admits that there is a problem even though the committee tries to say "we just want to enhance what we already do well) even though I bet most the majority of the “base” of science students probably think everything is fine. You don’t hear about committees to enhance departments and disciplines sought out by pre-laws such as political science, history, and English because those programs are actually really good. No one is actually in denial about the quality of those programs. The sciences seem to have the thing going on where faculty notice issues, but students prefer the status quo because it technically means a lower pressure curriculum/environment where there are less labs, active learning components, and other components or methods that require a higher level of engagement with a course; classes that many students tried and kind of freaked out about because they were very different from the courses that they had previously gotten A’s in (this may not be just speculation, because one can look at the CSE website and notice that some courses that started out as experiments that tried different ways of teaching intro. courses, or project based labs/classes are no longer available. I’m pretty sure both rising enrollment, low demand/student resistance caused them to give up on even considering keeping around such courses). </p>
<p>As for math, fortunately many students don’t have to really go through the lower levels or can essentially place 2 intermediates (diff. Eq, Multi, Lin. Alg) on their schedule at once, breeze through them and get them over with. But as far as I’ve seen, many people are double majors with math and something like chemistry or physics (2 depts that require or recommend so much math that students majoring in them may as well get a degree in it as well). A lot of freshmen apt in math can probably finish all the intermediate classes as a freshman and even juggle that with other science courses. I’ve seen many students do (they of course have like BC credit). These are often the grad. school bound freshmen (even if they don’t know it at the time, a huge number of these people end up in grad. school in a science).</p>
<p>Re-read your second sentence, Bernie. That’s exactly why I said it.</p>
<p>As for math, I agree with that. If you can get into the classes, you need to take at least two of diff eq, multi, and linear as a frosh - no matter what your plans are in college. </p>
<p>Not a fan of Physics at Emory, though. I have a hard time understanding why people would want to do that - Although the ones who do have gotten some pretty neat after-college opportunities.</p>
<p>Same for math - some really good opportunities after the degree- Don’t want to go into much detail because I dont know how happy they’d be if I started telling everyone online.</p>
<p>BTW, are you still on campus?</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m basically trying to migrate to another lab (this time, back at my homebase, chemistry in Emerson) and me and the professor are working on scraping up some funds to support this. I’ll likely end up writing a proposal (I already developed 2 ideas, I just need to run them through him before I do a full write-up to see if they would work for a “seed grant” sort of situation where he splits some of an existing grant to fund my project). Hopefully I’ll be back officially working in this lab by August.</p>
<p>As for physics. I suppose students who major in that would basically have the major and departmental resources kind of to themselves. One thing I admit about physics is that it is one of the departments that could actually benefit the college (and attract more hardcore prospective students) if it actually worked to infuse more biophysics options and opps. into its curriculum (I usually do not advocate a hard sciences dept. completely selling out to attract natural science oriented people who may have potential in a hard science, but this is an exception as they need help). I mean, many of the faculty there are on the biophysics end of the spectrum anyway, which may explain why stereotypical physics (both lower and upper level) don’t end up being taught well by these faculty members. They should teach electives that interest them. And along with that may come students who have an interest in physics, but decided not to do it because they thought the current courses to be less applicable to their dual interest in natural sciences (for example, there is a maymester course in physics that was apparently very interesting and it integrated a biomedical component. I believe this should evolve into a semester long option, as I believe lots of maymester courses should). And perhaps increased success of the program may even hinge on the improvement of the lower level and intermediate math courses. Often the quality and rigor of the two depts. reinforce each other.</p>
<p>That sounds pretty neat. Keep me updated via PM every once in a while.</p>
<p>Good to hear you’re doing well - and still on CC. I don’t get on much anymore - it’s just the same rehashing of questions usually.</p>