<p>Hi I need some serious advice on college. I have three colleges that I value the most: Amherst, Middlebury, and Wesleyan. I need to know which one is a better place for a "wanna be a cancer curer"? </p>
<p>I thank you for your comments!</p>
<p>All three schools are great. You would not really be able to choose the school that would help most in your career choice, except to maybe choose the school with the best science program. However, as all these three schools are basically on par as far as academics, your choice to boil down to which school YOU would be the most happy attending. You will be devoting the next 4 years of your life to a school. In the end, it doesn’t matter which school has the best program. What matters is where you want to spend those next 4 years being the happiest person and student you can be.</p>
<p>If that’s your only criteria, I would say Amherst. You will be surrounded by the smartest kids that will motivate and inspire you the most of the three schools with the highest % going onto to MD or PhD of the three schools.</p>
<p>I think Amherst is needing some infusion into their science facilities. It was on their “to do” list as an immediate concern before the current financial crisis. Not sure where that fits today, but I think the sciences in general will be hard hit by spending and capital improvement freezes. Whatever you do - and it looks like you’re interested in a CLA rather than a large research university - I would write to the department heads and ask about research opportunities and the current research taking place on campus. A Curer of Cancer is going to have to love the research. And I agree that a smaller school allows a student to get your feet wet without having to wait for graduate school.</p>
<p>“You will be surrounded by the smartest kids that will motivate and inspire you the most of the three schools…”</p>
<p>The “smartest kids” part is a little debatable, if not almost a little insulting. If you mean in terms of medical knowledge, then yes your statistic says something but not exactly <em>everything</em>. Other than that, I wouldn’t rank schools in terms of which has the most intelligent students, even if I am going to Middlebury next year (and therefore completely biased). It’s rude and it has no merit :S</p>
<p>Gellino–i see where you got the PhD numbers, but where are you getting the MD numbers from?</p>
<p>Thank you for replying! I believe in order for me to find out which schools the the most suitable one for me, I have to visit the campus. I love research. I will be I will be motivated by my surroundings no matter which of the three I go to. My motive is to get to a competitive Grad school like MIT, Caltech, Harvard, U Penn, Johns Hopkins, etc, so I believe a small school will prepare the best, to hit the big dogs later. I really want to learn as much as I can and get down to research.</p>