I’m a junior right now and I am planning on majoring in biology on the pre med track. I was wondering whether Rice or NU would be a better ED choice for me. Any advice would be appreciated
What are you looking for in a school?
Great academic insitution, high quality of life, not too many frats, strong sports scene(one of the minuses with Rice), and most of all, strong medical school placement. Thanks!
Also, if there are any other schools similar to Rice or NU that would be good to note.
School size
Urban/suburban/rural
Weather
What is your budget / family income
Any school size other than large(25000+ undergrad)
Urban or suburban
Any weather
Low family income(hoping for lots of need based aid)
Rice
Northwestern
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Emory
WashU
Lehigh
Vanderbilt
Miami
Tulane
You should also look into Cornell, UChicago, and Notre Dame
Thanks for these suggestions. Interestingly enough I’ve looked at all of these fantastic institutions at some point!
Northwestern isn’t, as a student body, that into sports, even though its part of the Big 10 conference. Games are often very sparesly attended by students. Frats are a significant presence on campus, but there are definitely ways to be social without getting involved with them.
It seems like NU meets all of your other criteria well.
That’s really because NU’s teams have been bad for so long. But our football team had a really great improvement so turnout will probably be better next year
The only worry with northwestern I have is keeping a high enough GPA for med school. Lots of people here on CC indicate that pre med studies at NU are extremely difficult, so I was wondering if that was the case?
Don’t med schools take into account context (grading toughness of the school where the student did undergrad) when judging GPAs?
@thatrunnerkid Yea, but it’s hard to judge what metric med schools would use because it’s not just the toughness school but also the toughness of an individual students curriculum. However, most people would recommend getting a 4.0 at “easier” schools would be worth more. Sure, getting a 4.0 at less difficult schools may get you into med school, but getting a 4.0 at NU may give you a better chance of entering a higher echelon of med schools
I (respectfully) disagree with some of ClarinetDad’s suggestions for colleges. I think WashU has some of the worst financial aid out there of the “full-need” schools, and Tulane does not meet the full need of students requiring aid. When we started looking for schools, we started with that list of 70 or so full-need, need-blind schools and went from there. By the way, Rice only has $2500 a year loans, and Northwestern just switched to NO loans for all incoming students as part of their aid packages.