Northwestern vs. WashU vs. UC Berkeley vs. Rice vs. Amherst!!!

College Search & Selection
1

So, as you can tell by my username and the super varied schools in the discussion title, I’m super indecisive and need some help deciding between these schools by May 1st! From what I can tell, all five are comparable in terms of academics and research/internship opportunities, which is how I narrowed down the list to these, but they are different in virtually every other way.

Things I like in a college are:
warm weather (Berkeley and Rice)
liberal people (Northwestern, WashU, and Berkeley)
non-Greek (Rice and Amherst)
good reputation (Northwestern, Berkeley, and Amherst)
strong sense of community amongst students (Wash U, Rice, and Amherst)
easy access to outdoorsy stuff (unfortunately none of them really, unless there’s something I’m missing??)
small classes and individualized attention from professors/counselors (everywhere but Berkeley)
strong sciences/possibly engineering (everywhere but Amherst)
collaborative environment (WashU, Rice, Amherst)

Obviously it’s impossible for a college to meet all of those criteria, but as many as possible would be good. Basically I’m really scattered and applied to a clusterfuck of schools without really thinking ahead to how I would decide once I was admitted. I live in California, and good weather is more important to me than I like to admit, so Berkeley is a plus in terms of both in-state tuition and sunshine. However, I’ve gone to small schools my whole life and am kind of freaked out about how going to a school that big - how do you meet people/make friends? Is there any sense of community? I really don’t want to join a sorority, so I don’t know how else to go about meeting people.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Amherst is super cold and expensive but I also would think it would be a much easier place to be when it comes to getting attention from teachers and getting to know people because of the size. I also think it has the most prestigious reputation of the five. Then again, I could be totally wrong.

Northwestern, WashU, and Rice all seem to be great and are in the middle in terms of weather and size. My main concerns with each are competitiveness, reputation, and conservatism, respectively.

Probably important to mention - I am planning to major in either biophysics, physics, or biomedical engineering, depending on the school, but I am also planning to change my mind like a thousand times once I get there. Basically all I know is that I want to do something in the natural sciences.

Sorry for the super long post! If you have any input/words of wisdom I would greatly appreciate it.

tl;dr - If you have an opinion regarding which of the five schools listed at the top is the best for a potential STEM major, please let me know!

2

In terms of weather, Northwestern isn’t warmer than Amherst. Chicago is cold.

3

With respect to Berkeley, the Berkeley hills has plenty of hiking and bicycling to do. However, if you were not admitted to the College of Engineering, it can be very difficult to switch into the College of Engineering. If you have a strong interest in physics, you may want to choose the honors physics courses if you attend Berkeley, which are smaller and have a cohort of students with the strongest interest in physics.

Be aware that biology and chemistry classes tend to be on the large side for any given school, so you may want to check the on-line schedules to see how large they are.

A really big question: what is the net price of each school, and how much of a consideration is cost?

4

good to hear that there is hiking/biking at Berkeley! net price is similar at all except Berkeley, which is significant lower, which would be nice but isn’t hugely important rn. how do you get into the honors physics classes? is there some sort of a test/prereq?

5

You just sign up for them in the course registration system. I.e. you sign up for Physics H7A instead of Physics 7A.

http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=FL&x=0&p_classif=–+Choose+a+Course+Classification±-&p_deptname=–+Choose+a+Department+Name±-&p_presuf=–+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2fSuffix±-&y=0&p_course=7a&p_dept=PHYS shows three lectures of Physics 7A and one lecture of Physics H7A, each with associated labs and such.

There are also honors math courses as well. See https://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/honors-courses .

6

Have you visited any place humid in the summer? Houston is great from about November to March, but kind of brutally hot and humid otherwise. (Not just pleasantly warm and sunny like most of CA). Even St. Louis - won’t be as hot for as long, but say September and if you ever decide to stay over a summer is pretty unpleasantly humid. Then it’s nice for about a month and then it’s cold.

What kind of outdoorsy stuff do you like? Berkeley has a marina on the bay a couple of miles away where you can take sailing or kayaking. Google Cal Adventures. A lot of people bike in the East Bay hills. If you have a car, or a friend with a car, you can do day trips to Point Reyes or Mt. Tam or all sorts of beautiful spots.

7

Lots of good choices there. They all have great reputations.

As far as easy access to outdoorsy stuff, Amherst is in a valley in the middle of the Berkshire mountains. It has a national arboretum/wildlife sanctuary and hundreds of acres of hiking and biking trails on the edge of campus, and a very active outdoors club that does hiking, rockclimbing, rafting, skiing and so forth.

http://www3.amherst.edu/~acoc/

Berkeley is in the Bay Area, which means that there will be many outdoor opportunities, just further away. Northwestern and Rice and Wash U not so much. They have nice campuses, but its a ways out of Chicago, Houston or St Louis to get to notable outdoors activities.

As someone just said, if weather is your major concern, Amherst and Northwestern will be equally cold in the winter, with Wash U very close behind. Rice will be much warmer in winter, but it is really humid and muggy for much of the year. Berkeley wins on weather.

Intimacy/small classes/collaboration. This is where Berkeley will fall short. It is enormous, and there is no way around that. The others will all be much better on that front.

All of these schools are liberal, Amherst and Rice just as much as the others. If ethnic/economic diversity matters to you, Berkeley has the broad diversity that comes with of a large public school in a diverse state. Amherst might be the most diverse small college in America, and Rice also makes great efforts at diversity. Northwestern is middle of the road, less diverse than its peer schools. Wash U has the least economically diversity of any university near the top of the rankings.

None of these schools are known for being completely dominated by frats, but they are at least a notable presence at Northwestern and Wash U. No frats at Rice and Amherst, of course. Berkeley has everything, including frats and anti/frat people. As far as ethnic/economic diversity, Berkeley used to be tops, but no

A biophysics/physics type STEM major will be well served at any of those terrific schools. Unless you are sure that you want to get an undergraduate engineering degree, I wouldn’t worry about any of them not meeting your needs.

Hope this helps.

8

Great choices all around. I can only really speak to WashU and Northwestern. WashU’s Greek Life I wouldn’t consider overwhelming, with sororities not having houses. I had friends who were non-Greek or involved in various fraternities, and I wouldn’t say it was divisive. Northwestern felt pretty Greek to me when I spent a summer there, but I’m not sure how Greek it actually is. Their beach is nice but I don’t really enjoy lake effects in the winter.

WashU does have Forest park (1370 acres) right across the street. It’s not quite wilderness, but it’s nice to be able to feel like you’re not in a city sometimes. If you like outdoorsy things, there is the Wilderness Project student group. It’s not the easiest to access all the time, but WashU does have a 2000 acre research area outside the city that includes a wolf and bird sanctuary.

WashU is pretty good for taking courses between divisions and with taking classes for fun. I took business courses for fun and I know people with combinations like engineering and dance or psychology and computer science (or fashion design and business). It’s pretty common for students to explore interdisciplinary classes.

9

Disclaimer: I have no idea how much undergrads will be interacting with it, but I think WashU did just get a new particle accelerator. Since you’re a physics major I thought you might be interested in it (there has been a cyclotron on campus since like the '40s).