Just wondering …
D wants to pursue Biology BS in state or prive school in 2020. But she is not so much into med school . How to get into pharma research side or health sciences research side? what to pursue in master/PhD level
Another suggestion-get another major or minor in Computer Science or Data Science along with the Biology major. Or Biology in the Computational/Bioinformatics track.
Informatics and data analysis are pretty hot fields and it’s relatively easy to find employment even without a graduate degree.
Agree with @Hamurtle if she’s into math. Interesting careers for that in biostatistics (eventually will want masters), data science for healthcare companies of various kinds (right out of college).
IMO there’s rarely any important difference between BS and BA in Biology.
Virtually all research universities and LACs have biology majors, which can lead to a wide variety of careers besides medicine. Your own state flagship might be a good place to start checking out programs.
I would think much depends on what kind of biology most interests her.
Biochemistry? Cells? Organisms? Ecosystems? Evolution? She doesn’t have to commit to any of these now, but after the first year or two of college should be ready to start focusing (not only on a course track but also on internships or research projects).
What are her stats? What’s your budget? How far are you willing to travel?
She is good student with 3.93
UW & 4.7w GPA. 1550 SAT and lots of volunteer work and school clubs. Got about 500+ hr of teaching piano and got bunch of awards piano competitions. In state of FL I think bright futures is granted. Out of state may be can meet 50% cost.
Aiming mostly east coast (Vanderbilt , BU, North eastern, UNC may be Duke)
Wonder what’s her chance?
Vandy and Duke will be reaches but the SAT/GPA will mean the application will be looked at.
BU/Northeastern should be matches. Be aware that BU is pretty stingy with aid. Those numbers will get into Honors at Northeastern.
UNC is a tricky one since they have a mandate to take ~80% of their in-state students first. Although the numbers will put OP’s daughter in the running.
For Biology, you should consider Case Western, Rice, and WashU as well. Case in particular is generous with merit aid, especially for high GPA/SAT students.
Assuming Bright Futures, UF sounds like a safety.
Thanks folks. What’s the chance of getting into Carnegie Mellon? I know they are solid in bio and big data & analytics
No one really knows your chances @flspace . CMU has 5-6 different schools that have very different acceptance rates, too. CMU SCS is harder to get into than Harvard last I checked.
But I do know this - you can get a solid bio + statistics/math/cs combo at almost any college in the US. These are not unusual majors.
Although it might be a reach as well, Cornell has an excellent Biology program and one of their tracks is Computational Biology. Son’s friend is doing the track there.
Agree with @OHMomof2 about any school doing a Biology + CompSci/Math combination. Pretty much all the Biology programs now have some sort of track in Computational Biology or Bioinformatics. And depending on the number of CompSci classes required, you could easily earn a CompSci or Data Science minor.
https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/undergraduate-admission-statistics does give some idea of how the different divisions at CMU vary in selectivity. Note that every division has a 14% or lower admission rate, and every division except for the College of Fine Arts has GPA 3.86 or higher and SAT-RW and SAT-M 25th percentile of 700 or higher.
Of course, it is very difficult to change into the School of Computer Science if one enrolls in a different division.