Pre-med looking at LACs

College Search & Selection
41

“Next to a large city” (or IN a large city, if that’s ok) filters out many LACs (including Amherst).
Considering all your other criteria in the original post (CO-ED etc), IMO one of your best options is Haverford.
Many others could work if you relax one or more of those criteria.
If you want someplace a little larger, and are open to a women’s college, maybe consider Barnard (which offers all the resources of Columbia U).

Other LACs located in/near cities with enrollments > 2K:
Wellesley (women only)
Colorado College
Macalester (which I don’t think of as “preppy”)
Occidental
Trinity College (Hartford)
Rhodes

Colorado College has an unusual one-course-at-a-time Block Plan, which isn’t right for everyone. Apparently it also is one of the few LACs with its own human cadaver lab.
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/curriculum/course/introduction-to-human-anatomy-201620
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/curriculum/detail.html?courseid=HK254

As far as I’m concerned, all the schools mentioned so far are about equally good for pre-med.
For med school admission you’ll need good MCAT scores, a good GPA, and completion of all expected pre-med courses (which AFAIK they all offer). Hospital/clinic experience is a “nice to have” - or maybe more than that if you’re aiming for high prestige - but you may be able to get it from summer employment regardless of where you go.

42

Sorry, I had missed “COED” in all caps at the top of your post.

43

What @MYOS1634 said - You might have other reasons for ditching Macalester, but “preppy” shouldn’t be one of them.

44

As I acknowledged previously, there are three groups of LACs with relatively high diversity:

(1) Women’s colleges - but the OP wants a coed school.
(2) AWS - the OP already knows about Amherst, doesn’t like Swat, and Williams is not “near-urban”.
(3) Claremonts - the OP already knows about them.

The five “.7-.67” schools that you refer to all fall into one of these three categories. But the OP has already addressed them, in one way or another, and is looking for additional options. So what OTHER highly-ranked LACs are there with diversity index >= 0.5, based on the USNews list? I see:

Oxy, Haverford, Wesleyan, Bowdoin

My interpretation: this doesn’t seem like a very long list.

Over on the National University side, the list of schools with diversity index >= 0.5 includes:

All 8 Ivies, Stanford, MIT, JHU, Rice, CMU, NYU, USC, Caltech, Emory, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Miami, BU, Vandy, Case Western, WUSTL, Brandeis, Georgetown, Rochester, Tufts, RPI, all 9 UCs, UT-Arlington, UT-Dallas, TAMU, UNC, Georgia Tech, Rutgers, UMCP, UIUC, Washington, UVA, and William & Mary.

My interpretation: it seems like the OP would have more options for highly-ranked, high-diversity schools on the “National University” side than on the “National Liberal Arts College” side.

45

@Corbett, yes we will disagree on the limit of diverse LAC’s to the three buckets you noted - that’s your arbitrary cut-off which is fine. That said, the OP specifically asked about LAC’s s the rest seems moot.

46

This is super helpful for exploring economic diversity https:// www. nytimes .com/ interactive/projects/college-mobility/

Collegedata consolidates good info on geographic and ethnic diversity.

47

If the OP wants substantial need-based aid, remove most of the OOS public universities from that list.
Some of the others (like NYU) also aren’t super generous with n-b aid.
Of the 60+ colleges that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need, ~3/5 are LACs.

48

Unless your parents are huge donors, you go to an elite private school, or you’ve already been contacted as a recruited athlete, I would be very wary of calling Rice or Vanderbilt matches. They’re reaches unless you fall into one of the three categories above.

49

I think they’re reaches, period.

50

If you want a LAC that is fairly larger while still having the LAC feel I would look into a college that is part of a consortium. There is the Claremont Mckenna School (Pomona, Claremont Mckenna, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer) the Quaker consortium (Haverford, Swarthmore, Penn, and Bryn Mawr) and the one with Amherst which I am not sure what schools it includes. Those will allow you to have a small liberal arts feel that have classes with no TAs and don’t have large lectures with a more expansive social scene. Hope that helps!

51

The Five Colleges are Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, Mount Holyoke and UMass Amherst.

OP is already considering Amherst and doesn’t want a women’s college (though if it makes a difference that they are in the consortium, Smith and MoHo would be good choices).

52

Thank you all for the links/advice!

@TheGr8Gatsby @porcupine98 Thanks for telling me that–I should know better than to think they’re matches. There are two college-prep companies near me that had free counseling sessions, and they told me those schools are matches, but I feel that they were too generous. I’ll keep my expectations low for sure

@rman0070 @OHMomof2 hey, I’ve actually been looking into those schools! For Cal, I’m stuck between CMK and Pomona (what’s the difference between the two? I can’t tell. I heard CMK shares pre-med to like 3 other schools so it might be worse than Pomona) and Haverford is back on my list! Lol my econ teacher went to MoHo. I think Amherst is off my list because it’s too rural–will check UMass Amherst out.

Sorry if I didn’t mention everybody–so many people replied & the feedback I’ve gotten is amazing! There are so many schools on my list now, yikes. I was only planning on applying to one, three tops. Here’s a very general list (please let me know if I left one out, there’s so many):

Occidental
Pomona (too hard to get into?)
CMK
Haverford
UMass Amherst (isn’t this rural?)
F&M
Macalester
Vassar (too liberal?)

Can CCers help me cut this down? Any help would be appreciated! Although obviously everybody had helped so much already–the diversity paper was a great read, and I’ve been very lax on diversity with LACs, but I’ll definitely use it to cut out some schools.

Also, about the liberal thing–I don’t care about bathrooms, just a SJW/(or on the other end, diehard redneck) attitude–it’s just really really really not my thing (also preppy kids).

Really, thank you all for the replies! Now I need to go back to applying to non-LACs haha :slight_smile:

53

Relative to the others you listed, I’m thinking F&M might be a little preppy/fratty if that’s not your thing. UMass Amherst is also a bit of an outlier since it’s much bigger place than all the others – state flagship, etc. I wouldn’t call it rural, exactly. Amherst is a thriving college town. Population ~35-40 thousand. (Were you by any chance thinking about Amherst College rather than UMass Amherst? Same town, very different school.)

I think Pomona, Haverford and Vassar are all reaches-for-anyone school. (Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.)

54

UMass is ~ 1 mile from Amherst.
What led you to believe that Vassar may be too liberal?

55

Pomona is hard to get into, but such a great place to be premed. Don’t count yourself out.

56

@culaccino

Maybe look at St Olaf if you’re looking for merit? Their med school placement record is excellent. About 3K undergrads, no Greek life, more politically moderate than many LACs, about 40 minutes from Minneapolis/St Paul. Their merit tops out at half of cost of attendance (58K last year)

I wouldn’t say it’s diverse, most LACs aren’t, but their % of Pell Grant students is better than many.

Macalester’s merit topped at 20K last year. It’s definitely not preppy, might be too politically liberal for you, smaller student body at about 2K, but right in St Paul, about 7 miles from the airport and its urban location combined with a fairly self contained campus makes it fairly unique among LACs.

Case Western (about 5-6K undergrad) has a few full tuition merit scholarships by separate application and merit scholarships up to 30K with no separate application. Deadline may have passed already - check! It also has a BS/MD program that might be of interest to you. It is fairly diverse (high % Asian and pretty good socioeconomic balance). Obviously urban, near medical centers, and not excessively PC.

Wash U is similar size to Case Western, in the suburban outskirts of St Louis but accessible to the center of the city by light rail. Also has merit scholarships up to full tuition by separate application - very competitive but worth a look.

57

I had the same reaction to F&M for you as @porcupine98. Really lovely school, great pre-med, but the preppy/Greek part doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for.

58

@porcupine98 @gardenstategal @mamaedefamilia @preppedparent @CrewDad

Ok, F&M is off the list, as well as CMK. College towns do sound great, but I’ve lowkey lived in a suburb all my life and I feel like a school would have to be near an urban area if I want to justify moving thousands of miles away, but thank you anyways!

I’m pretty sure I got the impression Vassar was super SJW by student reviews in niche, maybe unigo. I could look again to make sure.

St. Olafs–40 minutes seems a bit far, but everything else sounds pretty good. I think I’ll add Mac to my list of applications; the school seems great and as a huge fan of planes, the proximity to the airport settles it. I just checked Case Western, and the merit deadline is Jan 15. I’ll consider the school because I don’t have to apply in December (I’m getting application burn out this month). As for WUSTL, my mom actually convinced me to apply a couple weeks ago :slight_smile:

Oh shoot I really didn’t want to apply to more reaches, although Pomona and Haverford both sound great. This will be a struggle…

Perhaps I’ll cut down on the schools I’m applying to that are non-LACs. Honestly speaking, several of the schools on that list are only there because I dislike having what-ifs, even though my current impressions of those schools are leaning negatively.

And–I know this is repetitive–thanks again for the much appreciated advice!

59

It shares science departments with two other schools:

http://www.kecksci.claremont.edu/

60

Lewis & Clark seems an obvious suggestion, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet. Located in Portland, no Greek life, very strong in the life sciences, and a nice campus.