<p>I'm shocked that I even have to make this choice. I was set to go to Hopkins until the Ivy decisions came out. Yale is giving even better fin aid than Hopkins (although I could afford both packages) and Cornell gave me the opportunity to be a research scholar which would mean very good research opportunities and Columbia made me a 'Kluge Scholar' although I still don't know what that is. Alas, my heart still lies with Hopkins but I still feel torn...</p>
<p>What do you guys think I should do? Better yet, what would you guys do?</p>
<p>“Cornell produces more graduates that go on to become doctors than any other university. It also produces the largest number of graduates in the life sciences who continue for Ph.D. degrees, and the third highest number in science and engineering. Cornell students and faculty members have garnered 21 Nobel prizes.”</p>
<p>that also probably has something to do with the fact that cornell has the largest quantity of students, so really, relative to the student population at other schools those stats may be less significant. Just a thought.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think you have any bad options. Personally, I would make the decision based on fit and financial aid. Try to visit as many of the campuses as you can. They are all very different from each other in terms of feel and student life. For instance, if you are interested in the Arts, Yale might be the place to go. But if you are interested in outdoor fun, it would be hard to turn down Cornell.</p>
<p>That said, if you are interested in research, I would give the Presidential Scholarship serious consideration. It provides you with automatic access to top-notch research opportunities and faculty supervision from your first day at Cornell. You might even want to see if you can’t get in touch with some Cornell faculty members before you make your decision to see what they have to say.</p>
<p>As a Cornell partisan, I would also note that the Presidential Research Fellows program has a long history of producing very successful students. Goldwater Fellowships in the sciences were announced today, and Cornell tied with MIT for producing the most number of students. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that three of the four Cornell students were Presidential Research Scholars…</p>
<p>I would encourage you to contact the director of the Rawlings program, explain your situation, and see if you can’t speak to some potential faculty research advisers. They will best be able to give you a flavor as to what type of environment you can expect at Cornell.</p>
<p>If how you like a school environment/population does not matter at all, then I would probably choose Yale solely because of their grade inflation.</p>
<p>“Cornell produces more graduates that go on to become doctors than any other university”
As someone pointed out, Cornell has a large quantity of students. What is noteworthy is that a large percent of Cornell applicants are accepted to med schools, despite “grade deflation.”</p>
<p>However, none of that should really impact where you go to school. All of your choices are excellent, but quite different from one another and you need to find a place where you’ll be happy. I know that Columbia has a core curriculum and even as premed you’d be taking a foreign language, philosophy, etc. If you haven’t visited them, hopefully you can, as there’s definitely a different feeling between the schools. </p>
<p>Congrats on those wonderful acceptances and good luck in your decision.</p>
<p>I thought Hopkins had the best pre-med acceptance rate of them all. bump please. Want to study neuroscience or cellular and molecular bio or genetics if that helps</p>
<p>Top five pre-med schools are Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, and Duke.</p>
<p>Hopkins has a high raw acceptance rate, but they screen before allowing people to apply. Still, it is a very good pre-med school (along with Cornell and Columbia) just not quite at the level of those mentioned above.</p>
<p>Cornell does not screen. Any student who wishes to apply to medical school may do so and will receive a committee letter of recommendation if they follow the rules for submitting the appropriate forms, payment and completing an interview with the letter writter </p>
<p>Screening is probably used for gaining the pre-med committee letter of recommendation. So students at a school that screens can probably still apply, they just won’t have the committee letter of recommendation that most medical schools prefer (if not require).</p>
Hopkins refuses to give you a committee letter if they think you aren’t a strong applicant. Yale does not do this.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t that you specifically should be afraid of being screened (work hard, get a good GPA, you’ll be fine) - the problem is that screening inflates the acceptance rate. This is how Hopkins gets a 90% acceptance rate and Cornell more like 70%. Hopkins has that bottom 20% not even applying in the first place.</p>
<p>So Yale’s 90%+ acceptance rate, which includes the worst applicants coming out of Yale, is really impressive.</p>