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<p>Considering the incentives placed in front of pre-meds – need a high GPA, need to spend time doing pre-med extracurriculars in addition to time spent on classes and labs – perhaps it is no surprise that pre-meds may have a less-than-complimentary reputation.</p>
<p>Makes you wonder about who actually ends up becoming the next generation of physicians.</p>
<p>Stanford, MIT, UChicago, Duke are probably the first that come to mind. Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore if you’re into liberal arts schools. </p>
<p>Duke, no…not really (intellectual climate not really conducive to the intensity you see at the other 3. Duke is honestly more like a “happier” more laid back version of places like NU and JHU IMHO. It’s known for the “overall” experience, not an “IIvy League” intensity education, especially when you look at science courses. Duke appears to me like a more rigorous version of Vanderbilt. They are very similar schools), but better than most. Everyone knows that Stanford, Chicago, and MIT. I understand why it would come to mind, but perhaps it shouldn’t. It’s as selective as those, but the intensity is not there quite yet I don’t think. It’s not the place you to if you want the intensity of the top Ivy Leagues, but I suppose it would compare quite well to some of the middle or lower Ivies academically (It’s like a happier, more selective version of some of those). In general, it’s primarily known as a very vibrant campus, with a great social life, and solid academics. There is at least some innovation in teaching that I credit Duke for trying to implement on a reasonable scale. So in that sense, it’s doing better than most selective schools. </p>
<p>Excellent analysis of Duke bernie12. </p>
<p>this has been very informative discussion for someone who majored in chemistry 40 years ago. too bad the general esteem with which the pre-meds are held has not improved. do science majors still refer to many pre-meds as “throats,” as in sooner cut your throat than look at you?</p>
<p>@jkeil911: I don’t think they’re cut-throat so much as they are “weasels” (that perhaps bring down the environment in certain science courses. I know I started to take much more difficult courses just for the sake of reaching a more stimulating environment that would go untouched by the influence of that crowd), as in students who will do any maneuver to keep the GPA high (grade grub, stick to “easy” science classes and instructors, etc.). I’ve observed some soft instances of cut-throat behavior. For example, one of the 2 very difficult organic chemistry instructors at Emory grades on a curve (because exam averages are low), so you actually notice that most people study alone or with very best friends or significant others. In my organic chemistry course, which was probably more difficult, it was different because there was a set grading scale and a bonus point system (bonus point quizzes and problems would be done in class. They were tough, so the points would go straight to help exam scores, except the very difficult final). In my class (which was actually more diverse and a higher than normal percentage of non-premeds and even non-chemistry majors), even the A students would study in groups together. There was more a spirit of collaboration among everyone because you never needed to fear someone taking your spot on the curve. </p>
<p>As for the weasle and “soft throat” behavior: The medical schools promote this (again, “bird that sees shiny thing” admissions policy) by looking primarily at grades and MCAT (which they of course say are the best predictors of success in their introductory courses, which aren’t that good anyway. Better undergraduate institutions do the counterparts that are offered in the UG curriculum better…at least if you assume the goal is for students to master content knowledge AND to be able to apply the material. Medical education in the first 2 years at most places has already been called out as crap by many research studies and forums. It’s apparently like the crap most biology depts are scolded for, but with a more unbearable amount of content) with no regard to the actual rigor of the major or curriculum. If you go to a selective school, your chances of doing better than normal (maybe not good enough to get into a very top tier med. school, but good enough to get in somewhere) on the MCAT are high because you already test well (especially multiple choice). All that is left to do is to play the game to get the GPA to be competitive (the admissions scheme does not really permit risk taking or students pushing themselves to higher than average levels with respect to the institution). </p>
<p>Some would claim that a rigorous course load should result in better MCAT and to some extent it does (like the state of biology education dictates that many/most biology majors will perform poorly, and they do relative to those in other majors. Some of this is because many students know that biology education at many schools sort of resembles HS type of education and thus is not very rigorous, so they can rack up A’s and cover the bases of the MCAT; I.E. the students perhaps on the whole are not that good and naive in the first place and certainly are not into learning problem solving and the process of science so much as the “facts”), but the extra couple of points will not save you if the GPA slips below 3.4-3.5 (which is why many engineers with even decent MCATs have trouble getting in even if they have decent interpersonal skills. The stats. play into med. school rankings, so ultimately they want selectivity to increase every year in terms of them, they don’t care about how good the students actually are or how they got the numbers as long as it didn’t involve like abuse of summer courses…). Also, while the MCAT does test higher order cognitive skills, it does so in a multiple choice format. In some senses, I would expect that it limits the advantage that someone in a more hardcore/problem solving oriented major gets because exams in physics, chemistry, engineering, English, etc, unlike biology, while involving critical thinking, do not usually give as much exams that are multiple choice or “canned” short answers (short answers where you regurgitate a problem type, what you read in the text or a power point slide). After you’ve been a problem/critical analysis oriented major for some time, multiple choice, fill in the blank, and canned short answer may actually tick you off. I for one, after a while, started to overthink on multiple choice exams in some biology classes (because I was basically a chemistry major); Instead of just putting the answer that was presented on the powerpoint or whatever, I tended to think of potential scenarios in which at least one other could be true (and could often think of those cases as the questions were often intentionally vague or wordy so as to be interpreted in several ways). KInd of like: “assuming this, the answer is b), but assuming the other scenario we learned or that I know about, a)”. It really annoyed me…</p>
<p>Anyway, if there were a free response portion on the MCAT that emphasized problem solving in each of the science sections, I bet the gaps between biology majors and the other depts. would grow wider (in favor of the others). Medical schools did this to themselves. I am actually convinced that many graduate students in biological sciences who would not make the cut for medical school may be more “apt” in science. They often just took too many risks, which landed them in the “non-competitive” column. Also, the thinking skills they learned from taking those “risks” are perhaps best used elsewhere. I can’t imagine a person genuinely into problem solving and thinking creatively in science tolerating the medical school curriculum at most places that well. Many good undergraduate courses require greater depth of thought than those courses. The volume of memorization needed to do well in med. school on the other hand, I imagine is crushing to someone who does not do well or care for rote memorization or fact learning with limited context or mechanistic understanding. On the other hand, I imagine many pre-meds probably would not like the openness and ambiguity of exam prompts in more difficult undergraduate and graduate courses (I know we have a cell biology class where the typical pre-meds go to the instructor that is pure lecture slides and memorization tests and the pre-grad and pre-MD.Ph.D caliber students go to the other instructor who does student centered learning and writes open-ended exam questions that come from seemingly random research paper abstracts. I, of course took the latter. Needless to say, that the latter instructor gets maybe 2/3 the enrollment of the other guy when he teaches. Usually it starts of full and then once students find out that class is not lecture based, they start dropping like flies. Upwards to 30 of 70 drop within the add/drop/swap period). It is clear that the science students seem split into two different camps that think in entirely different ways about learning. One likes the nice predictable lecture path, and the others can at least tolerate ambiguity. I have to wonder if it would be any different if medical schools were not so “strict” so to speak. Would more hardcore pre-meds become more open to “more risky” (you know for them) pedagogical approaches or are many just pre-programmed (as in, it’s a personality type/orientation toward academics that basically says that the academics are mainly an obstacle/chore, a means to an end) to take the secure or safe path to success even if not really required. </p>
<p>it’s good to hear you’re finding more weasels than throats. The throats worried me. They were usually among the best students in the class, but that wasn’t good enough. They had to ascertain that no one but them would do well on any important assessment. Theft and sabotage were not unheard of.</p>
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This is the biggest bunch of hogwash I’ve ever read. You’re going on stereotypes rather than first-hand experience which you don’t have. Duke is just as rigorous as all those schools you’ve mentioned; its students wouldn’t do so well on the MCAT and LSAT if it wasn’t. Duke is a better feeder than NU or Hopkins into the nation’s elite law schools and medical schools.</p>
<p>Pre Med and Economics are insanely difficult at Duke from what I’ve heard from people who have gone there from my high school. A lot of them wished they would have just gone to UCLA instead where they could have stayed at the top of the curve. Ha!</p>
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<p>Agree with Alexandre. This looks like a pretty solid list of top LACs and universities, although I might be inclined to add UCSD, USC, and perhaps Wake Forest.</p>
<p>Others have argued that the main value of an Ivy league education is in terms of connections. There are now several universities capable of offering those same connections which are not Ivy league schools, including Duke, Stanford, and others. This makes perfect sense when one considers that the U.S. has over 300 million people, and American universities have applicants from all over the world. Not everyone was able to go to an Ivy league school, so they had to go to different ones. And now, we have dozens of excellent universities in the U.S. as a result.</p>
<p>Whoa!! Where did you go? Again, the worst I’ve seen is a lack of collaboration, maybe cheating( common at elite schools and among honors students anyway), and perhaps students hoping that the exam mean is lower than normal when they fall short (there is always the assumption that if they did bad, everyone had to have done poorly). And pre-meds are almost always the “best students” if we define a good student as someone who is relatively smart and will do exactly what is necessary to make the best grade. Basically, if we just leave it at a high school definition of “good/best student” then maybe it’s the case. Other science students like grades, but not as much, and can get bored (as opposed to thrilled) when they are not challenged by material. Like I would not expect a math or physics major to go and experiment with regurgitation oriented biology classes and have most of them enjoy it enough so as to put their heart and soul into making a perfect grade. If they don’t enjoy it, they’ll more than likely allow for themselves to get a less than perfect grade. The pre-meds on the other hand will suck it up, grade-grub/do what is necessary to get that result even if they don’t deserve it based on their actual scores simply because they have to. On the other hand, to show you that pre-meds are often not “the best” in what I would believe to be the college/university level standard. </p>
<p>I remember taking physical biology, and it starting with 20 people, with 5 being graduate students, 5 of us being non-premed/pre-med chem/physics/math undergraduates and the other 10 being biology or neuroscience undergraduates who were all pre-med. When the first problem set came out and involved a significant portion of calculus based physics/some differential equations and was somewhat intensive, all 10 of them dropped which was no surprise because none of them had taken any form of a calculus based physics class (though most of them, ironically, knew or had taken calculus, so they could have learned it really quickly. Plus, there were 2 problem solving sessions a week that helped dramatically, but no…). What was even more shocking about them dropping is that the course did not even have exams, it was simply that the “p-sets were too time-consuming for them”, you know…as if pre-meds are the only people with a “rigorous” courseload and a social life/EC life to maintain. Amazing! The fact is, the class required a good command of math/computational skills, and an ability to learn independently and think creatively at times. They aren’t pre-programmed to do that I guess. They probably expected a typical biology class that did a very light treatment of the physical basis of some biological phenomenon (as, I don’t know, an neural science class would have) and for problem sets to basically be things that could easily be done by copying notes, powerpoints, or from books(of which none was assigned, but several recommended). However, they should have known because it was based in the physics department. They tend to be “good students” in predictable environments where the instructor basically finds ways of telling them exactly what to do and how to do it. Open-endedness scares the hell out of many of them, even as a junior or senior at a university (at that point, you would think that independent learning is doable and even welcomed).</p>
<p>And while the examples I cite are indeed anecdotal, I am not exaggerating. I’m fairly sure that such stereotypical (for biology, neuroscience, and psychology pre-meds) behaviors are observed to some extent at many institutions, especially selective ones. As we all know, humans, especially doctors, are perfect, never fall short, and never deal with ambiguity, and always have someone telling them what to do. </p>
<p>Bernie, what really is your frame of reference here? Your experience with all this “knowledge” of other schools? </p>
<p>@looking forward and @ennisthemenace: Pre-med there is certainly harder than UCLA. Even Emory and Vanderbilt’s are, but the science courses are not at the same level as those 3 and is more in line with JHU and NU (if not a little easier). Duke also has the softest grading curve of those three (their graduating GPA suggests that the humanities and social sciences have a bigger inflation than at some other schools. Some of the sciences are on the typical B-/B curve, maybe it’s not as common as it is at JHU, NU, and some other schools that grade below Harvard). You can go look at biology course websites and chemistry course websites/materials and compare them. The other 3 do things differently. Also, Duke students have extraordinarily high SAT/ACT scores (which predicts some success on MCAT) along with higher grades (because of a Harvard like grade inflation. Their grade inflation is even higher than NU and WashU, and significantly higher than Hopkins). Is Duke rigorous, yes, but in comparison to places like Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, Yale, MIT, just no…It’s definitely harder than UCLA, but not much harder than say, Berkeley, if it’s harder at all. The other schools on the other hand, can take the intensity of Duke’s science curriculum for a ride, and that’s not surprising, because I know that even at Emory, the chemistry instructors are tougher (me and a couple of friends their shared material and they admitted to not really even understand what our organic chemistry is for example). It of course beats us in biology (though some courses and instructors are comparable, just not many. I suppose our neuroscience program gives theirs a run for the money, but not until recently, I don’t think…) and all of the physical and computational sciences are of course more rigorous. The other programs (MIT and them) are harder all around. It’s not really fair to compare it to UCLA. I’ve always heard that UCLA is rigorous and then went and took a look at their courses and actually found that Emory was significantly tougher in science (the classes, in general, are flat out harder content wise, and we use a similar, if not slightly harder grading curve in pre-med core courses) on the whole (except biochemistry, that class was better than ours) all the while being at the bottom of the top 20 on the rigor scale in my opinion. Duke is more like in the middle somewhere. Grade inflation, and high MCATs get students into great medical schools, not rigorous training. if that were the case, MIT students should have a much lower threshold than Duke students, but they don’t. Med. schools likely care little about the rigor of the program so much as the prestige (or perhaps, the perception of rigor much less than actual) of it and getting the highest credentialed students from each school. Like, if a Duke student had a high GPA from maybe not so tough courses, but a very high MCAT because they studied and tested well as expected, and then got a Fulbright, Goldwater, or Rhodes, would you deny them admissions that easily? They are likely well accomplish for reasons that may have nothing to do with the curriculum. </p>
<p>Also, UCLA does exceptionally well for its caliber of students in terms of getting students into med. school which means that it probably actually enhances the ability of the student. For the more selective schools, it’s hard to tell whether or not it’s the school itself or the brilliance/talent of the students. It’s usually some combination of both, but usually the school isn’t always contributing as much to academic improvement so much as giving them resources to enhance their extracurricular life and stand out in an app. pool (which again, their brilliant, so will do anyway…). I mean, I’m serious though, go and look if you don’t believe me. Go look at some of say, Harvard and MIT’s “pre-med” and biology courses and go find Duke’s counterparts and tell me if they look identical in caliber. They won’t be. Duke’s science programs are simply “rigorous enough” or “more rigorous than normal”, but not the same intensity as many of those places. Keep in mind that the other places are also intentionally training many future graduate students and engineers, and thus their curriculum sometimes are just much less “pre-med friendly” as they call it. Like seriously, Life Sciences 1a at Harvard looks more like one of the advanced/intermediate courses at Duke and similar schools. MIT’s intro. biology is perhaps slightly more similar, but then the advanced courses are just insane. Organic chemistry at both is crazy (pre-meds have to take 17 and 27 at Harvard. I thought 17 was easier than our medium and harder instructors, but 27 is off the charts. Let’s not talk about chem 20/30 which is not geared toward pre-meds. MIT’s is somewhere between those. Duke’s is just not comparable at all to either). These patterns don’t only exist for MIT and Harvard, but several other selective schools. They bring rigor to levels that go far beyond the purpose of training pre-meds. Also, those other schools have a larger distribution of freshman/beginner physics and math courses where most students at Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc would not actually end up in the lowest one (the pre-med version at Harvard is Physical Sciences 2 and 3 I believe, and it’s definitely tougher than Duke’spre-med version, which I admit is pretty tough. Let’s not discuss MIT. And Stanford, Yale, and Chicago will be more similar to MIT because they don’t have the “integrated” science thing going on like Harvard). </p>
<p>Asking what is the source of your knowledge. And the “why” behind it. You graduated from Emory. Do you have experience with these other schools? What is the basis for all these statements? </p>
<p>@lookingforward: Oh, I’m just into science education and potentially teaching it at the collegiate level. I was kind of interested to find out what other institutions were doing for many of their chemistry and biology courses because that was my background. I mainly wanted to see how good it was(I thought that biology, in general was not that good, and it isn’t based upon what I’ve seen) at Emory (as in, was I getting the best biology training and I was not. Most are and were much, much better. Many places have moved beyond “keep the pre-meds happy or at least comfortable” mode and have moved more toward teaching using pbl or approaches that involve heavy emphasis of experimental methods in biology. Again, we have some instructors and a “suite” of courses like that, but it’s hardly pre-dominant. I feel like I learned a lot/meaningful analytical skills outside of lab because I took these courses. Had I had skipped them and took the others, I would have a head full of facts that would not last that long) vs. other places known to be good at biological sciences and chemistry. I found that many places were doing much better in the area of biological sciences, and that while, we could certainly improve in chemistry, we weren’t particularly bad at it even when compared to other schools in the top 20. It’s more of a “what could we do to improve the courses and what do they look like at other leading institutions”. I keep in touch with faculty members who I knew (the ones who I actually thought were good and were doing something innovative) at Emory, because they want to know too as there is an initiative to improve the undergraduate science education here. I also help one professor design his organic chemistry course (he is one of the difficult instructors who is looking to “revamp” his course so as to move into the direction that is more appealing to life science majors and those interested in things like chemical biology, biocatalysis, etc).</p>
<p>I just do the dirty work of looking up things for either inspiring that or contributing evidence to their “committee” meetings. I only looked at physics and math stuff out of curiosity to see exactly how bad we were compared to other places (and it’s pretty…bad, maybe only like 1/2 selective institutions were remotely at a similarly low caliber). As for my sources, the course websites (with assignments, exams, etc) and syllabi tell me so. Even if they are “old”, you can find out if the same instructor runs the course and if that is the case, it’s rare that an instructor (especially tenure track) will change their methods, so that signals that the course is likely the same as it was. However, things like magazines and literature based on things going on within various universities can hint at whether or not something is changing (like The Chronical is good to see what new trends are emerging in higher education and who is implementing them).</p>
<p>As for Duke, let me give the place some credit: I found out that Duke is actually trying very hard (it’s students are as bright as those at those places, it’s as well connected as those places, and its overall environment is as rich as say, Stanford’s). Its academics have come a long way indeed, especially when compared to other schools that have also been increasing in selectivity, but is not quite the level of those places just yet (again, I believe it resembles more so the schools that between 11-15 I guess. The other schools just have/had more of a culture of intensity, and the academics, especially, in science and math reflect it). I believe it actually will get to the level of those schools eventually, because it appears to be making a larger effort than many of the others to actually change their science/non-science education for the better. They don’t appear to be content, which is good. It also appears that they are one of the main schools who has actually gone up in intensity/innovation along with the increase in caliber of the student body. Looks like many schools use selectivity increases as a signal that everything is currently being done correctly and won’t do but so much to change academics, but it appears they are trying to enrich it even further which is more than I can say for most (perhaps even Emory. I know many faculty members do care and some innovative things have come out of that which are not common at other schools, but to change things on such a large school as Duke has is just plain difficult). So while I do not think they are as “intense” or perhaps even as rich of an academic experience as those schools (I think their social/EC environment makes perhaps a bigger contribution to their overall environment), it’s actually trying and is likely closer than many schools will ever be because the place just has a good outlook/attitude about its academic environment. However, I just wonder if it has the intellectual climate (like the others) to support too many further enhancements. They’ve always been having discussions about it, and I wonder if it plays a role. It definitely does at Emory, because even if faculty want change, students may love the status quo, especially those in the sciences. I feel like students at the very leading institutions actually ask for change or more than what they are getting. It’s hard to change when students (and even some faculty members who do not want to put much effort into teaching UGs) are content or even satisfied with how it currently works. Even experiments are prone to a fairly intense resistance. Places like Duke have improved so much, IMO, likely because the depts and faculty members probably have more “backbone” I would guess. It’s simply not easy to do what they’ve done. However, just because a place has improved a lot does not mean we have to say that its academics of all things is the same as Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Princeton, Yale, etc. Overall, undergraduate environment, perhaps academics are only one component to that, and it’s not like that element makes the same contribution to the environment at each of these schools. Like one doesn’t say, “look Caltech and Duke are ranked similar, so the level of academics or intensity must be similar”, no…USNWR mainly tells us “which of these schools is the best place to be”(where are the brightest students, richest campuses, highest graduating rates, “happiest”/“well compensated” faculty, best reputation, etc) and not “best and most rigorous academic environments” though there is some correlation, it’s obviously not perfect. </p>
<p>If you’re going to deny that Duke is on an “Ivy League level”, then the relative intensity of a few biology and chemistry courses (as determined by examining course syllabi and sample exams) is not very solid ground. Making these comparisons may be useful if you especially care about those courses, but I doubt even all 8 of the Ivies would meet the same “intensity” standards.</p>
<p>Actually, the content and rigor of the courses and curricula is an important factor in the “quality of undergraduate education”, but it is difficult to assess on a large scale (though bernie12 seems to have done so for a small selection of courses at a small selection of schools). Of course, any “ranking” between schools on the basis of this comparison can vary considerably based on different departments or courses.</p>
<p>Because of the difficulty of doing such comparisons on a large scale, this type of thing is rarely looked into in discussions about the “quality of undergraduate education”, or people tend to assume that more selective colleges have more content and rigor (while they can have more content and rigor due to better prepared incoming students, this is not always the case in bernie12’s findings).</p>
<p>@tk21769: What?! I never said that, I just said it wasn’t like those three (and the others that are similar) that that person mentioned! If I said it’s more like JHU, Northwestern, WashU, etc, then it’s definitely Ivy League level, just not HYPSMC level in my opinion, at least not the sciences. The Ivies don’t only comprise HYP! Do you not consider JHU, Northwestern, WashU Ivy League caliber? I actually think that the 3 are tougher than Penn, Brown, and Cornell for sciences. Northwestern, Penn, and Princeton do have an “Integrated Science Track” now, which is cool. I don’t think Duke has such a thing yet. However, it doesn’t matter, because those programs serve a very small niche of the student body in the sciences. anyway. </p>
<p>Also, when I rate “rigor”, I don’t mean by grades and class averages, I mean the cognitive skills/level required to complete exams. I’ll give an example by comparing organic chemistry 2 exams at Emory, Vanderbilt, and Berkeley: I would believe that the ranking for the set of exams I’m about to choose should be Emory> (but not by much, the gap in ochem 1 between this instructor and the Berkeley counterpart on the other hand…is huge!) Berkeley (I’ll choose a rigorous 112b instructor) >Vanderbilt (I’ll choose an instructor that gets a 3.0 quality and 2.1 difficulty rating on rmp. As in, this is a class that is only hard to students because the profs. suck, but does not actually require much higher level thinking, analytical skills, etc. I assume the one highly rated instructor they have would be more in line, even if not quite at the level):</p>
<p>Emory chem 222:
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42Bb3ZRZk5ISEthR1E/edit”>https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42Bb3ZRZk5ISEthR1E/edit</a>
Berkley chem 112b
<a href=“https://tbp.berkeley.edu/examfiles/chem/chem112B-sp05-mt2-Francis-soln.pdf”>https://tbp.berkeley.edu/examfiles/chem/chem112B-sp05-mt2-Francis-soln.pdf</a>
Vanderbilt 220b
<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Chemistry/Rizzo/Chem220b/Exam2K_S08.pdf”>http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Chemistry/Rizzo/Chem220b/Exam2K_S08.pdf</a></p>
<p>so if I had a bright prospective science major who liked tough problems and wanted to be challenged by the curriculum and instructor, who had no interest in pre-meds and wasn’t entirely focused on grades but would like to go to graduate school, what should I look for in the curriculum and syllabi of the 1st and 2nd year courses? Did I phrase that correctly?</p>
<p>Qualifyer/disclaimer: Again, this is just to show you how I rate the exam/assignment caliber. My school comparison course break downs would involve investigating each instructor in which course material is available and observing a pattern. I give those who don’t have materials who are rated highly with a low difficulty (as in are difficult, below 2.5 or so and quality above 4.0) rating the benefit of the doubt and would make them equal to that Emory instructor I show here (my instructor is actually a bit harder than this guy, for ochem 2 at least. Ochem 1 is more like a tie with different styles). </p>
<p>If I did this breakdown for these schools and this sequence, I remember it being kind of like: Emory=Berkeley>Vanderbilt. Emory gets dragged down because of the 2 weak instructors we have, and it appears that Vanderbilt only has one very highly rated organic instructor (whose materials are not available so I give them the benefit of the doubt). The 2-3 of 4 or 5 I’ve seen are indeed lower than most instructors at both of those schools. If I do say, intro. biology, it flips with Vanderbilt having an advantage and Emory and Berkeley tying for dead last (like far behind :(. Emory has like 3 particularly special or rigorous instructors that try interesting things, but one left unfortunately. At Vanderbilt, they all seem rigorous and the content just looks better IMO). </p>
<p>Which science? Some science majors will have minimal shared classes with pre-meds, at least at schools where there are separate (easier) versions of physics, chemistry, and math for biology majors and pre-meds, compared to the versions for physics, chemistry, and math majors. Biology majors will, however, encounter pre-meds frequently, since about half of those who apply to medical school are biology majors and much of the curriculum is the same (unless a non-pre-med biology major chooses the physics, chemistry, and math courses for those majors rather than the (easier) versions for biology majors and pre-meds).</p>
<p>However, assessing actual course rigor likely needs an expert in the subject to evaluate available on-line course materials and exams, similar to what bernie12 is doing.</p>