I’ve been admitted to all these schools and I am supposed to visit all of them in two weeks. My favorite one is Schreyer because it’s an internationally ranked program and all the perks of being an honors student at Schreyer. I am interested in Biology and Neuroscience. I want to attend small classes if possible so I would be able to ask help to professors. I’d like to be involved in scientific research. I don’t want to spend all my days studying, I’d like to have time to workout, be involved in clubs but I am also looking for an atmosphere where learning is the number one priority. Also I am not a big partier. Finally, I hope for a strong culture of volunteering and philanthropy. Thank you for any opinion, advice, or anecdotes you may have!
Your goals and wants seem to align well with Rhodes. I can’t really speak of the other colleges on your list.
However, if the honors program at PSU is anything like the honors program I was in at large state university (genetics major), then many of the core science courses will not be of the honors variety. If you want small class sizes in your science courses, then make sure PSU honors college offers those courses at the honors levels. I suspect that you will take intro bio, chem, physics, etc classes and many other core science courses with the masses, but I could be wrong. If you’re looking for small classes and accessible faculty, I think you may find this occasionally at PSU honors, but this will be the norm at a LAC like Rhodes.
As for undergraduate scientific research, this can be done well at both LACs and large universities like PSU. Keep in mind that bio professors at PSU are there for their research. Obtaining grants is priority number 1 for them; teaching undergrads is way down their list of priorities but you are another set of hands in the lab. At LACs, teaching undergrads is priority number one and having students perform research in their labs is a large part of this priority for some LACs.
I know Rhodes has great opportunities for undergrad bio research on campus and the top students can also perform research at St. Judes (about a 10 minute drive from the campus). For the other smaller schools on your list, make sure the students can engage in “real” research and not just cookbook stuff like is done in lab courses attached to classes.
I really love Schreyer because of all the perks and how prestigious it is but you just made me realized that it may not be the best school for me because as an international student I need the attention of my professors since I’ll need some time to adjust to the language (just a couple of months).
But I also think that whenever I’d need some help I could ask the other students of Schreyer to help me. I have talked to some of them on the Facebook group of the 2019 class and they all look like great people.
I know a former Penn State prof. He told me that Schreyer students GET the attention of Penn State professors because they are presumed to be exceptional whereas the run of the mill Penn State undergrad wouldn’t get professor’s time of day. I think that’s far and away your best option.
I also have a Schreyer’s grad working for me and he is just brilliant.
I do think Schreyer is my best option! Compared to the price of the other schools on my list and the level of education it provides Schreyer is definitely far ahead. If what you said is true @ClassicRockerDad then I shouldn’t worry anymore about the prof’s attention. I also plan on living in Atherton Hall which is the home of many teachers and the dean himself has a meet with the students every week.
Wheaton would be the choice of being a “big fish in a smaller pond” - it’s more relaxed and it doesn’t have a reputation for being a party school, plus being between Providence and Boston it’s well-located. Its Biology department is solid as is neuroscience and the student body is friendly. I don’t know if they have an agreement with a hospital for their biology/neuroscience students. Student research is supported, ask if there are funds to help you present at undergraduate conferences and whether students have presented there in the past couple years.
Trinity would be like Wheaton on steroids… actually, Trinity has a lot of prep school students, so its student body tends to be competitive and wealthy but you’re near a “gritty” town if you want to volunteer, plenty of opportunities there. THe students are very, very good. Classes will be small. It’s got a reputation as being the most conservative of the NESCAC colleges and quite a party school. It’s also well considered for biology.
Lake Forest is a mix between Wheaton and Trinity. It’s less good academically than Wheaton and its student body is preppier (though not as preppy as Trinity’s, it’s one of the preppiest colleges in the Midwest), with a reputation for med school preparation. It’s located near a very large lake, in a wealthy suburb (unlike Hartford) and like Rhodes it has an agreement with a great hospital.
Rhodes is more Southern. Its internship program with the St Jude’s children hospital make it very attractive to premeds, so there’s a lot of competition there, but the program is solid. There’s an important Greek life but it’s not residential (Greeks don’t own houses so they don’t “rule” a place). You may want to investigate what it means for the college culture. Academically it’s excellent. It’s located in a great city - the area of Memphis are really neat, but some areas in Memphis are among the most segregated and poorest of any American city.
At all four, you’ll enjoy small classes - freshman seminars with 16-18 students, classes with 24 students or even fewer depending on the topic, even a “large intro class” is unlikely to go over 40. You’ll get the professor’s attention, you’ll easily be able to get into meaningful research quickly because there are no grad students, you’ll be part of a close-knit community.
Northeastern and Schreyer are different from these four.
First, they’ll have large classes. No way around that.
Since you’re not in Honors at Northeastern, most of your first-year and 2nd year classes will be large - some with 100 students, many with 40 students, few with fewer than 24 (this is something you can ask - ask to be put in touch with a student, and ask him/her his/her 1st year schedule, and how many students there were per class: 20-24? fewer? 35-40? 100?). The professors divide their time between undergraduate and graduate students, and graduate students have priority, while research has priority over either one. Because the school is larger and has graduate students, there are many research opportunities, although you’ll be ranked after graduate students and scholars to get to anything meaningful. I’m not sure of the support for student research. The level of classes will be quite high. Your classmates will be very competitive (as competitive as at Trinity) and very preprofessional-oriented (ie., work hard to get a good grade to get a good co-op position, not because learning is so much fun. Of course, considering their credentials, most do find learning easy and interesting, and Scholars are the most likely to be like this.) Co-ops do not count against your OPT time, unlike CPT internships. Most are attracted to Northeastern for its co-op program. This can be a great advantage if you want to go to med school, because you’ll be able to intern at many hospitals in Boston, which gives you a leg up in med school admissions. However it means the students there are at college to get a job and view their classes with that optics (not sure it’s yours, based on what you said above). It also makes them very focused and competitive. Finally: BOSTON!
Schreyer is about 4,000 students, so it creates a community, but it’s part of a campus of 48,000 students and about 32,000 undergraduates. Just the undergraduate population is twice that of Northeastern and at least ten times any of the other colleges. It’s HUGE. You have to take a bus to go around campus. It means a huge library with lots and lots of books and archives and about anything, but also very large classes. The big fish/small pond effect may still be in play though, because your stats are likey significantly higher than the average student’s (ie., it likely wouldn’t be as competitive as Trinity or Northeastern or Rhodes in the “regular” classes). However, Schreyer students are amazing so they’d be there for a high level of intellectual passion. There’s quite a high cut off to stay in Schreyer, so the students work very assiduously - they have to be in the top 20% of every class they take so it puts some pressure on them(on the other hand, it’s the same requirement for med school, so…) You’d have the large school/graduate students priority effect like at Northeastern, but greatly mitigated by the Schreyer Scholar “card”, which means you’d automatically get everyone’s attention and wouldn’t be considered “second best” to grad students, while getting priority over “regular” students. 1st and 2nd year Schreyer classes will be smaller - check how many there are each semester and how large they are, but also how large your “regular” classes would be. I suppose that you’d have 2 Schreyer classes per semester and 3 “regular” classes per semester, perhaps 3/2, so ask about that (choice of offerings, size of classes, ratio of Schreyer class to “regular” class). You’d also have to check how the Schreyer status helps for getting into meaningful research (ie., not scutwork, not rinsing out beakers…), whether there are shadowing and internship opportunities for you in State College, and how easy it is to avoid parties yet still have fun on weekends for a non-partyer.
(I think this must be one of the longest posts I’ve ever posted, I hope you read it all, as well as students faced with similar choices!)