<p>I'm a west coast student looking for a college with a strong bio program. How do Stanford, Brown, and Columbia stack up? I want to major in marine or environmental biology for undergrad, and will be either applying to medical school or working on a ph.d in marine biology after college. For me, an ideal college would have programs for undergraduate research, small classes, few TA's, and plenty of advising and assistance for med school/ grad school placement. A diverse and free-thinking student body could be a plus.</p>
<p>Concerns about each school that I'd like adressed:
-I've heard that Stanford's med school placement is weak compared to many of the ivy leagues, is this a concern?
-A good number of Brown's premeds are PLME. I most likely won't be PLME since I'm not 100% sure I want to be a doctor yet (4 more years of soul-searching should help) and because the acceptance rate is abysmally low (5%). Does advising and placement for non-PLME premeds suffer because of the PLME? Do a lot of Brown students who weren't PLME apply to medical school?
-Columbia's core curriculum is supposed to be a sure-fire GPA killer. Is it as hard as everyone says it is?</p>
<p>I'm considering visiting all three campuses. Is it worthwhile to visit a college during the summer, since the campus would most likely be deserted, or is it better to wait for the fall when everything is in full swing?</p>
<p>hmm....i dunno much about marine biology undergraduate ranking....but brown and columbia are pretty cold and the time zone difference may make it difficult for you to keep up with personal friends and family. Also, Stanford is on the west coast....closer to water? id think thats a plus for marine biology but i dunno....</p>
<p>regarding your concerns about PLME and its effects on Brown's overall premed experience:
in any given class year there are around 55-60 PLME students, out of ~2000 kids in the general population. I don't have statistics, but from the math you can probably sense that traditional pre-meds outnumber the PLMEs by a lot. while it's true PLMEs get special program advising, these are separate from the (phenomenal, from what I hear) general advising and pre-professional resources available to the rest of Brown's pre-med population. a commonly quoted fact is that Brown is almost always in the top 5 for placement into medical schools (along with harvard and princeton and yale and whatnot), so obviously there isn't much of a detrimental effect here...</p>
<p>I'd also like to second the other poster's opinion that your description of an ideal school really matches up with Brown's philosophy and environment! I'd definitely recommend checking them out</p>
<p>I guess the default option for me to apply SCEA to Stanford and RD to the other two. The real reason I ask though is that I'm weighing the pros and cons of possibly applying ED to Brown, which would really help my otherwise low chances of getting into any one of these top-tier schools.</p>
<p>"Brown consistently ranks among the top five colleges in the nation in the percentage of its applicants accepted to medical school, and these impressive records are similar in other areas of graduate study."</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn't visit during the summer if you can avoid it. You can't get a good feel for a school during the summer.</p>
<p>I think the real question is how interested are you in marine biology. It's the kind of thing, obviously, where some schools are going to be strong and some schools are going to have practically nothing.</p>