<p>I'm trying to find some college recommendations for a junior friend of mine to look into. She's looking for a school with a strong science/math program (primarily chemistry, though any science will work) that offers some decent financial aid.</p>
<p>Some preferences:
Locations: Not Washington/Lousiana/Mississippi/Oregon areas, will go out of country, primarily to Turkey
Size: Any size, prefers smaller but will go to a larger school if it has an honors college</p>
<p>harvard</p>
<p>need more info</p>
<p>MIT and Caltech might be the best places for undergraduate sciences in the entire world! But they might not be her cup of tea at all…</p>
<p>Thanks, guys. I’ll send the names along since I’m not entirely sure what she’ll think of them. Our school has sent a few people to those three schools, who all seem pretty happy.</p>
<p>About to edit the first post, hopefully with more information.</p>
<p>EDIT: Whoops, can’t.</p>
<p>Anyway, as far as what kind of student she is, which may help for the caliber of college: pretty good grades, taking about 7-8 APs in high school, not many ECs or community service. Mostly, she’s an academic person. Her weaknesses are mostly in English/history/economics, but she’s really strong in math/science. (She’ll be in Calc III senior year, with AP Chem and AP Physics.)</p>
<p>She really doesn’t have much preference about anything in college (something which I bet will change pretty soon), but my impression is that she’d be better at a smaller college, or somewhere where she may have a few classes with >30 people. Her parents aren’t big on letting her travel outside of the US, and I think she’ll cave in to that eventually; I believe the furthest she’d end up going is just to the east coast. She’s big on the ivy league name, as well, but she needs a ton of financial aid to get anywhere.</p>
<p>Cornell or maybe Princeton or Dartmouth if she wants Ivy League. Consider Harvey Mudd for a great general science/math education at an ‘LAC’. Olin is great, small, and nearly free!
Depending on major: Cooper Union! Columbia, Duke, CMU, Rice, Case Western Reserve…</p>
<p>for LACs, Scripps, Colorado College, and Pomona are all fairly strong in the science department, especially, I think, CC for Chemistry. (Pomona’s strong and prestigious all over and difficult to get into, but it is a good choice for a reach.)</p>
<p>BTW, why doesn’t she want Oregon? I live there, and if you feel like posting it, I’d like to know what she’s got against my home state. If she was okay with OR and Washington, or for anyone else looking for small LACs with good science programs, I’d suggest Willamette U, Reed C, or Whitman C. Whitman’s in Eastern Washington, so it’s a lot drier, if she doesn’t want the rain. After all, a lot of Oregon is desert.</p>
<p>Thanks for those!</p>
<p>(Let me say here that I personally like Oregon. Been there tons and tons of times, and think it’s a pretty place. At least I’m used to the desert parts.) I think her problem with it is it’s proximity to Washington; she has family there that she dislikes quite a bit, and I think she’s worried that if she lives that close to WA, she’ll have to deal with them more. Or something like that. Maybe she just has a personal vendetta against Oregon!</p>