What can you actually afford? Have you had a financial conversation with your parents, and what did they say? What is your long term career goal? To add to your list, Haverford has strong molecular-cell bio.
As you dig deeper into the departmental pages of your current target schools, be sure to look at the specific courses and/or course descriptions. Most will be available on the schools’ site.
The course descriptions, along with the graduation requirements for your specific major,
will provide you with a better idea of what’s really on offer.
Other things to research –
What types of academic options exist? Are the academics co-operative or competitive?
Do the academics emphasize experiential, or theoretical learning?
What are the internal attitudes re: undergrad research?
Can you easily integrate courses between departments (interdisciplinary), or double major?
Do they have major-specific advising?
Any other surrounding schools that make up a sanctioned educational consortium?
Any other majors/minors on offer that might be of interest you?
Are there a mandatory number general education (CORE/GE) requirements?
Any special programs such as accelerated degrees, or study abroad available?
Based on your criteria, I concur that Tufts would be a solid option.
If you are accepted into the U Washington honors, or receive their merit award, anything to get the OOS cost to a manageable level, then it might be comparable to some of the UC’s.
A few other schools (in addition to UCB, UCAL, UCSD, UCD) to look at might include:
Pomona, JHU, Cornell, Tulane, Brown, Brandeis and Case Western. If Tulane and Case look good to you, be sure to apply under their Early Action options, which gives you their highest consideration for generous merit aid.
Good luck.
That’s true, but the lack of a specific major in that program doesn’t mean that there aren’t resources for research in that area. It could either mean that the professors who are doing research in that area don’t teach enough undergrad courses for a specialization in that area OR it could simply mean that the department decided not to bifurcate its majors and instead just let them choose whatever electives they want.
It won’t, not necessarily. A lot of schools would rather their undergrads go to another department for their graduate degree, and frankly, it’s usually a good idea. Attending a different department for your PhD expands your network and teaches you different ways of thinking and approaches to research.
While getting published is a nice cherry on top, you should know that most undergrads actually don’t get published in top scientific journals and that’s not expected of you to get into graduate school. Most undergrads really aren’t in a lab long enough to get something published after the time they know enough useful stuff to even approach making a contribution to a paper (usually around junior year). It’s more of a luck-and-timing thing than anything else: you have to enter the exact right lab at the exact right time to have a shot. While getting published is not a bad goal to have - and can definitely improve your prospects for graduate school and for national fellowships - the more fundamental goal when picking a lab is where can I get the best basic foundational education in the enterprise of research in my chosen field?
There’s really no central place to do this; it’s going to be a longer process of investigating individual departments. But you don’t need to find the department with the best undergraduate biology research, because relative comparisons like that are hard to make and there probably exists no one “best” department for this. Instead, you need to find a department that is a good fit for you specifically and your interests and needs. The number of publications a department turns out and the funding they get for research may not be an indication of how good their undergrad research is. I know of some really excellent university departments with excellent research and funding whose professors would largely rather avoid undergraduates if they could and focus all of their energies on their grad students and postdocs (and writing grants and papers, of course).
The most important thing in undergrad research is having a mentor who is willing to put in the time and effort to train you well and an atmosphere in which you are encouraged to ask questions and seek out support from the professors in your department. You’re looking for professors who say they like to mentor undergrads, places that boast about the percentage of their undergrads that participate in research, places with rigorous coursework that is focused on teaching the foundations but also about cutting-edge areas in the field, etc.
If you can visit schools, one great thing to do is arrange ahead of time to visit the laboratory of a professor and meet with that professor to chat about their research and how their lab works. You can also ask if you can be connected with one or two of their undergrad students to talk about the process of doing research there. Even if you can’t visit, though, you can reach out via email to professors and ask if you can have a phone call or Skype meeting about their research because you’re interested in doing research there. Flip through the course catalog, too.
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That said, I do think that Michigan is an excellent recommendation; even being a very large research university a lot of their undergrads get solid research experiences and they make training undergrads in research a priority. If you are from California Michigan might be a pricy OOS option, though. Duke is another place I have heard that undergrads do a lot of research and have good relationships with their professors, and of course they have strengths in biomedicine. Johns Hopkins is another place with crazy research coming out the wazoo, and I know undergrads do research there - but I don’t know what the atmosphere is like for undergrads trying to do research; I’ve heard it’s kind of stressful and competitive.