My son toured several colleges this summer and his favorites were Vassar and Tufts. He wants to apply ED to one of them and plans on being premed. He knows that premed will be tough anywhere. However, which school has happier premed students? Which school will be least stressful? Thank you!
Don’t know about Vassar, but Tufts is very community oriented; not cut-throat as a lot of pre-meds are. People help each other and don’t sabotage each other. No one talks about grades or how well they did. They work together.
Vassar is not cutthroat at all- all the things @tolstoy2 mentions are true for Vassar (and lots of other schools as well).
As you probably know, Tufts has an early admit option for really strong students, which (if he tries to go for it) might add to the general sense of stress. Vassar isn’t a stressful sort of place, but it is academically intense. Is it at all possible for your son to revisit the 2 schools / sit in on a class / stay over in a dorm during term time?
@collegemom3717 He definitely plans to at least visit the colleges (and hopefully sit in on a class) before he applies ED. We visited both this summer and didn’t see many students, so I want him to make sure that he “fits” in the school that he applies to. Thank you!
good plan, @xray123 - both Vassar and Tufts have very distinct personalities- and a surprising number of students react quite strongly to them!
@collegemom3717 - I think the Tufts Med early assurance program (http://medicine.tufts.edu/Admissions/Special-Admissions-Options/Early-Assurance-Program) is likely to decrease the overall stress of premed, not increase it
(opinion, obvs) @hebrewhammer, arguably the perceived level of stress (esp. in the first 2 years, if trying to make the cut) could go either way, depending on the individual.
Fwiw, I was in a program decades ago, not pre-med, that allowed a fixed handful of students from our uni to enter my school’s very prestigious grad program at the beginning of senior year, allowing a BA/MA in 5 years rather than 6. It made my program extremely competitive - for those interested in this option, we were all each other’s only competition - even those of us who had no interest in this program.
I am not saying that would always be the case, but it fueled competition in that program. As @collegemom3717 points out, this could go either way.
@collegemom3717 and @gardenstategal : I completely agree. That is exactly what I initially thought. Most of the premeds will be competing for the early assurance into the med school. A premed who doesn’t want the pressure of competing for the few early assurance spots (like my son), would still feel the intense competition from the others.