UChicago vs. Amherst vs. Pomona vs. Johns Hopkins for Neuroscience and Pre-med

Hi guys! Can anyone out there give any insight regarding these 4 schools? I’m interested in knowing about the quality of professors and teaching, research opportunities, internships, volunteering or shadowing at hospital, neuroscience program, city life, career adivising, social atmosphere and student life, is the school very cutthroat? The general feel for campus, students, life, and classes?

I know that many people change their minds in the future about medicine, but as of now that is what I am interested in.

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have taken calculus AB, but dropped my Calculus BC class as I could not handle it with my 20+ hour/week athletic commitment


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All of these schools and many others have very good profs…and likely some jerky profs.

All of these schools and many others will have research opps, and nearby shadowing opps, and volunteering opps.

What are your grades like?

How well did you do on the AP Bio and AP Chem exams.

Why are you choosing those schools for premed? ARe you serious about being premed? Or is it a passing fancy?

Not that this would be any reason to choose a college but it seems like UChicago is incredibly intense academically and even more so for pre Meds that it could cause a lot of stress personally and on your gpa.

@Illinoisbound

Unpopular opinion: If you are basically 100% set on becoming a physician, attend a school that best fits these parameters:

  1. You can afford it without too much financial difficulty (you will need to have $$$ for Med School).

  2. Great premed opportunities (like research, shadowing, great pre-health advising)

  3. Here is the controversial one: prestigious school name, while also having high levels of GPA inflation. I am sorry, but for pre-med students, high GPA trumps actually challenging yourself.

@yikesyikesyikes So which schools that I listed fits the 2nd and 3rd criteria?

@mom2collegekids I am a straight A student and have taken 9 AP classes so far in high school. I plan on taking another 5 next year as a senior. I scored a 5 on the AP Bio test and a 4 on the AP Chem test. Although I believe that I could’ve gotten a 5 on Chem but I was sick that day and out of it. I am fairly serious about premed. These are schools that I am looking at because I am an athlete who is in contact with the coaches at these schools but can’t decide which one I want to visit.

@almostdonewithhs Would you say UChicago is the most stressful school out of the 4 that I listed above? I’ve heard that Hopkins is extremely cutthroat with their premeds, is this true?

@Illinoisbound

I would probably say Johns Hopkins, but I am not too familiar with Amherst or Pomona on their grading.

UChicago, although a great school that will challenge you, open your mind, and provide an intellectual upbringing few, if any, other schools can match, willnot serve you best for Med School admissions. AdComs do they into account grade deflation, but I have heard that it is not enough to account for ultra-rigorous programs like Chicago.

Sorry I don’t know. I think Uchicsgo all around is very stressful but not sure how cutthroat it is

Your choices have been well reviewed for pre-med: “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges with Great Pre-med Programs” (available through a search).

As @merc81 notes, all 4 have great reputations, but I can only comment on my kiddo’s experience as a pre-med neuroscience major at Pomona. For at least the past several years, neuro has been one of the 5 most popular majors at Pomona - which for a college that size translates to a cohort of about 26. Significant workload, driven students, but the atmosphere was extremely supportive and collaborative, and the professors very accessible. Participated in several internships including about a year in a CCE program that rotates pre-meds through numerous departments in 3 area hospitals. Spent almost 3 years on a research project that led directly to being offered a full-time research position in a med-school lab a couple of months before graduation (Pomona’s Pre-Health advisers generally recommend taking 1 or 2 gap years before entering med school). In fact, by grad day, all but a couple in the cohort had either been accepted to med school or had lined up a research or related gap-year job.

@otisp Thanks for your advice! I have visited Pomona and noticed that it was in quite a suburban area. One of my concerns is that it would be hard to obtain research opportunities since it is quite small and there are fewer professors than large schools like Hopkins and UChicago. Did your kid do research at Pomona or outside of the school? Was volunteering or doing an internship at the hopsital easily accessible since it’s not really in the city? Did the Pomona Pre-Health advisers assist your kid a lot? Do most of the neuroscience majors go to medical school or take a gap year?

First of all, southern California is in many ways sorta one giant city, and while some industries do congregate in particular areas, hospitals are everywhere. My kid participated in what is now called Health Scholars (you can search for it) and, like for many internships, Pomona supported transportation to the hospitals with Zipcars and mileage allowances. (The college also provides stipends for students who have unpaid or low-pay internships). The research project just happened to be at one of the other 5Cs - one of the perks of being part of the consortium, but there were also opportunities offered at Pomona. Remember, that while there may be fewer profs at LACs like Pomona and Amherst, there are also a lot fewer students looking for spots. Plus, the profs are focused 100% on the undergrads, so you’re also not competing with grad students and post-docs for positions, and it seems to be just as easy to create your own research as it is to assist a prof on their project. A lot of students are paid to do research at Pomona, either with funds provided through profs, or awarded directed to the students. Many also do paid summer research at R1s around the country under grants from NSF and NIH. Most of this year’s neuro majors planning on med school are taking at least 1 or 2 gap years (sounds like almost all doing research), but at least a couple seemed to be going directly to med school. Pre-Health advising started during orientation week, and apparently remains available throughout one’s career. Again, similar things are probably going on at the other schools you’re looking at, but I can only comment about my kid’s experience at Pomona.

I am pretty much the same as the OP, also interested in those schools and their premed/neuroscience. Can anyone else speak to these programs? Specifically Amherst since it hasn’t been explored much in this thread. I am afraid because its course catalog in Neuroscience seems small. Thank you!

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of a neuroscience major, the availability of a dozen or more listed courses (beyond foundational classes in biology, chemistry and psychology) will typically be more than sufficient for most students.

Neuroscience is a significant major at Amherst and the program is extremely well respected (it is the first or second oldest neuroscience major in the country). As merc81 noted, most of the course selections for that particular subject are interdisciplinary so you won’t see a ton of courses listed as Neuroscience, even though every neuroscience major must take them. I guess they could just start labelling them as chemistry/neuroscience or psychology/neuroscience, but there really is no point to that. There is no way that anyone could exhaust the curriculum in 4 years after also taking calculus, chemistry 1 and 2, organic chemistry, evolutionary biology, cell biology, physics, statistics, and two biology courses in addition to your upper level courses in neuroscience and your senior seminar.

Med student here!

First of all, full-stop. There’s a fair amount of misinformation in this thread (I’m looking at you yikesyikesyikes). I have classmates, colleagues, and friends who have gone to all these schools and frankly, I believe they’re all top-quality schools which support their pre-med students and ultimately produce top-quality med students (admittedly that statement is somewhat self-serving). These four schools will not be considered differently from each other, and GPA is normalized to schools and majors for the most part. In short, don’t let the pursuit of a high GPA determine your path in pre-med. What is far more important is what you do in your four years.

First of all, your foremost consideration should be that Amherst and Pomona are LACs and UChicago and JHU are powerhouse research universities. Your undergraduate experience will be very different in a class of 400 as compared to 1500. Their education emphasis is also different, though others can speak to the LACs with more credence than I can. The neuroscience/pre-med track at UChicago and JHU are both feeders to medical schools, and they rigorously prepare students for the learning style of medical school. No, they are not cutthroat. This myth has been promulgated well beyond its expiration date. While the “gunner” phenomenon exists, it is vastly exaggerated and is mostly harmless–the majority of “gunners” earn that reputation for what might be construed as excessive studying and sometimes a protective introversion. It’s best served with a “live and let live” mindset as compared to the “fear the reaper” attitude that bounces around places like College Confidential and, heavens forbid, SDN.

Which is not to say any of these places are easy. Rigorous preparation is rigorous, and there are plenty of routes to medical school that do not involve biology or the basic sciences (I was an engineer, myself). Your undergraduate major should reflect your interests rather than any perception of what “med schools want to see”. If you’re genuinely interested in neuroscience, I think you’ll enjoy the major greatly–otherwise, pick what interests you and take the pre-med coursework on the side. Again, I don’t think this changes by institution–you may note some broad differences in teaching philosophy by institution but by and large individual professors will be more of a determining factor.

All of these schools have exceptional access to volunteering and shadowing opportunities, and you shouldn’t have difficulty finding internships (though they are competitive across the board). Neither do I believe career advising differs much between institutions (you wouldn’t believe how much cross-talk happens between different institutions’ pre-med offices). The pre-med offices at UChicago and JHU do benefit from a massive sample size of pre-meds, on an order of magnitude more than Amherst and Pomona, but this also detracts from the time you can spend with them.

Regarding social atmosphere and student life, I could go on for ages about JHU but I can hardly draw a fair comparison to other institutions I’ve never experienced. I’m sure you’ve seen UChicago and JHU compared harshly in this regard, and I think that again arises from misconception rather than any actual experience or understanding. If you want to hear more, I’m happy to message you about it, just drop a line.

Finally, on the topic of medical research, you can’t go wrong with any of these schools, and you particularly can’t go wrong with Hopkins. Amherst and Pomona have good in-house research programs and I’m sure otisp canspeak to that much better than I can. But they pale in comparison to the sheer size of the programs at UChicago and JHU. There are dozens of labs and PIs (hundreds if you count physician-scientists), from the giants of the field to fledgling assistant professors. You can join a lab that occupies an entire building or one that takes up just a room–each with its unique attributes and personality. You’ll have a wealth of resources at your disposal and seemingly unlimited advice and expertise from your colleagues. At Hopkins, the neuroscience department is also intimately connected to numerous other fields such as bioengineering and neurosurgery–you might be working on a hemispherectomy project one day and a deep stimulator the next! So I’ll tell you what I was told at numerous med school interviews–if research is your driver, then pick Hopkins as your vehicle. That said, you don’t actually need to do research as a pre-med so long as you can demonstrate equal involvement and commitment in other passions, so this whole point could be moot for you, who knows.

Whew, I’m going to stop myself before I go much further, but I just want to emphasize again that you should consider the kind of school you want to go to before you consider the pre-med details of majors and advising offices and volunteering. I know it’s easy for me to say, but don’t sweat the little details–it pays to see the forest for the trees.

Great comment, @JustAnotherTry

@JustAnotherTry

Thanks for the post. Admittedly, I have definitely heard different things from my friends (pre-med and recently admitted to med school), maybe they have gotten too engrossed in the almost Machiavellian culture that exists in many premed cohorts.

Which one of my three points did you disagree with? The last one?

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