<p>Hi! Can anyone (hopefully past or current students) give input on these three schools concerning these areas:</p>
<p>quality of professors and classroom experience, research opportunities, prestige, student life and housing style, campus life, city life, career/course advising, med school admittance, and just the general feel of the school and the students?</p>
<p>I'm aware that many students change their minds later on, but as of now I'm interested in majoring in Neuroscience/Cognitive Science and am considering med school. </p>
<p>I don’t know if I’m very qualified to answer this, but I’ll try. The professors are amazing here, just like a liberal arts school- my humanities course as a first year was 8 other students; my professor was a Rhodes scholar, and though it was his first year teaching he was absolutely amazing. You’re going to get a lot of research opportunities here since it’s a major research university, and again I’m not very qualified to say this but I believe it’s superior to Brown/Pomona. I know of a lot of students who chose UofC over Pomona (some said there was excessive drug use there, this is only hearsay though) and Brown (many said Brown wasn’t serious enough about academics). Prestige wise, I don’t think you should really factor this into your decision if you’re accepted to all 3 as they’re all good schools. The career advising here has really improved from what others have said, and if you’re interested in a certain profession they’ll have specific programs (UChicago Careers in Healthcare, Science/Tech, Business, etc). I don’t know about housing but the residential house system is very homey and makes you feel like part of a small community. I live in a house of just 40 people and it’s really great, definitely choose a smaller dorm if you go here. Hopefully that helped a bit! Good luck.</p>
<p>If you haven’t already you should read the recent thread about UChicago’s med school placement. Chicago is generally a better research university than Brown but Chicago isn’t known for biological sciences so the advantage may be more minimal. I imagine Brown, Pomona, and Chicago all have very different cultures too.</p>
<p>Plenty of students turn down Chicago/Brown for Pomona and Chicago/Pomona for Brown, so this isn’t an easy decision by any mean.</p>
<p>Brown and Chicago are renowned for being academically great research schools, but they are not liberal art colleges. There is a difference- Pomona’s community is more integrative in terms of administration, professors, and students. You are treated more like an individual at liberal art colleges like Pomona. Then you have the Claremont Consortium as a whole which makes it a bigger experience if you want it to be.</p>
<p>All three are great schools. It’s hard to say which one has better academics because the teachers in all three care for you and the class sizes in all tend to be the same (Pomona has less big classes than the others, but the others have slightly more small classes) Research, while it seems like it may be more available at research universities like Brown and Chicago, is a highlight of Pomona due to the large % majoring in a STEM field, the SoCal location, and Pomona’s endowment, so all three are most likely equal in this regard. </p>
<p>To the common person, Chicago and Brown are much more known than Pomona is, but in grad schools and by top employers all three are extremely renowned.</p>
<p>Brown can’t be seriously considered a first-tier “research university,” certainly not one in Chicago’s league. Brown does, however, a bridge model between small liberal arts college and massive research U. that some might find appealing.</p>
<p>For PhD programs probably Chicago because it is the stronger research university and probably provides a more rigorous education than Brown (there may be some fields where this does not hold though). For law or med school probably Brown because the grading standards are much easier there and admissions in those fields are very dependent on GPA without much regard to difficulty of classes.</p>
<p>also, how does the general atmosphere of each school differ? I’ve heard that at U of C it’s more stressful and intense, while at Pomona/Brown students are more laidback</p>
<p>The school that will prepare you best for graduate school is the school where you are passionate about what you work on and where you find an environment that helps you stretch intellectually and emotionally. All three schools you mention can do that. I suspect, though that Chicago and Brown have an edge in areas like neuroscience over Pomona because they have the research resources that even well-endowed small colleges can lack in specialized science fields. But I also know excellent people in neuroscience who teach at small liberal arts colleges. And who knows whether your interests will change directions while you are in college? </p>
<p>You should go visit all three schools, talk to professors, and talk even more with other students in the areas you want to study. And then see which place(s) seem to stoke your passion the most.</p>
<p>Since you said you are interested in neuroscience, I will mention UChicago is just about to open a new $700 million hospital that will focus in part on neuroscience programs. The University has been investing a lot in biomedical research in recent years and is said to have 6 new facilities planned–part of a big push to strengthen the Biological Sciences Division.</p>
<p>@ Truth123: Many schools have been investing in neuroscience. It’s the new bandwagon to jump on. Princeton, for instance, is building an entirely new facility devoted to it.</p>
<p>True, but UChicago is making big strides. Princeton doesn’t have a medical school or a hospital. (UChicago’s hospital had a profit of $120 million last year.) UChicago is investing in the entire biomedical enterprise and has SIX new buildings planned and is adding 3 million sq. ft. of research space. The Medical School just entered the Top 10 in the U.S. News rankings and has been climbing every year. (Really I should say re-entering the top 10 because of UChicago’s historical strength in medicine.) The biological sciences division is stronger overall as well. Anyway these days UChicago can compete head to head with anyone as well or better than any time in its past and it will be interesting to see how the University improves in biomedicine.</p>