upenn (benjamin franklin scholar/vagelos life science) vs. stanford

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
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<p>I'm still in the process of deciding (-__-) lol....only 2 more days. It seems like penn is giving me alot of special attention. The two "honors" program at penn gives me a lot of personal attention, with opportunities of getting paid to do research (5000 for summer at penn). I'm thinking about going biology/bio engineering/premed. Can anyone at penn tell me about the advantages of these two programs/how many ppl are selected each year? They seem really special but I feel like there's no point in doing this especially when I'm just gonna go to med school? what are the disadvantages (if any)? I heard that alot of the ppl in vagelos drops out after the first year....However, the program also offers a really good opportunity to do some worthwhile research (like publication and not just being a lab monkey). The program seems to be geared towards PhD students and not M.D. Although I've had prior research experience, I'm not quite sure if I want to go straight to the research field just yet.</p>

<p>So I don't know if I should take this opportunity where I could stand out at penn or just be another student at stanford? I don't know much about the research opportunities at Stanford so could anyone elaborate as how to go about getting a worthwhile position (and getting grants for such research)? I really love Stanford and I really love the humbio program there (i'm somewhat of a fuzzy), but again I feel like I wont get access to the best profs or hopefully get a chance for research publication if I ever end up on the Farm. Also, from admit week, my host (from frosoco) told me that the advising for Stanford is not that great...can anyone attest to this?</p>

<p>sorry if i didnt make any sense in this blurb</p>

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<p>There are SO many research opportunities at Stanford. Most of them aren't that hard to come by, probably almost all of them aren't. I know in the physics department you are guaranteed $5,000 or so for one summer to do research on campus, and I know that we give out over $1 million/year (I think it's $1.2 million?) for undergraduate research. That's a lot. Most people find it pretty easy to find a lab to work in, so I wouldn't worry about that. There are a couple of labs that are very competitive, but I've literally only heard of two such labs (one in CS, one in psych/neuroscience/etc.) </p>

<p>Human Biology is a really neat program. All my friends in it seem to love it. </p>

<p>Advising here isn't always great. One of my friends complained a lot about med school advising, and I know my freshman year advisor wasn't too great. My advisor now is awesome. My freshman advisor left and I was reassigned to a sophomore advisor (normally it's just one freshman-sophomore advisor, and then a new one when you declare). He is great. My advisor in my major is great too. I asked around first who the good advisors were. There definitely are people who are good at advising, you just may have to search for a bit. But I would be surprised if that wasn't the case everywhere.</p>