<p>This is the list I've arrived at, and I'd be very grateful if you could offer your opinion based on my interests.</p>
<p>I want to go to a school that would prepare me for med-school if I decided it was for me, but that also has strong programs in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and other humanities fields. Price isn't too much of a problem, though so far Pomona has given me the best package (I haven't heard from Penn yet). I've worked hard in high school so I want a school that has a very lively social atmosphere.</p>
<p>Currently I'm leaning towards UPenn (but I don't know how much of that feelin is due to its prestige). I'm attracted to Pomona as well due to its location and the fact that I'd be able to continue with track and field there, but its small size worries me a bit. I liked the JHU campus, but I've heard from several sources that undergraduate life is very stressful there. I really don't know much about Vanderbilt; I just applied there because my dad thought I might like it.</p>
<p>Pomona is a small school in itself, but keep in mind that there are 4 other great colleges around you - CMC, Harvey Mudd, Scripps, Pitzer. You see them in some classes, many parties, and 5C organizations.</p>
<p>Also, in terms of course offerings, the consortium offers a very wide range of courses.</p>
<p>Why are you worried about the small size exactly?</p>
<p>Also, I would like to point out that Pomona is amazing in every one of the fields you mentioned. Not amazing as in a flippant 'amazing' but really so. It's philosophy department is very strong all round - be it ethics, or epistemology, or existential though. Its neuroscience department has great professors and plenty of research opportunities, its pre-med admission is pretty darn good. Not to mention its amazing history, english, and econ departments.</p>
<p>I'm from Pomona, so feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.</p>
<p>Whatever you decide, good luck and congrats on getting into 4 fantastic schools.</p>
<p>This is probably foolish but I guess I'm worried that in a class of less than 400 I might not find a large group of really good friends. I come from a high school that has classes of only 160 people, and after four years I feel I've sort of exhausted my opportunities with the opposite sex :) Do you have a lot of good friends at the other Claremont schools? Also, how often would you say you go to LA? I'm not sure whether I like the urban environment of UPenn over the smaller city near a big city situation of Pomona.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I'll have to visit these schools before I make a decision!</p>
<p>My advice is to take what other people say (including me) with a grain of salt. Visit each again (its amazing, but schools look and feel different once you've been accepted) and go with the one you think fits best. I'm biased towards Hopkins--I think the opportunities there are unparalleled and I've always loved the intense academic environment--but it surely is not for everyone. Contrary to popular myth, I never found it to be cutthroat (quite the opposite actually) but it is probably true that students will be reluctant to help another student who is slacking off (e.g., never going to class and asking a diligent student for his/her notes probably won't get you far). On the other hand, I always found that students were very willing to help others who had a legitimate problem or who, while trying hard, were having difficulties. And I am not excluding premeds from this statement, although many of them are overly grade obsessed (and not just at Hopkins).</p>
<p>My point is that everyone has different likes and dislikes, and different points of view. Make up your own mind and go with your gut. What other people think or believe is really not important.</p>
<p>Lava (cute screen-name, do you like geology?) I've quite a few friends in Pomona, so I don't really have many friends from the other schools. I know a few CMC people from debate and a few from other schools in International Place (since I am an international student), but that's about it.</p>
<p>The great thing about Pomona is that it is a diverse community, in terms of interest and talents. I definitely can't speak for you, but I'm sure you'll find a nice group of close friends - first, Pomona is really good at matching freshmen to their respective sponsor groups, so there will be a high chance that you land up in a group of 12 or more people that share your interests and passions. Second, as long as you branch out beyond the sponsor group, you'll definitely find more friends. Everybody here is just so friendly. I really won't be too worried about the relatively small class size =)</p>
<p>As for LA, people do go there occasionally - shop, Chinatown, little Tokyo, Hollywood and stuff like that. Keep in mind there's also the beaches (Huntington, Manhattan, Venice etc) and snow (Mt Baldy) So yeah, the big city is definitely very accessible.</p>
<p>One major advantage of Penn is the incredible breadth and depth of options available to undergrads. Penn is very serious about its "One University" policy, which encourages undergrads to take classes and pursue interdisciplinary studies in more than one of its 4 excellent undergrad schools (Wharton, College, Engineering and Applied Science, and Nursing), as well as many of its grad schools (e.g., undergrads can even enroll in some classes in the law school, design school, etc.), no matter which one of the 4 undergrad schools is your "base of operations." All of Penn's undergrad and grad schools--as well as its major hospital and research facilites--are located within a few blocks of each other on its relatively compact campus, which helps to facilitate the One University policy. It's really a unique strength of Penn's undergraduate program.</p>
<p>I think you should visit all of them, and consider the whole picture, including location. The crime rate in the surrounding area is not the same for all of those schools. The housing situation past the first year may also be different enough to give you a reason to choose one over the other.</p>
<p>Would you be able to continue with track and field anywhere other than Pomona?</p>
<p>Track isn't a huge deal to me, though I would like to be able to say I competed in college :)</p>
<p>One thing that worries me a bit about Penn is the fact that some people label it as a "pre-professional school before an intellectual school." If this is true, is Penn intellectual enough for one who is an academic at heart?</p>
<p>I didn't mention this earlier but I suppose I'll throw it in now:</p>
<p>I also got into Wash U and University of Pittsburgh (full tuition scholarship)
I really think I'd regret going to Pitt, though the money has prevented me from saying no to them yet...</p>
<p>All things being equal, UPENN is the obvious choice here, especially because it is one of the most socially active and "fun" Ivies along with Brown and Cornell. If money is an issue then go with the best offer. As for Penn, being pre-professional over intellectual, it is what you make it. I have friends who graduated from there and loved the intellectual environment and did not once mention any kind of "pre-professional" bias a la Columbia. Good luck with your choices. There are also a lot of recruiters on these threads so hopefully they are straight forward about their biases, but beware otherwise.</p>
<p>Obvious? How is U Penn "obvious?" Do you know anything about the quality of the people and the academics at at Hopkins, Pomona or Vanderbilt? All are outstanding colleges and can definitely position the OP for a successful undergraduate experience, including pre-med preparation. In academic terms, the separation between these four schools is paper thin. U Penn is not at all obvious to me except for someone who is absolutely blinded by the prestige associated with an Ivy college. </p>
<p>U Penn is certainly a quality college choice, but Hopkins, Pomona and Vanderbilt aren't exactly chopped liver and compare very well with the undergraduate programs at U Penn. In the post-graduate, for-profit world, all three would be superior to U Penn in their home regions (least of all would be JHU due to overlap, but JHU exceeds U Penn in the medical realm).</p>
<p>For your situation, it sounds like Pomona might be the best choice as it gives you all the academic power you could ask for, it gives you greater academic breadth than some might imagine due to its association with the other colleges in its area, it will probably give you the best chance to run track, and it even offers you the best financial package (thus allowing you to save your resources for the more important and more expensive graduate school education). </p>
<p>The only adjustment that I might make would be if there were certain aspects of undergraduate life that you were particularly interested in. I ask this partly because of your father's suggestion to consider Vanderbilt. He clearly had a reason for this and I wonder if he is directing you to a college that is a little different from U Penn and Hopkins and Pomona. Vanderbilt clearly has the strongest social and athletic life element of these four colleges, not to mention a strong Greek presence, and if any of these facets were appealing to you, then Vandy might be the better choice. Have you visited there (or any of these places)? If not, hopefully, you will have that opportunity to because there are some important differences in the nature of their campuses and the campus culture of each college.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Penn is in a rough city and the area is not particularly safe. My son had his laptop stolen from his off-campus room right before December finals. There were recently two severe assaults (one resulting in a death) in the center city subway underground station. I am a Penn parent, so I am just trying to make sure you have all the information.
As for Penn Relays (I am also the parent of recruited Penn runner), it is a neat event, but not something you are going to be participating in.
I would lean towards Vanderbilt (very preppy but great campus and academics in a wonderful city) or Pomona. Pomona is really great, but it sounds like you want something a little bigger. The other thing about Penn- my son found it to be VERY pre-professional and he was not happy with his freshman year classes. He is having a good soph year, but had to talk his way into some advanced seminars with better professors and smaller classes. He would not describe the environment as particularly intellectual- you have to look for it.</p>
<p>My D had similar choices - Pomona, WUStL, Vanderbilt (did not apply to Penn or JHU). She chose Pomona and is very happy there. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt is a great school though whose reputation is rising fast - very social in a good way, but perhaps overly Greek for some, and a tad less intellectual. </p>
<p>Penn is definitely geared for pre-professionals, especially those who want to just get through college and get on with their Med/Law/MBA school training, but they do a great job of it. </p>
<p>JHU is probably the most pre-med oriented, but that's not necessarily a good thing, particularly if you fancy yourself a closet academic/intellectual. Penn and JHU aren't in the safest neighborhoods, either. </p>
<p>Having gone to a pre-professional ivy myself (including running in the Penn Relays), if I could do it all over again I'd pick a top liberal arts college like Pomona.</p>
<p>Of course some people are not used to living in a large city, especially if they only venture in on occasion from the suburbs. So if you are not acclimated to city life, as some of the posters here are obviously not then maybe UPENN is not for you. That said, an ivy league education can't be beat by the other choices. HYP, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, Chicago, MIT and Cal Tech then there is the rest. That is reality in terms of employment opportunities, funding sources, connections etc etc.</p>
<p>Sorry, UCLA PhD, but I strongly disagree and support the previous 3 posters views that, in fact, this is a more complex decision process.</p>
<p>This might have been obvious if the poster was interested in Wharton with an eye to an IB finance job and liked city living. But he's talking about possible pre-med ambitions. Pomona students fare at least as well as Penn students in med school admissions and potentially better in grad school placement. To argue your other contentions, Pomona has a much larger per capita endowment with significantly better research funding opportunities than Penn. The school has excellent alumni connections. Though smaller in number, there will be 400, not 2,500 graduates/year competing to connect to those connections from Pomona vs. Penn. As already pointed out, Pomona's intimate participation in the Claremont consortium also makes the campus feel much larger (5,000 students overall between the 5 schools). </p>
<p>Every school you've named obviously deserves the title "elite." But there are many others out there that are not only deserved peers but, for selected students, can deliver things these schools can not.</p>