Vanderbilt or Northwestern

@mrballer : Why are you so concerned about what we think? We should not be able to decide for you. That is insane. And why do you keep looking at irrelevant numbers? Do you truly believe that 68 vs. 75% at NU is any sort of difference? There is a lot behind such numbers that often has little to do with quality of the school and more so the students and how they apply. Chicago used to struggle for example with those and it wasn’t because of low GPAs. Also, 2 datapoints and opinions on each’s grading patterns are not worth considering. What if it just so happened that it was switched so that you met the person at Vandy who thought BME was really hard and the person at NU doing extremely well? I am also trying to understand where the more and least generous grading ideas come from too. I don’t get it. They probably grade about the same (lots of evidence that suggest most selective schools grade similarly in STEM as in overall curve. Course content is a different story, but grades often come out similarly if you look at a distribution). One program in theory may have more professors who give a harder course, but typically the curve or final grades may be similar. If you are going to rely on such anecdotes, you need to just flip a coin at this point. It is now up to you to decide. If you are concerned about the academics maybe look at the actual course work required and co-curriculars and electives offered for each program and maybe also try to find out if there are any signature/famous courses you are interested in at either and make a judgement by that instead. I’m sure you may find some differences. In the meantime, there is really no more reason to discuss this. Don’t let us decide which should be preferable. Hit the BME websites and try to read in between the lines if you care enough.

Also, note that with Vanderbilt, you can actually directly consult their course offerings (you can see enrollment patterns/numbers and everything) on a per semester basis even if you are not enrolled. Simply type in Vanderbilt course schedule. NU, typically you can see them at the departmental level (like you can see BME’s last offered courses) but of course it doesn’t give enrollment numbers, but it should be informative enough. This will give you a better idea of what each school tends to offer regularly in any given semester (often “course offerings” is the most expansive list including any course ever offered in a dept, even if some have been discontinued or are offered every blue moon or something). I say this, because with engineering, some schools are known for special courses, whether they be capstone (upperclassmen) or at earlier levels. At many schools certain engineering depts. are known for very neat/renowned classes (like I know MIT has one in mechanical engineering). Don’t worry about the vague portion of academics like pre-health placement and GPA. As a pre-med, you need to get a high GPA regardless of where you go and it will be hard in any engineering curriculum. See if you actually prefer the offerings of one vs. another as folks tend to perform best in courses they actually enjoy (half the battle in STEM is looking forward past the entry and required courses into more exciting ones).

From what I see Vanderbilt’s UG courses, once in advanced/electives seem more geared towards optics and imaging (which I find cool as a chemist), whereas NU looks like it is skewed toward more Molec. biology and tissue engineering (as a former biology major who has fully switched to chemistry, the concept is cool from what I learned in my epigenetics and cell biology course, but I’ll have to pass…). You should go look for yourself. The schools appear to focus the UG program on their research strengths I guess (which is kind of how a STEM UG curriculum should be run IMHO), so I appreciate both for doing that!

I agree with bernie on this one. You’re getting lost in the weeds. It’s kind of impossible to directly compare two specific programs at each school, because it gets difficult to know what information is useful. Also, if you are so concerned with attaining the highest GPA possible and your main reason for choosing a school is what will get you into med school, then you should probably just go to state school and be a big fish in a small pond while saving money.

I would choose between them based on more extracurricular oriented aspects. Decide which community you feel more aligned with, and which has a campus/lifestyle you think you would enjoy more.