<p>I'm currently a high school senior planning on majoring in neuroscience next year, maybe with a minor in psych. I've made a list of schools that I think are awesome, but I don't know how to get any more information about them. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to get into all of them (or even that I'm going to get into any), but I'd appreciate any information you could give me on the social life, surrounding area, student body, food, quality of life, or pretty much anything else that you think would be helpful.</p>
<p>These are some of the schools:</p>
<p>Dartmouth
Northwestern
U of Chicago
U of Pitt
Brown
Bucknell
Cornell
Northeastern
Boston U</p>
<p>Get hold of some of the college guide books and do some reading. They have most of what you want. Yale Insider’s Guide, NY Times Guide and a few others are worth reading. Most major book stores have them and the new ones just came out.</p>
<p>Chicago and Dartmouth represent 2 distinct poles. Dartmouth is in a rather isolated rural area, very outdoorsy, with a very active Greek life. Chicago is in - surprise! - the sprawling city of Chicago, with minimal Greek life and very low-key athletics. Dartmouth is a scholar-athlete culture, Chicago more purely “life of the mind” (with no engineering or other pre-professional programs.)</p>
<p>Get Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, the bible for college searches since even before I was in college! Lost of useful information in there. No relationship to the poster Barrons I assume.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input! One of the biggest downsides to Dartmouth seems to be the athletics. Don’t get me wrong, I think its great that the students are smart AND athletic, its just that I’m not really a sports person. Because of this, I’m afraid I may not fit in with most of the student body. As for Chicago, its sounding better and better the more I hear about it, but I’ve also heard that the workload can get pretty intense and (while I’m not afraid of hard work) I worry that I might get overwhelmed or I may “burn out”. Are these logical concerns or am I just overthinking things?</p>
<p>You really don’t have to be athletic to have fun at Dartmouth. I’m totally not the outdoorsy or athletic type and I love it here.
I think it’s kind of unfair to tar Dartmouth with the label of “scholar-athlete” with no justification. Yes, there are many athletes here, but that doesn’t mean you need to be athletic to fit in.</p>
<p>Go to the website uni go.com (without the space – CC censors this site for some reason) and the u.com (without the space again) to get accurate student reviews of these colleges. For information on the colleges, I highly suggest you look at the following books: The Insiders Guide to Colleges 2010, Princeton Review Best 371 Best Colleges, and The Student’s Guide to Colleges. These books were very influential in my college decision making process.</p>
<p>Also, I highly recommend that you look at Rice University in Houston, TX; it is just as good academically as many of the schools on your list. We are very well known for the quality of life, since Princeton Review ranked us #1 in the country for Best Quality of Life this year. The residential college system makes for a very supportive, close-knit college experience. If you don’t want that, then I suggest you look somewhere else, but almost everyone at Rice loves it here. Plus, we are next to the world’s largest medical center (literally across the street from our campus), and there are TONS of neuroscience research opportunities at many of the hospitals and Baylor College of Medicine (which Rice is having merger talks with).</p>