Which of These Colleges Should I Choose (for Cell/Molecular Bio)?

[GenerationG]

I live in Indiana and am looking to go to college for Cell/Molecular Biology. There are 2 colleges in Indiana that offer this among the (statistically) 5 best: Purdue and Ball State. the others are IU, IUPUI, and Notre Dame, but IU and PUI only offer General Bio and I am not interested in private college.Purdue is my dream university and I feel like I have good odds of getting, but I need to have back ups just in case. Ball state was my original 2ed, but when doing research, I found 2 other colleges that were about the same price out of state as in state equaling Ball, and ranked decently among websites.They were University of North and Univ. of South Dakota(s). I know it does not sound glorious, but they seem decent and here’s why.

(If you wish to answer now, feel free to because from here, I will be listing my research I found on the 3 colleges)

There are 3 Websites I have been using to do my research. The 2 monopolies of college ranking: US News (nat. and bio) and Forbes Top Colleges (nat.), and a smaller website called http://biology-colleges.com (theirs will be national too). This is what I got on each one

 USD: US- Nat. 180, Bio. 188, Forbes- 411, Biology College- 320

 UND: US- Nat. 180, Bio. 188, Forbes- 444, Biology College- 277

 Ball:  US- Nat. 168, Bio. N/A, Forbes- 569, Biology College- 194

I also looked up student reviews from Unigo, Niche, and a couple other colleges and each one is generally the same review from review:

 USD: Cons: Dorms a little small, not much diversity, and some, NOT ALL, but some do not care for their jobs. Side from that, everything else about it seems great to students.
UND: Cons: not too many healthy food options, people are not all that social alot of times and many who are seem stuck up, and, while it is more of a college town than the other 2 colleges, people say it does not offer a whole lot for students. Everything else is fine for the most part.
Ball State: (visited) The town is DEAD; only fast food and old factories, known to not be safe in the past, and people say you REALLY have to try putting yourself out there to become social.

With small aditional stuff, USD and Ball are about the same size, at 10,000 students,whikle UND is about 15,000
UND has no famous Science Alumni; most are sport people. Ball States most famous is David Letterman, but he barely got by with a C, while USD can say they have Ernest Lawrence, the man who invented the Cyclotron and won a Nobel Peace Prize for it.
Each college has it’s specialty: Ball State makes Media and English degrees, USD has many political alumni, and UND has many hockey players and some writers.

These are about the basics discluding cost and look of college, but focusing on Cell And Molecular Bio, This is the main “jist” of it all. If you have any opinions or reasons for why i should pick a certain or none of these colleges, please tell me, as I am hoping for some insight. Thank you for your time.

[mademoiselle2308]

When I think of excellent CMB schools, none of these schools are on my list. Purdue is good but there are many other Big Ten schools ahead of Purdue.

Furthermore, don’t make your decision on where to go to school based on “famous people” from the school. That makes no sense.

[xraymancs]

When I think of excellent CMB schools, I am thinking of their research and Ph.D. programs. For an undergraduate, it is much less important what kind of ranking the graduate program has. When you look at the USNWR rankings for biology you are looking at the results of a survey of biology department chairs and they really only rank based on research prowess. More importantly, look at the curriculum and the outcomes and then make your decision. If you have a good idea of what you want to do after your degree, it will help you choose.

If you want to go to medical school, then make sure there is a strong pre-health co-curricular program and find out what the typical MCAT scores are for students at that university. Here the most important thing is the internships and shadowing experience you can obtain and the rigor of your fundamental coursework (what is being tested on the MCAT). The university can be any size and have any kind of graduate program or none at all. In fact, because oyu are going to be funding your medical school studies, it would be best to look at the bottom line and find the best option that gives you the lowest cost of attendance.

If you want to go to graduate school, make sure that there are research opportunities and that there is a full range of lab courses that you can take to develop your skills. In this case, you might want to pay extra attention to programs that do offer Ph.D. degrees because you are pretty much guaranteed that there will be meaningful research opportunities available. This is not a hard and fast rule though because many smaller undergraduate-focuses schools (including a number of private LACs) will produce excellent graduate students. here the overall cost is important but since a Ph.D. in biology is fully funded (tuition and stipend), you don’t have to worry as much about the amount of debt you have after your Bachelors degree (although i would always recommend trying to keep it as low as possible).

If you are aiming to get a job in industry, then you should look for a program that has some practical concentration options in the curriculum and which has a history of getting internships for its students. The internship experience will help you get that first job after graduation and this is particularly important for a field like Biology where there are not as many jobs as graduates.

I completely agree with @mademoiselle2308 that the prominence of a school’s alums is irrelevant, particularly if they are not in the field you are studying. However, it is relevant to know if the CMB alums have gone on to graduate programs (not necessarily how famous they are).

Finally, the most important thing is finances. Make sure that wherever you go is affordable and does not leave you with a lot of debt.