Hello! I have been accepted to both Trinity University and Oxford College of Emory. I plan on studying Neuroscience and Philosophy on the Premed track.
After aid, both colleges would cost me about the same. However, which is the best school?
Trinity is a small liberal arts university in San Antonio, Texas and was a beautiful campus when I visited. However, it is not as prestigious as Emory.
I was waitlisted at the main Emory campus and would attend the 900-student Oxford College (liberal arts) for my first two years. I would then feed directly into research-premised Emory University. Is Oxford college as good as the Emory main campus? Is it a good idea to attend a different institution after two years? Is Atlanta or San Antonio a better city to be a student in?
I eventually want to attend Medical School, so I want to attend the school that will best prepare me. Out of these two, which would that most likely be? Both schools seemed to be filled with intelligent students and noteworthy faculty.
I appreciate the close-knit atmosphere that both schools would provide, but I’m playing a game of prestige and location and opportunity. Trinity also has the 8th ranked best science facilities according to the Princeton Review. How do Emory’s facilities compare?
I know this post has been filled with lots of random questions, I am just apprehensive and severely conflicted. Thank you so much for your time and responses!
I visited Trinity at the beginning of the month and will visit Emory and Oxford next month.
Do you have an opinion as to which two of these school would do a better job of that? Trinity is liberal arts, small and has good connections. However, Emory is ranked as a research university but has more students.
OK, the Princeton Review rankings can be useful for some things, but the methodology is entirely dependent on the studentss. The students can evaluate their opinions of their own schools’ science facilities, but they are almost always doing this in a vacuum: these students don’t have the context to compare their college’s science equipment and facilities to any other colleges’ on the list. They can only compare the science facilities to their own expectations, which are likely set by their high schools’ facilities.
I’m going to go on a limb and say that while I believe Grinnell’s science facilities are probably very good, there’s no way that they’re better than Stanford’s or Dartmouth’s. And while I’m sure that Trinity is a great school with awesome science facilities for their students, there’s little chance that they’re better than Emory’s. Emory is a world-class research university in which professors and researchers rely on the quality of the equipment and facilities for their livelihoods and careers. From this, and from personal experience, Emory has EXCELLENT science facilities.
However, as an undergrad, you don’t need the most cutting-edge science going on. You only need professors who are actively engaged in science and can mentor and teach you; you’ll get that at both colleges.
Other thoughts:
-I was a college student in Atlanta, and I’ve only visited San Antonio. Both are nice cities, but Atlanta is such a great place to be a college student - it feels like a big college city, and there are so many colleges and thus lots of events for college-aged students to get into across campuses. However, do note that Oxford College is in Oxford, a small town right outside of Covington, GA. It’s about 40 minutes (by car) to Emory’s Atlanta campus. I don’t know what the transportation situation looks like but I would expect that you’d be spending the vast majority of your town in the small-town suburban Atlanta metro area. It’s beautiful out there, but much sleepier than Atlanta proper.
Emory has really excellent undergraduate neuroscience offerings.
Oxford is located between Atlanta & Athens (home to the University of Georgia) next to Covington (where the TV show In the Heat of The Night was filmed).
Two years at 900 student Oxford could either be the best or worst years of your young life. I suspect that your visit to Oxford will have a substantial impact upon your ultimate decision.
@juillet Thank you so much for your response! I actually had not known that information about the Princeton Review, and what you said is completely plausible and makes complete sense; it had always confounded me as to how Trinity managed to rank so high.
Were you a graduate from Emory? And from what I’ve heard, transportation is pretty well established between Oxford and the Main Campus (shuttles make trips multiple times a day apparently) so hopefully, I’ll still have adequate exposure to Atlanta even while at Oxford. I’ve heard of Emory’s reputation and its research caliber is something that is really attractive to me. And you’d say its neuroscience initiatives are strong? I am also attracted to the fact that Emory’s alumni networks are much stronger than those of Trinity.
Also, a little off-topic, but would you say that the stigmas against Oxford transfers that I’ve read about are true? You know, with the whole “oxtard” mentality? Or does this only occupy particular niches of Emory?
@juillet, I agree that no LAC can match Stanford in science facilities, but Grinnell is rich (by per capita endowment, much richer than Dartmouth), and Dartmouth is actually little more than an overgrown LAC with some professional schools attached. None of Dartmouth’s grad departments rank well (and you can see that in international research rankings, Dartmouth is never anywhere near the top in any subject). So in that case, I’m not so sure that Dartmouth actually is better than Grinnell when it comes to science facilities.
In any case, a bunch of public research U’s, many that aren’t nearly as tough to enter as Emory for undergrad, actually have among the best science facilities.
@PurpleTitan - It is, of course, possible that Grinnell has better science facilities than Dartmouth. But from a research perspective…Dartmouth is a Research 2 university; they’re also in the top 50 for medical research. In FY2017, Dartmouth got over $91 million in NIH funding - more than Brown, Cornell, Princeton, Tulane, Penn State, and NYU. I’m sure that Grinnell’s science and biomedical research facilities are excellent, but I’ll say I’d be really surprised if they’re better than Dartmouth’s.
But that’s besides the point - my point was simply that Princeton Review’s rankings of science facilities is unreliable, because these are students who are evaluating their own college’s science facilities and who are unlikely to have experience seeing or working in any other college’s. And in this specific case, I’d be super surprised if Trinity University’s science facilities are better than Emory’s.
BUT I also said that’s not necessarily a reason to choose Emory over Trinity, since at the undergrad level, you don’t need the most cutting-edge science facilities to learn how to do research or prepare for medical school. What you really need are dedicated professors who are good at, and interested in, mentoring undergraduates in research. OP could get into medical school from either school!
No, I’m not an Emory grad - I grew up in Atlanta, and I went to Spelman College. I considered Emory myself as a high school student, and I have a few friends who went to Emory (for undergrad and med school), including a couple who went to Oxford.
Yes, Emory’s pretty good in neuroscience - they have a well-regarded undergrad [neuroscience and behavioral biology](http://nbb.emory.edu/) major. NBB is considered one of the “signature” programs of Emory College, and Emory’s location in Atlanta means there are lots of different research resources you can take advantage of - the Yerkes Primate Center, CDC, American CAncer Society, the Neuroscience Initiative and lots of others. Emory also has several different undergraduate research programs - if you visit the NBB page I linked above you’ll see connections.
(And Trinity may have great programs, too! I am simply more familiar with Emory’s.)
Back in the day, Oxford actually did have a higher acceptance rate than Emory College, because it was less well-known and it tended to be populated primarily by Georgia students and students from neighboring states. (Honestly, Emory itself used to be a destination for mostly really smart kids mostly from the Southeast.) I think that’s where some of the ‘stigma’ against Oxford transfers came from, back then. I can’t really speak to where that’s landed now and how widespread that is across the Emory undergrad population; but I do know that the class profiles of Oxford freshman and Emory freshman is very similar - similar GPAs, class ranks, SAT/ACT scores, etc.