Why Stanford?

<p>Pre med isn't a major. </p>

<p>Pre-med is a set of 8(?) classes you have to take for med school. </p>

<p>So you can major in anything and meet the requirements. They have pre-med advisors and support too.</p>

<p>some schools offer it as a major</p>

<p>Yes, some schools do.</p>

<p>Stanford does not consider pre-med to be a major.</p>

<p>yup thats what i thought. thanks. the person before you was asking whether premed was a major so i was answering that</p>

<p>what's engineering like at stanford?? boy:girl ratio, nerdiness, difficulty, flexibility, time consumption, etc. At this point stanford is my first choice (i'm a senior) and i think i want to go into engineering</p>

<p>boy:girl ratio</p>

<p>This one is for CS, but engineering is probably similar ;):</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/%7Egcuellar/media/images/csshirt.jpg%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/~gcuellar/media/images/csshirt.jpg&lt;/a>
(This was their t-shirt design last year)</p>

<p>Sorry about that, I thought you were addressing my post.</p>

<p>its ok</p>

<p>haha that shirt was funny</p>

<p>Overall girls outnumber boys at stanford</p>

<p>Not true. </p>

<p>According to USNews, the undergraduate student body (as of the 2004-5 school year) was 53% male and 47% female.</p>

<p>52-48 according to Stanford.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/undergraduate.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>zephyr would know, eh? also, i couldn't reach NT today, i'll try tomorrow.</p>

<p>Someone asked how pre-meds are weeded out. That happens as soon as people take Chem 31X their Fall Quarter of freshman year. Some find it too hard or uninteresting and move onto something else. This happens with the subsequent organic chemistry classes... gets smaller every quarter. It gets worse in the Biology core, which is a series of 3 classes taken sophomore year; it's tough because of the extremely smart pre-meds (and other bio students), so people are discouraged. Some people say it's unfair for professors to make those classes so hard "for the purpose of weeding out pre-meds", but I think that medical school is going to be a huge battle not for the faint-hearted, so those who aren't determined enough to be a doctor should indeed be "weeded out".</p>

<p>As for the neuroscience program... I can talk a little about the neuroscience focus within the psychology department and the neurobiology focus within the biological sciences department (I was in the former, then I recently transferred into the latter). I think a lot of it has to do with the faculty - there are world-renowed researchers teaching and researching at Stanford. Plus, many of them are great, enthusiastic professors... check out Robert Sapolsky if you don't know who that is.</p>

<p>I went to stanford for a creative writing camp in my sophmore summer and i loved it. The weather is awesome the campus is beautiful and the students seemed the happiest out of all the schools ive seen not to mention it has awesome academics</p>

<p>How's the undergraduate economics department at Stanford?</p>

<p>Michelle Wie is going there. Need I say anything more?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Someone asked how pre-meds are weeded out. That happens as soon as people take Chem 31X their Fall Quarter of freshman year. Some find it too hard or uninteresting and move onto something else. This happens with the subsequent organic chemistry classes... gets smaller every quarter. It gets worse in the Biology core, which is a series of 3 classes taken sophomore year; it's tough because of the extremely smart pre-meds (and other bio students), so people are discouraged. Some people say it's unfair for professors to make those classes so hard "for the purpose of weeding out pre-meds", but I think that medical school is going to be a huge battle not for the faint-hearted, so those who aren't determined enough to be a doctor should indeed be "weeded out".

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think the issue of 'unfairness' is not so much that you need to get rid of some students who are not determined enough, but that the 'weeding out' is uneven - and specifically, that some students who got weeded out in the Stanford premed course series might have done very well and hence have gotten into medical school if they had simply completed their premed courses at another school (or completed their entire degree at another school). THAT'S the source of the unfairness. In other words, Stanford premed courses * unfairly * weed out some students who could have become perfectly good doctors. </p>

<p>Consider this statement from the Stanford premed Quest Scholars program:</p>

<p>*
Myth #11.
I AM ALWAYS BEST OFF TAKING ALL MY
INTRODUCTORY PRE-MED CLASSES AT
STANFORD.
False. It is true that it is more difficult to get
an A in a Stanford pre-med class than it is at most other
schools. This is easier to understand since you are
graded on a curve with some of America’s best students.
Consequently, an ‘A’ at Stanford can mean a lot,
particularly in science classes with a ‘C’ mean.</p>

<p>However, most of you won’t get A’s in every
class. And because of this, some of you certainly
would have had higher GPA’s elsewhere. It is also true
that medical school know this and will take it into account.
However, this ‘forgiveness factor’ is not infinite.
Getting a 4.0 in your pre-med requirements at a
junior college will certainly make you a stronger applicant
than a 3.5 in your pre-med requirements at Stanford.
One admissions officer I spoke with estimated
the bump factor of attending a school like Harvard or
Stanford to be between 0.3 and 0.5 of a grade point.</p>

<p>For some of you, an ‘A’ in high school could
be achieved through hard work and determination.
This is not necessarily true of the pre-med classes at
Stanford. Everyone is trying hard. They are all smart.
And the classes can be very difficult.</p>

<p>The upshot of all of this is that some of you
may be more successful applying to medical school by
taking most of your pre-med classes elsewhere. And I
have certainly known many applicants who would have
been more successful applying to medical school if they
had pursued their academic passions at Stanford and
took their pre-med classes elsewhere, either in summers
or in a year off. I have also known students at Stanford—
who would have been fantastic physicians—who
quit the pre-med process in frustration without exploring
this option. If you want to be a doctor and are
struggling at Stanford, this option is worth exploring.</p>

<p>I say this with some hesitancy because I know
it may cause controversy and it is difficult to know who
would be statistically better off focusing their pre-med
energies at a less competitive institution. I should also
add, however, that all such ‘core’ classes cover the material
required both for the MCAT and to be a good
doctor.</p>

<p>This in no way is meant to imply you made the
wrong choice by coming to Stanford if you are a premed.
Quite the contrary, Stanford may be the best
place in the country for pre-meds to attend college.
You can attain a first-rate education in any field and
simultaneously approach your pre-med curriculum with
more flexibility and more creativity than at nearly any
other university.</p>

<p>Take home point: Consider taking some of
your pre-med classes elsewhere if you are hitting a wall
here. Many successful medical school applicants have
done this. *</p>

<p><a href="http://questscholars.stanford.edu/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://questscholars.stanford.edu/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>wow, I just wrote an article kind of about this for the OC Register. Premed is crazy</p>

<p>"So, besides being one of the top 3 universities in the US, what else is bad about Stanford?"</p>

<p>your band loses football games...</p>

<p><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=8_VGBxfAdDM%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://youtube.com/watch?v=8_VGBxfAdDM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>This year, the Band probably could have won more games than the football team.</p>