Just announced Amherst College Science building wins award. I mean why study science in anywhere when you can do that at Amherst.
Both very good schools. Because there are a lot of factors that go into a college’s premed success rate (and very few students who begin premed graduate premed), I generally don’t make a big deal of them, but last year the rate for Brandeis was below the national average of 42% and Amherst’s was way above that average (as good or better than several Ivies - if that really matters).
Good points.
OP can get a great science education at both schools. One difference between the schools is that Amherst has an open curriculum, whereas Brandeis has a fairly extensive core curriculum (updated for class entering 2019). Because of this, OP would be able to take more science (and fewer humanities) classes at Amherst.
@otisp wrote:
Can you share the source for this data point? All I can find is the acceptance rate from 2009-2013 https://www.brandeis.edu/acserv/health/basics/admittedschools.pdf
Note that it can be difficult to make comparisons of med school acceptance rate across colleges because one doesn’t know how those numbers are calculated, e.g., Does it include DO and MD schools? Do all students get a committee letter, or is it limited to those meeting a certain GPA and MCAT threshold?
@23stevenyu I see in your other thread that Brandeis will cost you almost $30k more than Amherst over 4 years. All things being equal Amherst would be a clear cut winner over Brandeis but if you are getting a full ride at Amherst – its a no brainer–choose Amherst! You won’t regret it!
The NSF makes data available about the baccalaureate origins of STEM PhDs.
The following was published about 6 years ago and covers 2002-2011:
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
Table 4 probably is the right one to look at.
In it, Amherst ranked #26 and Brandeis #37 by institution-yield ratio.
An even better adjustment might be by program size(s), which one might be able to derive from the CDS breakdowns of degrees conferred, or from IPEDS data.
I ran my own query on WebCaspar for alumni PhDs only in life sciences earned from 2007-2016.
Results: 115 Amherst alumni and 237 Brandeis alumni earned life science PhDs in that time frame.
From approximately 2x the undergraduate population, Brandeis generated approximately 2x the number of life science PhDs.
So, using only this data, at face value (with no effort to control for admission selectivity, for alumni post-graduate preferences, or for where the PhDs were earned), my own search suggests the two schools might be about equal on this basis.
AAMC data for all graduates who applied to MD schools during the most recently completed cycle. And, I should have noted that Brandeis was only slightly below the national average.
Totally agree! With respect to DO schools, I don’t know the admission statistics for these particular schools, but in general the DO rate is actually lower than the MD.
Both are really excellent schools, but OP asked whether going to Amherst for science would be a disadvantage, and as other posters have noted, that wouldn’t appear to be the case.