<p>I don't know if this is the right thread to post on but I do need a bit of advice.</p>
<p>A bit of background: I plan to major in either molecular biology or biochemistry and go on to graduate school to get a PhD in genetics. However I also hope to explore various areas of study and maybe even double major in a humanities. I'm from California which factors in a bit on my decision.</p>
<p>I'm mainly leaning toward either Yale or UC Berkeley, but I was invited to Penn as a Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences. I'm looking to get into research early on and perhaps even publish a paper before I finish undergrad.</p>
<p>Aside from environment and aesthetics (I've visited all three universities), which of these three would best prepare me with connections, research opportunities, and a good bio education?</p>
<p>My thoughts: UC Berkeley has a great biology program but it's quite impacted; it's also a fairly large, competitive school. Yale isn't as well known for the sciences but has a smaller Biology department that may be beneficial in terms of attention and research opportunities. I don't know much about Penn. </p>
<p>Any help is greatly appreciated. I never thought I would find myself in such a difficult, yet fortunate position. </p>
<p>Net price at each school? Future professional goals?</p>
<p>At Berkeley, neither molecular and cell biology nor integrative biology is a capped-enrollment major (what people typically mean when they refer to impacted majors). However, they are two of the largest majors on campus, so even many upper division courses are quite large, and their lower division prerequisites have huge enrollment. The flip side is that that there are lots of course offerings and research areas available because the departments are huge.</p>
<p>Because (at any school) pre-med courses are mostly the same as the lower division prerequisites for biology majors, expect to be in classes with pre-meds who need to get high GPAs to get into medical school.</p>
<p>Huh? Yale isn’t known for their sciences? News to me. Yale has one of the strongest molecular bio graduate programs in the world and its undergraduate program is also excellent. You will have no trouble procuring research opportunities at any of those schools but the research opportunities at a place like UPenn or Yale might be a bit more substantial than the generally available ones at Berkeley. </p>
<p>Penn has one of the largest–if not THE largest–biomedical research complexes on any university campus in the world. Its top-ranked Medical, Nursing, Dental, and Veterinary Schools are awash in research funds and programs related to human health and biology, as are the top-ranked University of Pennsylvania Hospitals (main HUP and Penn Presbyterian) and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia also located right on campus, not to mention the world-renowned Wistar Institute, the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, and the University City Science Center located on or within a couple of blocks of campus. As a result, Penn is perennially one of the top 3 or so recipients of NIH (National Institutes of Health) research funding in the country.</p>
<p>Additionally, Penn makes undergraduate involvement in all of this research a top priority. Accordingly, Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) maintains an active directory of campus research positions available to undergraduates.</p>
<p>Further, my understanding is that Vagelos Scholars are granted unique research opportunities–including paid summer positions if I’m not mistaken–that are unsurpassed at any other undergraduate institution, as the core of the program. In fact, the Vagelos Program maintains this listing of the research topics of all students who have been in the program:</p>
<p>Not to mention that Penn also has many top-ranked humanities and liberal arts departments to explore (as, of course, do the other two schools), but also allows you to take courses in Wharton, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Nursing School, as well as most of Penn’s graduate and professional schools (including, e.g., the School of Design, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education, and even the Law School!). Penn has long been known for its “One University” policy that encourages undergrads to take courses in all of these various schools within the university.</p>
<p>But to conclude, I encourage you to look carefully at the Vagelos Program and what it has to offer, because my understanding is that is really offers undergrads an unparalleled opportunity to be involved in molecular life sciences and research at an extraordinary level.</p>
<p>Here’s what I can tell you being the father of a graduating Vagelos MLS student. First of all, it is not for everyone. That’s probably why 2/3 of the students eventually leave the program. It is really geared for people who want to go on doing research after their undergraduate studies.</p>
<p>Negatives:
It has a fairly structured curriculum which turns off a lot of people looking for a more liberal arts education. The head of the program (Prof Ponzy) is not that approachable and I have heard that having the will to push back at his suggestions is important to one’s success. You are required to either do a double major or submatriculate for a masters degree - doing the double major requires a lot more courses. You are required to take at least 5 courses per term, but there seems to be a mentality amongst the students that 6 is the way to go after your first year.</p>
<p>Positives:
Having funding for 2 summers of research and the Vagelos name behind you guarantees you will be doing undergraduate research. It is not only a foot in the door, MLS students generally get their pick of labs to enter from among hundreds at Penn and the medical school. You will probably even get paid for working in the lab of your choice the summer after your freshman year since they want you the next 2 summers for free too. This connection to your lab is invaluable for the required independent research course. If you look at the MLS website you will see an impressive list of where students go on to. What you will not see is that those students probably had the pick of top programs to enter and many top 10 programs were turned down to enter the school of their choice. People say that it is a GPA killer and therefore not for premed students but approximately 60% of them go on to MD/Phd or MD programs.</p>
<p>My son’s experience:
Not being all that interested in humanities until his senior year, he triple majored in biochemistry, physics and biophysics. He also submatriculated since along the way he had almost all of the required courses to do so. When applying to graduate programs I know they were impressed by the fact that he had in excess of 2500 hours of lab research under his belt. He was offered admission to 6 of the 7 schools he applied to and eventually turned down offers to Berkeley, Harvard, Caltech, Yale and Michigan in favor of his final choice. His regrets included not taking more courses outside his field his first 3 years including more computer science.</p>
<p>Like I said, MLS is not for everyone. It is hard to pick Penn solely because of it since so many people eventually decide it is not for them. For those who know for sure they want to do research and stick with the program, however, the experience and doors it opens can be a life changing experience.</p>
<p>One suggestion to the OP - post your thread on the 3 specific individual college forums and you will get a much better response. Expect partisan cheerleading from each of them.</p>
<p>@RML If my experiences at UCI (another AAU UC) can be generalized to Berkeley, many professors are somewhat reluctant to use undergrads in any high capacity, non “beaker-monkey” position. This was a major concern of my two bosses, both STEM professors at UCI, before they sent their daughter to UC Berkeley. Fwiw, they encouraged her to consider smaller STEM schools or top level universities which are nowhere near as prestigious on the graduate level as UCB because of the increased faculty student interaction. </p>