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Emory vs USC
CantbelieveNJ
37 replies1 threads Junior Member
My son is admitted to USC Price School and Emory Arts and Science He is very confused on where to go. Granted he has no idea what he wants to do.
Emory gave him a ton of money. So, I want him to go there, but I don't want to push him and let him make a decision.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
25 replies Emory gave him a ton of money. So, I want him to go there, but I don't want to push him and let him make a decision.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Replies to: Emory vs USC
If the former, I'd recommend Emory A&S, as I firmly believe that public policy is a grad type discipline. Emory is also cheaper.
Does he care about big time D1 sports, i.e., football? Greek scene? Both are big at 'SC.
I am happy to hear that USC and Emory are academic peers. Thanks for the feedback guys.
I am happy to hear that USC and Emory are academic peers. Thanks for the feedback guys.
And Emory students aren't that "loud" or as present on social media as other top private schools, so you just don't hear as much from them and most willing to say something, generally claim that these targets are "fair" and that you get out what you put in, and this may be because Emory doesn't have D-1 sports or a giant party scene so students kind of just come in expecting the academics to be a certain way and are more open minded about what "rigor" should look like. You just sort of do the work and complain to friends in person every now and then. There is no culture of going to social media and warning people or complaining about tough grading and tests in certain courses. At Emory, no one cares that much to sort of expouse any sort of academic reputation regarding opinions about difficulty and all that.
For example, here is the grade distributions for all of gchem 1 at Berkeley:
https://old.berkeleytime.com/grades/?course1=1145-all-all
(to prove Emory targets this, I'd have to post syllabi which are in my google drive and I just don't wanna bother with that right now but am willing to maybe PM OP with them if they don't believe me lol).
Now versus USC/other Ca universities that are elite, non-honors level classes may be delivered differently because enrollment per section in Emory intro. courses are generally quite a bit smaller than USC and other even similar enrollment (USC has much larger undergrad enrollment than Emory's medium sized peers like Gtown, WUSTL, Vanderbilt, Cornell, Brown, and whatever other privates it labels as its peers) peer schools ranked above and below. It means they can do certain things less likely to be prevalent at USC.
I also suspect neuroscience is structured differently at the two, and depending on how picky a student is, it may matter. Emory has a pretty stringent 4 course core which I think is unusual among schools offering neuroscience majors. They definitely have the right intentions in how they structured it, but some students do value this concept of "freedom" in course selection and don't know much about learning goals and skill development. I'll go look at USC's neuro program and get back to see if I can confirm, but I am sure it is structured more similarly to other schools.
USC: https://dornsife.usc.edu/usc-neuroscience/bachelor-of-science-in-neuroscience/:
Emory: http://www.nbb.emory.edu/academics/major-requirements.html
3 vs. 4 (Emory has the writing requirement, 401)cores and then lots of electives.
What is cool to me about both programs versus many I see (keep in mind, I have a grad schoo/research bias) is that both programs (I actually checked out materials and syllabi from USC courses) is that both have much more of a problem solving/application, and research/experimental neuro/behavioral science focused lean versus many other programs which seem to have an almost overly clinically/medically oriented curriculum where the courses focus more on students gaining a knowledge of say...neuroanatomy and lots of content regarding pathways and specifics more so than a focus on "how" someone may discover those facts. Also, both have infrastructure for your son to combine those neuro and math interests. USC has the computational neuroscience "major" and Emory basically has it via the QTM department AND 2 computational neuroscience/life sciences fellowships for undergraduates. You won't really lose out on Emory not having the major because the schools appear to offer the same courses (so you can basically major in NBB at Emory and craft a concentration by taking key math, biology, physics, and CS courses). There has also been this proliferation of computationally and mathematically focused courses in biology, with about half of them relevant to neuroscience majors. It also appears that Emory's NBB major is much more than just a "major" and may be better developed in some ways.
The resources and opportunities offered through the program appear a lot more localized and robust. Compare the handbooks per major:
https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/753/docs/NEUR_InfoPacketpdf.pdf
http://www.nbb.emory.edu/documents/NBB Handbook as of 03-26-2019 copy Beckii .pdf
Your son won't necessarily be hurting if he took Emory's financial aid offer unless he really wants the D-1/USC sort of social atmosphere. To me it is clear, he won't be losing out academically. Plus as I said before, the introductory courses at Emory that lead into most of the neuro courses could be more "interesting" for him. Despite them still being tough, faculty in the intro. life sciences (namely chem and biol) have worked extremely hard to make them feel less like large lecture weeder courses, and more like they are trying to seriously expose students to different ways of learning material. They use methods typically less used at most other peer research universities probably because smaller section sizes make it easier to do that (I'm amazed how places like Duke pull off curricular innovation with much larger enrollment, but kudos to them).
Either way, this is some of what I could gather. You can't really go wrong with these two (I wouldn't worry about them being overall "academic peers". It just so happens that your son got into two schools and is interested in something both do EXTREMELY well even in comparison to some higher ranked peers IMO). Good luck! Hopefully you won't have to spend the extra money lol.
I couldn't disagree more with your first paragraph in post #7, but since cc is not a debating society, I'll leave it at that.
(btw: grading policy can be significantly different than student culture. For example, Hopkins does not have grade deflation, but it can still be extremely intense in the intro premed sciences. Cal Engineering is a lot more collegial than Cal premed.)
I didn't care about "student culture". Never mentioned it at all. Any nastiness among students at some schools versus others is all kind of in vein if they will ultimately get similar level courses and grading curves as similar caliber schools. You mentioned that the grading at USC and other California schools, and I addressed THAT. I don't care to address "culture" because I don't know what to believe. I just know that OP's child should expect similar intellectual intensity and grading in those particular areas if USC grades similarly to a Berkeley or UCLA. I have no idea if such grading norms are sufficient at USC to yield the same alleged competition that Berkeley or JHU is known for, so I stuck to commenting about grading. Maybe a B-/B average should be considered "deflation", but all I know is that it remains fairly standard in STEM at a lot of places.