Am I on the Right Track?

M_s_Mom
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:30:31 +0000

Grinnell has a great chemistry dept (S was a chem, and ultimately a biochem major there). (My definition of ‘great’ by the way, is highly rated faculty who like to teach and mentor, small class sizes, state-of-the-art facilities, and lots of funding for student research.)

Keep in mind that you may change majors so you might want to think about more than school’s chem dept. You have some really different kinds of schools there: Harvey Mudd is a tech (and a LAC), Johns Hopkins is a mid-sized private research univ, as is Emory. Grinnell, Carleton and Amherst are LACs. You also have schools that are urban (Johns Hopkins again), rural (Grinnell and Carleton) and suburban (Harvey Mudd). I point this out because there is more difference between types of schools, and types of locations, than between schools within the same category.

It’s okay if you don’t know what kind of environment you want - but it’s also pretty rare to see Grinnell on the same list as Johns Hopkins. S considered Carleton, Amherst and Harvey Mudd - but wouldn’t have been interested in Emory, BU or Johns Hopkins because they were not what he was looking for culturally.