I have been accepted into WashU, UNC Chapel Hill, Tulane (with merit money and honors), Duke, Rice (with merit money), and UT Austin Plan II Honors. I’m going to be majoring in Biomedical or Chemical engineering, but I want a school where I can leave my options open. The main things I care about are:
Ability to go into Grad, Med, or Business school (this would include earning a high GPA)
Career counseling, professional network, and job placement
Access to professors and research opportunities
Also, I went to a Plan II information session and was impressed. The graduates there, two of whom went to Harvard Business School, said Plan II allowed them to pursue business despite not doing business for undergrad. Others went to top medical and law schools. This sounds really appealing to me, but I am concerned with competition and lack of access to professors at UT, where I would also be studying Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Any advice or first-hand experiences would be great, thanks!
At any of the schools you are considering you can pursue business without doing a business undergrad major. You can also go to top medical and law schools from any of them. Your ability to go to a top postgraduate school will not vary to any significant amount among these top schools.
Access to professors at large schools is more of a proactive kind of thing, I think. Even if you are in a biology class with 300 other people, for example, I’d estimate that 70% of them will never go to the professor’s office hours, and an additional 20% will only visit right before an exam or to get help with homework and such. There are lots of students at large universities who do research and have access to professors and don’t have to elbow someone for it.
You say that you have merit money at Tulane and at Rice. Does that money make these options significantly cheaper than the others? Because I would take that into serious account as a tiebreaker.
Congratulations on having such great choices! You really can’t go wrong with any of them. I am not in a position to recommend where you go, as all of those schools are excellent and your criteria are probably well satisfied by all. I will leave you with one bit of advice: beware the perils of chasing prestige. See this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s David & Goliath. (https://www.ash.nl/ftpimages/401/download/download_1009994.pdf) This is not to say that you should not count the reputation of a school as an important factor in your decision, but it is probably unwise to rely solely on it, and there are some downsides, as Gladwell points out. I hope you find the time to read it.
One last thing I can say is that, with choices like that, the sky is the limit. All best!
@NJDad68
Thank you for including that excerpt. It highlights many of the concerns I have with attending Duke or another high-caliber school (I was wait-listed at Harvard, and my parents are pushing me to attend if accepted). Especially as someone who wants to go to postgraduate school, I really want to make sure I’m not too small for the pond I end up in! I’m already signed up to visit Duke and Rice. Hopefully I can visit the other two as well to get a better idea of what student life and academics are like.
Well, for anyone who’s wondering, I chose Plan II/UT Austin. It was by far the cheapest option, and its alumni seem to be highly successful in whatever they choose to do. I think that at UT Austin, I’ll get a great education and a strong alumni network, all while saving money for grad school
Congratulations! I think you will love UT. My son started out in BME at UT, and was able to do research as a freshman (he ended up falling ill and had to withdraw). As Juillet mentioned, you will always have access to professors if you make the effort. My favorite class at UT was American History with George Forgie (he’s still teaching, so take his class!!). There were over 300 kids in the class, but he was such an amazing storyteller that I couldn’t wait to go to his lectures. He was always available during office hours, and we had some great conversations. If I had stayed away from that class because of its size, I would have missed out on a wonderful class.
UT is like a big city with lots of small neighborhoods. You won’t see all 50,000 students at once, except maybe on football game days, which are really fun. I hung out in the engineering building most of the time, and had a group of really close friends. I also went to engineering grad school at UT, so I was there for six years. I’m happy for you!
