Best Liberal Arts Colleges for Biology?

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@tk21769

For a popular major like biology, among peer LACs, it is nearly impossible. About the best you can do is to look carefully at the number of courses, descriptions, faculty bios, and class sizes (if that information is available). Chances are, you won’t see differences among most of these schools that are big enough to override significant net cost differences or non-academic personal preferences.

</p>

<p>Actually, biology is such a broad field that browsing the course offerings can give you an idea of what each biology department emphasizes, based on its upper level course offerings. Strictly for pre-med purposes, such differences are less relevant, since the pre-med courses are common frosh/soph level courses, but if you major in biology, you may want to check which biology departments have the subarea emphases that you are most interested in.</p>

<p>Note that this is not about ranking to find the “better” school, but is about finding the better academic fit for the specific student.</p>

<p>

@aquamar1ne

I would prefer liberal arts colleges that are fairly generous with financial aid. Our annual household income is about $85,000/year. However, this will not be the deciding factor.

</p>

<p>Medical school is expensive, so you do not want to add a lot of undergraduate debt to the total debt you will end up with after medical school.
<a href=“https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/”>https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/&lt;/a&gt;
Also, if you do not go to medical school, biology majors do not have the strongest or well paid job prospects, so taking on a lot of debt as a biology major is not a good idea.</p>