<p>Currently I am looking at those schools: Tufts, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Kenyon. As funny as it is, I like them all, even though they are different. But, solely on pre-med/bio programs, how would you rank them?</p>
<p>Thanks for the help in advance. :)</p>
<p>Swarthmore above all the rest</p>
<p>Of course the academic programs there are not what you should be looking at, since you’re not picking a PhD program in biology. The academic strength of a biology department has basically zero relevance to what a premed should be looking for.</p>
<p>^ fully agreed.</p>
<p>Actually, sometimes I feel that there may be some negative impact when an academic (PhD) program is too strong. The reason: the stronger the program, the more professors who are into research rather than teaching – Professors at such a school may have a higher pressure to deliver research results; the quality and quantity of the research are the most important criteria for the university (and peers) to rate the professors. But the department still requires almost every professor to teach one course. The end result is that it is likely to have classes which are taught by three or more professors, who barely coordinate among themselves in their teaching. – And some of them rush out of the class room at the end of the lecture to go to their research lab to do their main work: research.</p>
<p>Not all group-taught courses are bad. But many students dislike this style of teaching (unless it is just a seminar course, rather than core courses like genetics, biochem, cell bio).</p>
<p>I notice that neither chemistry nor physics is ever taught by multiple professor. Why? I guess it is because we are “lucky” that these two departments are relatively small, maybe lower ranked as compared to the bio department, and do not have so many research professors. Therefore, there is no need to assign multiple professors to the same course.</p>
<p>Hmmm…But I would imagine that there is a downside to go to a school that is too small. At a large school, there are multiple tracks for many introductory science courses. The student may choose a track that fits his/her academic capability. (I sometimes think this is somewhat unfair, when you see so many students coming in with AP chemistry 5 still taking the lowest level introductory chemistry courses.) You rarely have such a choice in orgo though. This is the reason why orgo is such a famous weeder class.</p>
<p>Well, I asked about bio as well b/c this is what I will be majoring in (and will not do it solely because of pre-med). Thanks for the replies, though.</p>