I note Carleton has special interest houses including a Christian house, FISH House:
So while it is not a Christian college, it is supportive of Christian students. Whether that is enough for you is very personal but I think it is worth understanding the nature of the option.
And then of course whether you like Carleton academically is another matter–it definitely attracts academicky kids who basically like school, but I think among such colleges it is very committed to being friendly and collaborative.
If any of this sounds interesting, then I agree Macalester is also well worth considering. Here is a page on Christian Life at Macalester to give you an idea of how they approach it:
It is a bit of a cliche but these Minnesota colleges really do make a point of trying to be welcoming and supportive of students with a wide range of belief systems. So I agree you could add St Olaf and Gustavus Adolphus, and more as well.
Put premed OUT of the college application search for now. You can do premed almost anywhere.
Find a college where you will be happy to be for four years. Happy students do better than unhappy ones.
Look for a college with a variety of majors in case you decide medicine isn’t for you after all.
Make a list of the qualities you want in a college…size, location, sports, urban/suburban/rural, religious vs secular (keeping in mind that many secular colleges have robust religious groups), ease of travel to your home, cost cost cost.
Be very open minded at this point. Look at lots of options.
I wonder how accurate your perception of Holy Cross as competitive would be. It’s not a stereotype that I’ve encountered in my own research. It’s fortunate that you’re Catholic because there seem to be a lot of great small-to-medium-sized Catholic schools out there. University of San Diego, University of Dayton, DePaul, Santa Clara, etc. might all fit the bill and are easier to get into than the elite liberal arts colleges.
I wonder if you’d be less comfortable in a more explicitly evangelical setting – somehow I think the more theologically conservative and homogenous the school, the more magnified the differences across different branches of Christianity might be (so, to use an extreme example, being Catholic at BYU or Bob Jones or Liberty is likely to be at least as uncomfortable as being Catholic at most secular colleges in the US. You’d be in the minority among people who believe very strongly that their branch of Christianity is the true way. I actually had an evangelical friend who worked as a missionary converting Catholics in Poland.) Meanwhile most universities and even smaller liberal arts colleges will have some kind of Catholic presence on campus.
Re: your preference for a more collaborative, less cutthroat environment, I think this is where you’ll want to do more research. Pre-med programs, for better or worse, seem to have more of a reputation for this kind of vibe. I second the recommendations for Rhodes and St. Olaf based on our visits to those campuses. Macalester similarly seems super supportive and kind and is so well situated for research opportunities – but compared to the other two schools seems to have a student body that skews a little more visibly liberal/activist. Those New England liberal arts colleges that you mentioned are long shots for everyone, even those with pristine stats and myriad accomplishments and awards.
You should be looking for a few likely schools that work for you culturally. In addition to some of the Catholic schools mentioned above, I think University of Puget Sound would be a likely and it might hit the sweet spot for you of small and collaborative but well-situated for research opportunities.
On the reachier end of the spectrum I think Villanova and Boston College could be great fits. You might also look into Tulane, Wake Forest (excellent for pre-med and there’s a research hospital right there), University of Richmond, Vanderbilt (super reach but worth a gander), and Wash U St. Louis.
Dwelling on Rhodes for a bit, if you get a chance to research/visit and it looks like a good option and fit, consider also applying for the early acceptance program at LECOM (you can apply as a HS senior). Rhodes is affiliated with that program (although others are as well… on the website below there is a link to a list of schools which may be worth exploring).
LECOM is a D.O. program, but if you understand what that means and you are pretty sure you won’t pursue plastics or derm or other hypercompetitive specialities, you should find yourself being able to match with ACGME residencies after med school. Like many things in life there are tradeoffs, but knowing you have a spot in med school coming out of college may tip the scales for you.
Rhodes is a good college for premed as well. Close proximity to the children’s hospital, lots of research opportunities for undergrads, good close community.
@momsearcheng has a daughter completing her freshman year there (in the LECOM program described above). I’m sire she can give you her parent as well as her daughter’s impressions of the school.
As some of you know, one of my favorite all time CC posters (who sadly has died) had a daughter who attended Rhodes on pretty much a full scholarship. She was subsequently accepted to Yale Medical School.
“pre-med students are always working together whether it’s for a project or to study. i know my friends are always doing study sessions with other pre med students. and i’ve seen all religions being accepted. i’d say i good chunk are catholic so they are never singled out.”
Correction. There are no crucifixes or crosses in classrooms; there is no required chappel attendance at all at Rhodes. Many students are not religious or agnostic. There are ton of Muslims on campus. There are 0 nuns or pastors. There are visiting religious professors for some religious classes (like reform Rabbi). School has lady chaplain.
So by any standards Rhodes is not very religious school.
And you can only imagine amount of alcohol on this “religious” campus. It is officially wet campus and you can drink underage in sorority or fraternity and nobody can stop you…
If you’re interested in Roman Catholic colleges that are on the smaller side, then you may want to consider these colleges which produced some of the highest rates of alumni who went on to earn a doctorate in a biological or biomedical science between 2000-2018 (source). This list is in order from most doctorates to least (and there are many more schools below these that I did not list). I tried to keep the schools to around 5k undergrads or fewer, but I gave a little extra leeway for California schools.
Creighton (NE): About 4300 undergrads in Omaha, 77% from out-of-state, 106 doctorates
U. of Scranton (PA ): About 3600 undergrads, 57% from out-of-state, 103 doctorates
College of the Holy Cross (MA): About 3200 undergrads in Worcester, 61% from out-of-state, 91 doctorates
Xavier of Louisiana (HBCU): About 2700 undergrads in New Orleans, 71% from out-of-state, 89 doctorates
Loyola Maryland: About 4k undergrads in Baltimore, 69% from out-of-state, 86 doctorates
Fairfield (CT): About 4800 undergrads, 80% from out-of-state, 82 doctorates
John Caroll (OH): About 2400 undergrads in the Cleveland metro, 34% from out-of-state, 70 doctorates
Xavier (OH): About 4900 undergrads in Cincinnati, 56% from out-of-state, 68 doctorates
Santa Clara (CA): About 6100 undergrads, 44% from out-of-state, 68 doctorates
Duquesne (PA ): About 5100 undergrads in Pittsburgh with 27% from out-of-state, 67 doctorates
Canisius (NY): About 1800 undergrads in Buffalo with 15% from out-of-state (and 6% from foreign countries), 63 doctorates
Gonzaga (WA): About 5100 undergrads in Spokane with 52% from out-of-state, 61 doctorates
U. of San Diego (CA): About 5700 undergrads with 40% from out-of-state, 60 doctorates
To provide a frame of reference, I’ve added in the number of doctorates earned at some of the other schools mentioned in this thread that are classified as baccalaureate institutions (colleges primarily focusing on undergrads). People mentioned these schools, sometimes several times, because they produce strong students. But looking through the number of people who’ve gone on to earn a doctorate in a bio field can help instill confidence in the strength of the preparation the alumni received, even if the school’s name isn’t one that everyone has heard of before.
Carleton: #1 producer with 321
Grinnell: #5 producer with 238
St. Olaf: #6 producer with 235
Williams: #8 producer with 215
Macalester: 144
Whitman: 117
U. of Puget Sound: 111
Hope: 111 (not mentioned, but I think could be a fit)
Furman: 107
Gustavus Adolphus: 104
Luther: 101
Wheaton (IL): 67
Concordia at Moorhead: 67
Rhodes: 60
Hillsdale: 44
Obviously, there are tons of other colleges out there. If you reflect more about what it is you want out of your college experience, that can help posters to help hone in the schools that might be the best fit. Some questions you may want to think about include:
What size classes do you prefer?
How do you feel about Greek life (sororities/sororities)?
How do you feel about intercollegiate athletic enthusiasm?
What kind of vibe do you want on campus? What kind of people would be “your kind of people”?
Are there particular interests you want to pursue, outside of anything for med school admissions?
How do you feel about climate (including the amount of sun, or feelings toward colder or warmer climates, etc)?
Are there states/regions you prefer, or would prefer to avoid?
Additionally, you may want to look at some of the colleges that have been recommended. What elements do you like? Dislike? Are there any that you’re excited about? Why?
The more information you give us, the better we can help.
Thanks.
Not all elements were relevant but Rhodes can be moved in the 1st category as per your experience then.
The classification was a rough metric for OP to evaluate the idea of a “Christian college”, which may have very different meanings, and thus have objective or subjective criteria to check for.
(The nuns/monks/priests thing was for Catholic schools; Rhodes felt closer to Fordham than St Olaf even though it’s secular. It may be due to its location&culture, or to the “more-religious” options for the 1st year seminar, which St Olaf no longer includes although religion as a social science and ethics/philosophy for careers are mandatory. I know you were quite upset at the religiosity/religion in the 1st year seminar last year but came back to praise the “religion as culture”, option. Thank you.)
Btw I agree Rhodes would be great for @lucyyyy
@lucyyyy : know that all universities, even public ones, will have a chapel or non denominational religious space with services, including Mass, for students, as well as opportunities for college-age education. Most campuses will have a church nearby and ways to help students go to mass if they wish to.
Some public universities will have a Newman center and all will have a club to support Catholic students’ faith.
So, as @Shelby_Balik said, whether your college is majority Christian/Catholic or not, all colleges will support students’ spiritual growth if that’s what they want.
My understanding that Rhodes has religious classes mostly because school uses (and needs) Bellingrath fund money or merit scholarships will disappear and school will close (a lot of students choose Rhodes due to combination of reputation and merit awards.) Condition of that donation back from 1960s was religious education. Rhodes is dancing around that thing with 4 different pathes by now…Rhodes wants diversity and come up with new ways to approach “religious” classes every year.
BTW , it is 3 semesters and not 1st year seminar. My DD stands her ground that is totally wasted time for her, but we had 0 choice when we discovered it.
It is a lot of “fun” to have forced study of history or Bible when you only goal is to get an A and you have absolutely no interest.
DD loves Rhodes and absolutely hates religious requirements.
Well, perhaps Fordham is less religious than you think it is. There is no required chapel attendance at either campus. And while I can’t vouch for the Rose Hill campus, I just took a pretty extensive tour of the Lincoln Center campus recently and didn’t spot any crucifixes. The core does include a requirement for 2 theology classes, but the offerings definitely lean “cultural.” It is true that there are a few classes taught by priests/monks for those interested! There definitely are faith communities available for those that want them, although the majority of students don’t participate.
I went to a college (Wofford in South Carolina) that required a religion class or two much like Rhodes. I took Old Testament and World Religions. All the classes are from a historic and literary scholarly approach to religion. It did rock the world and opened a lot of eyes of several students that only knew about the Bible from church and Sunday school.
I don’t want to derail this -I was trying to provide some examples for OP.
I grouped Rhodes and Fordham together because one is ostensibly not religious but has a lot of Christian students (of all denominations) including Bible Belt Christians alongside students of varying faiths and no faith at all, and a Humanities requirement with different flavors which include different approaches to Religion (the “Life” or “Search” freshman seminar, which is year long; there’s an extra class later on); Fordham is ostensibly religious&Catholic but very diverse, the students aren’t that religious, and the curriculum requires 2 religion classes, 2 philosophy classes, and 1 Values class; Lincoln and RH have a different vibe, and Gabelli has its own set of requirements. Both colleges are urban and make use of their location. Most importantly to my mind (as useful to OP) both colleges share an academic approach to religion (v. Dogma).
They could all be in group 1 for OP’s purpose, one big category of “religion class required but academic approach, religious people/symbols may be visible.” Or there could be just 2 categories “religion approached academically, religion approached as truth”.
I want to emphasize that my goal was for OP to realize the term “Christian” has different meanings when applied to colleges, in part because presence of faith seems to matter to @Lucyy (for instance, some Christian colleges don’t consider Catholic colleges as Christian, etc.), offering off the cuff categories as a starting point, NOT to make strict categories. It seemed easier to point OP to specific colleges so that she could figure out what was a good fit, a deal breaker, or just fine. Feel free to add examples.
Another way to go at it for @lucy is to look at the requirements, whether the approach to theology/religion is academic, whether there’s a creed for students to sign, whether the college hires Jewish/Muslim/atheist instructors. OP can decide for herself whether presence of religious symbols or people matter positively or negatively. Etc.
To conclude (I hope), it seems to me Rhodes and St Olaf would be better for @lucyy than Fordham despite not being Catholic but hopefully she can give us more info. Or perhaps the criterion doesn’t matter that much compared to size and merit aid.
I agree Rhodes and St. Olaf would be better for OP than Fordham, but that’s completely due to the relative weakness of Fordham’s STEM offerings (as you pointed out) rather than anything to do with religious vibe. For students who feel sure they want a STEM-based career, Fordham may not be a great choice unless there are factors that otherwise make Fordham a great fit (e.g. strong desire to be in NYC, large merit scholarship, desire for a Catholic school with a large and vibrant LGBTQ+ community.) Fordham is investing in strengthening its STEM offerings, but in my opinion still has a ways to go.
Hi! Thank you soooo much for all this information it was really helpful. I would prefer class sizes that are smaller for sure, I would not enjoy being in a lecture hall that would have something like 300 people all crammed in together. I do not care about greek life at all and I will not be joining a sorority or anything so it really doesn’t matter to me either way. It also does not matter to me how much people care about sports, really social things and location and everything else do not matter a lot to me, I just want to go where my education will be best for the path that I want to pursue and where my religious beliefs will be respected. For the vibe of people I would want people similar to me, very motivated and focused, definitely not a party school or anything like that, just somewhere where academics are the primary focus of everyone’s lives, but that still has a collaborative atmosphere without any manipulating or backstabbing kind of people you know. Medical school admissions are my primary concern, but as long as there is some way that I could get involved in religion at my school I would be fine with that. I do not care about the climate or location too much, as long as it would academically be a good fit for me and my goals. I think that I will definitely add Rhodes and Creighton to my college list, they both seem like pretty solid choices that would not be extremely difficult to get into. I added Macalester and Hillsdale to my list too. The one that I would say that I am most excited about is Rhodes, as it seems to be very good for premed, not super difficult to get into, and also offers merit which would be good. Thank you for the help so far!!
Thank you so much for all of the information!! I will definitely add Rhodes to my college list after reading everything. I’m glad to know that most colleges offer religious services, I thought that only Christian colleges would do that. Knowing that the colleges will all support spiritual growth is really good, as before I thought that if the college was not religious then they would not offer anything for religious life. With that in mind, I would not necessarily need a college that super enforces religion or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure that there would be some opportunity to keep faith as a big part of my life when I go to college, which seems like I will be able to no matter where I go. Thank you for all of your help!!!
Ohhhh that was very very helpful to know that some Christian colleges don’t consider Catholics as Christian, I never thought about it like that before. Before when I was thinking about this, I would just think that all Christian colleges would be accepting of Catholicism, but the fact that some Christians don’t consider Catholics as Christian totally slipped my mind for some reason. This is more making me think that I should steer away from a bias toward Christian schools, as they would be similar to thinking about my religion as secular schools, and maybe put more emphasis on what would be best for me academically. I was just concerned before reading all of this that there would be no way for me to grow my faith without being on a religiously affiliated college, but now knowing that there are ways to do that even at secular colleges makes me feel much comfortable with going other places as well. Rhodes and St Olaf are for sure going onto my college list, they both seem like really good options. Thank you so much for the new ideas and information!!
Ok I definitely will, thank you! I think that I will definitely end up applying to Creighton at least, they seem to have a really good science program and I have some family in Omaha. Thank you for helping!
