Chances at Ivy League, which is best for brain science??

Chance Me / Match Me!
#1

<p>based on my stats, can you give me an idea if ivy league colleges are far reach, or if they are somewhat reasonable?
<strong>stats</strong>
high school junior, caucasian male
sat math 660
verbal 710
writing 670
(im going to retake to improve the math and hopefully the writing as well)
sat chem and us history sat II pending next weekend
plan on taking sat II math level two and biology
high school gpa 99.6 last quarter whatever that is on a 4.0 scale
top of my class by a long shot, small class, 100-120 people
plan on going to college for a medical background and either becoming a doctor/surgeon or a researcher, either path would be focusing on brain science
<strong>school</strong>
my high school has no ap classes but it does college sponsoroed classes, if that makes sense
i have taken all the hardest classes possible so far and next year i will take basic physics, basic level civil war, college-level calculus, college-level english/writing and french, college-level latin american studies, and college-level probability and statistics. these are all the hardest classes and include every single college-level class my school offers, but i know i will be disadvantaged compared to applicants coming from bigger schools. to try and make up for the total lack of college-level science, i applied forand was accepted to a biology/anatomy and physiology program at a local college for 4 college credits.
<strong>co-curricular</strong>
i have taken band since 4th grade, play the clarinet 1st seat (not bad having practiced 1 hour maximum all year) and will take a level 6 solo next year (hardest level), but that wont happen till june next year. i also played in the all county orchestra and band on reccomendation without the usually necessary solo score. i just started playing guitar and becoming good, and for a while i plyed in the jazz band playing tenor saxophone. i have done martial arts since almost before i could walk, and am now a 2nd degree blackbelt. im in the national honor society, along with the french and science national honor society. i plan on running for some sort of student government (ie class president) next year and continuing the tutoring for math that i started half-way through this year. i plan on doing 40 minutes a day of tutoring for the first semester, as a minimum. i have been on the golf team for 4 years and will be on the top 6 team next year, last year we won leagues and sectionals, if thats too small-scale a victory i don't know. school ski club. i plan on tutoring, at my teachers request, the other kids in my chem class to write better lab write-ups (i am literally the only one getting consistantly above 85 on these, out of 40/50 kids). i am on the top 4 team for our quiz bowl team at our high school.</p>

<p><strong>awards</strong>
PSAT/NMSQT at leat a commended student (havent reieved notice that i am a finalist/semi-finalist as that hasnt been announced yet)
bausch and lomb scholarship for math and science
rpi scholarship for math and science
boys state considered student, didnt get into it though
I have also recieved "awards" in the mail. These are Who's Who Among High School Students, WWAHSS: Sports Edition, and the National Society of High School Scholars. I think these are scams/unimportant at best.
high honor roll and perfect attendance through high school probably wont hurt to mention.</p>

<p>k thanks for reading it, please give me some feedback to make it worth the time it took me trying to figure out how to post this</p>

#2

<p>yah o think you have a good shot to get into an ivy. But ivy league schools are not necessarily the best schools for pre-med. If you want to get into medical school or study neuro, then look at Stanfors, Berkeley, or UMich, or even Williams and Mary.</p>

#3

<p>The National Academy of Science/National Research Council ranking of neuroscience faculty (departments):</p>

<ol>
<li><p>UCSD</p></li>
<li><p>Yale</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard</p></li>
<li><p>University of California-San Francisco campus</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford</p></li>
</ol>

<p>etc.</p>

<p>Other Ivies ranked in the top 100 include #6 Columbia, #24 Cornell and #54 Brown.</p>

#4

<p>san francisco is grad school...</p>

#5

<p>It is a ranking of departmental quality. In terms of what classes are offered and how strong the undergraduate programs are, you need to talk with students & profs at each school and figure that out for yourself. I would say that the strongest undergrad programs are Caltech, Yale and MIT, however (for almost all sciences across the board, not just neuroscience).</p>

#6

<p>

I'm waiting for Suze tell you how wrong you are.</p>

<p>Ivies are all longshots. You should look at LACs with a need for students to fill their science departments.</p>

#7

<p>hey, thanks for the post, could you tell me what suze is, and what LAC's are?... local area colleges is a guess but I have no idea</p>

#8

<p>to Suze:</p>

<p>nice name</p>

#9

<p>LAC</p>

<p>liberal arts college</p>

<p>you have great stats, he wasn't being that mean (local area college), but ivy league schools are very very hard to get into even if you were perfect, that's all. That means apply but there's def no guarantees. by the way, I'm also interested in neuroscience and some of the schools I like are Emory and Vanderbilt. There are other schools too. google faculty for undergraduate neuroscience and click on the education link on the side and they have a list of many (though not all) of the schools with neuroscience programs with links to the universities neuroscience webpages. Unfortunately there's no raking for undergraduate neuroscience so you have to judge for yourself who's best. Best of luck on your college search and def don't count yourself out of the top schools.</p>

#10