<p>“Boston College - I love the Boston area, and I’d be in the honors program there. However, it’s the least prestigious and I know the least about it.”</p>
<p>Yes, it lags behind Hopkins, Berkeley, and Cornell a bit among people who make a living out of splitting such hairs. And there are some here who believe that the professors at “top 20” schools are all geniuses, while professors at the 31st ranked school have difficulty tying their shoes. But the reality is that to get a faculty position at any of these schools you have to have your stuff together, academically. The professors at all of these schools went to the same top grad schools and learned the same stuff.</p>
<p>The main differences here are not in their US News rankings. Cornell and Hopkins are classic high-pressure East Coast academic meat grinders that reportedly do a pretty thorough job of thinning out their herds of pre-meds. What happens in the classrooms at USC and Berkeley seems to have less of an effect on ones experience there than what goes on outside the classroom…the social life, sports, and glitzy SoCal lifestyle at USC, and the neo-Bohemian lockstep dudeism and step-over-the-homeless-guyism of Berkeley.</p>
<p>With all of this as a backdrop, you can see why the BC folks here are recommending their excellent-but-not-non-meat-grinderish school, which offers a quiet and safe location just a trolley ride from downtown Boston.</p>