Haverford vs. Vassar THIS IS URGENT

HC_Alum
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:17:55 +0000

Thanks and I’m glad you found my posts somewhat helpful. While HC has several outstanding departments and many excellent departments made outstanding with BMC, there is no LAC better in chemistry /biochemistry/molecular bio than HC (ranks #1 in % of MD/PHD grads along with Harvard and Stanford). If you want to major in these fields, you’ve come to the right place.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/haverford-college/427212-why-haverford-sciences-phenomenal-part-12-a.html?highlight=science

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/haverford-college/1237667-why-i-love-haverford-howard-lutnick-83-a.html

That being said though, as I wrote in the post above, you don’t need to go to the best college in a particular field to learn undergraduate topics to prepare you for your future (extreme examples include a HC religion major becoming CEO of Time Warner, 2 fine arts alumni one becoming a professor of engineering at Berkeley (now provost) and another the head of the ER at UPenn and alumni becoming the chief editors in the last decade of LA Times, NY Times and current chief of Harvard Business Review with HC not having a journalism or business program). Depending on your initiative and innate smarts, going to any number of the top (let’s just throw out a number) 50ish schools may provide you with different college experiences but similar potential for success; it’s a matter more of you than where you’re at. The pre-med preparation and work load may be different between the schools though (all of my friends and I consistently report that HC was more work than the med schools we attended- Harvard on down). My 2 classmates from UW honors seemed to work harder and appeared more stressed (without getting honors or publishing any papers) than I was but that stuff means little after residency and, in the long run, means even less.

In your post, you wrote you “generally liked” the vibe at HC which concerns me. If you merely “like” HC, it’s not worth the cost IMO given what I wrote above. If it really resonated with you like the initial poster wrote about Vassar, then it would be worth it. Med school is about 55,000/year so you should be in a position by 4th year to pick your residency based on your love of a field and not only because a specialty is lucrative so you can pay back your loans.