<p>I have been fortunate enough to gain admission into all of the above Universities. My financial aid package from all of them is more or less the same. I plan on eventually becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I’ll be looking to start off with Biology as my major, before switching to any pre-law major if I don’t see myself becoming a doctor after Freshman year. </p>
<p>Currently I’m leaning towards NW, but from what I’ve heard the pace of the quarter system is very hard to adjust to. I’ve lived my life with a work hard, play hard mentality and according to some people that’s not really possible at Northwestern, especially if you’re on full scholarship and have work study too. Other factors I’m looking at include the social scene, college town, acceptance of minorities and weather. </p>
<p>Carleton is the odd one out. Would anybody recommend a LAC over these relatively bigger Universities? I’ve gotten into Oberlin too, but have discarded it as an option because people have generally told me that if I want to go to a LAC Carleton is miles ahead of Oberlin. Are they wrong? </p>
<p>I’m also waitlisted at Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, and Rice. Are they worth pursuing? </p>
<p>I would appreciate your insights. Thank you =)</p>
<p>Personally I would recommend choosing between Northwestern and Emory. They both have a great curriculum and especially for potential pre-med and/or pre-law students. Also they both have an academic scene that seems to suit your style of work (based on what you wrote earlier). They both have great liberal arts systems as well. And if you are looking for some down time, they are both strategically placed near vibrant cities where there is so much to do and where you can let loose. I hope that helps! I also applied to Emory and Northwestern and it is indeed a tough decision!!!</p>
<p>Honestly, I’m a bit scared of Chemistry at Northwestern. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shirking away from hard work. I know you’ll pretty much have to work hard where ever you go. It’s just that the past four years of my life have involved me working my butt off to get into college on scholarship and the prospect of doing the same, with the additional pressure of maintaining the scholarship isn’t all too appealing. Which is why I haven’t discarded Notre Dame and Carleton where the pace is supposedly much slower and easier to cope with.</p>
<p>Among LACs, Carleton seems to be relatively strong in the natural sciences. One indication is the PhD production data vossron cited. Also, according to recent Common Data Set figures, about 1 in 3 Carleton students major in Computer Science, Math, Physical or Life Sciences. This is very high compared to peer schools. I would think this natural science focus, combined with the very small classes and undergraduate focus of a LAC, plus the high caliber of the student body, would all add up to a winning combination for someone with the OP’s interests.</p>
<p>Carleton is a challenging school. However, the atmosphere may be a little more relaxed than NW, with better opportunities for faculty hand-holding. Between the Carleton arboretum and the small-town charms of Northfield, there is plenty of room for quiet escape from academic pressures. The Twin Cities are fairly close, too.</p>
<p>Beware: notre dame performs a brutal triage of students who think they might be pre-med as freshmen via intro to organic chem. If you don’t come out of that class with one of the highest a’s you’ll be cut for sure. Oh, and there are usually 200+ kids in that chem class. Just fair warning! But ND definitely has that college feel you’re looking for.</p>
<p>Some colleges do post med school admission rates somewhere on their sites. However, it’s hard to get a head-to-head comparison based on identical standards for calculating these rates. For instance, do you measure total acceptances divided by total applications, or do you measure the percentage of applicants who got at least one acceptance? Furthermore, some colleges are more aggressive than others in weeding out pre-meds early.</p>
<p>The pace at Carleton may be slower, but not by much. We have a trimester system, so since you take three classes at once, the workload can get pretty intense, especially in classes such as math which have a set curriculum (my friend at Wake and I essentially did the same work, but I had 10 weeks and she had 16). That being said, I like the ten-week system for sciences, because it allows you to advance to higher levels in one year. If you were to theoretically start with Intro Chem, you could work your way through chem 230, or Organic Chem I and II, because you have three trimesters to choose from.</p>
<p>To be honest - all are great schools, and there are positives and negatives for both. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea of faculty “hand holding,” but it is definitely easier to get to know your professors, and to gain access to them, if you want to. The atmosphere at Carleton is also a little more relaxed - if only because people are slightly less competitive with each other than they were in high school (at least, in my high school). There is definitely a “work hard, play hard” mentality here; if you have a lot of work and don’t want to go out both weekend nights, that’s accepted, but if you do (people go out on Wednesdays as well), you’ll always find a party of some sort.</p>
<p>Carleton has a stand-alone house, donated to the college, that is open 24/7 with an endowment for the purpose of having chocolate-chip cookies, coffee, and a place to hang out and socialize perpetually available to Carleton students (per the donor’s bequest). This is the single coolest unique tradition in all of American higher education. :)</p>
<p>So far there haven’t been any replies addressing Notre Dame. I happened to come across this NW VS NU thread. Pretty much everyone seems to be in favor of Notre Dame. Notre Dame seems to have a more homely and friendly feel to it. One of the factors that makes me hesitant about going there is the fact that it is a catholic school with a predominantly catholic student body. I’m a Muslim and I don’t judge people based on their religion, but should I be worried about being judged based on mine at NU?</p>
<p>Is it true that I’ll get greater research opportunities at NW, NU and Emory as compared to LAC. How strongly does the alumni network of these universities impact getting internships?</p>
<p>And so far nobody’s even touched Wake Forest.</p>
<ol>
<li>The premed classes at NU are taught at the same pace as those in semester system (3 quarters vs 2 semester).<br></li>
<li>There are plenty of undergrad research opportunities at Northwestern, especially the chemistry department. NU students have been the most active participants in the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium <a href=“http://www.caurs.com/[/url]”>http://www.caurs.com/</a></li>
<li>NU’s chemistry is now top-5 in the country, according to NRC ranking. The faculty are way ahead of those in all the other schools on your list. You will have the chance to work with truly leading experts (many schools’ websites love using “leading experts” loosely…lol) in the field.</li>
<li>But I am not gonna lie. NU’s organic chemistry sequence is difficult. I am a bit confused about the contingency you mentioned. I thought NU doesn’t give GPA-based scholarships.</li>
<li>I wrote an email to one of the premed advisors at NU and was told the premed placement rate to be around 80%. But I was also told the average MCAT for the admits was around 34. So that tells me the 80% rate probably had more to do with the fact that many NU students scored very high on the exam rather than the school itself. But med school admission is mostly about numbers anyway. The advisor also wrote that the school doesn’t play game and discourage weaker applicants from applying. This claim is consistent with the fact that the number of med schools applicants has been around 300, which is a very large number for a med-size university.</li>
</ol>
<p>I am perplexed as to why some posters here wrote about PhD productivity when the OP stated
, => Totally irrelevant.</p>
<p>OP - All of the schools on your list can prepare you for admission to either law or medical school, but it will be up to you to keep your grades up and to score well on the LSAT or MCAT. All of them are very selective schools so you will find that your classmates are all academically talented so you should not expect to be able to slack off at any of them. It is true that the larger universities that are associated with medical schools will have a greater variety of research opportunities than the LACs, but the LACs will still have options for you and you can do research at major medical schools during the summers (again true for all). My suggestion is that you evaluate your options based upon other criteria that will help you decide where you will be happiest for four years, because that is likely to be where you will be most successful too.</p>
<p>Carleton is not “miles ahead of Oberlin.” They are absolutely on par academically and in terms of grad school and professional school admissions, and many people prefer Oberlin. For one thing, Oberlin has a much more national student body–Carleton has a much higher proportion of Midwesterners. And Oberlin’s world-class Conservatory distinguishes it from all other LACs.</p>
<p>“Is it true that I’ll get greater research opportunities at NW, NU and Emory as compared to LAC.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to generalize, but sometimes it’s the opposite, in that undergrads at LACs get ALL the profs’ research jobs, not being crowded out by the grad students at the big U. Sometimes the level of research is higher at the big U, but most of this is said to be done by grad students. Yes, there are exceptions.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about the other schools but the Muslim community at NU is very strong. We have a Muslim chaplain, for example. I’m personally not Muslim but I’ve gone to many Muslim events and they are very well-attended.</p>
<p>On the quarter system, a bad grade will have less of an impact, but I’m not a science major. I don’t know if professors cram a semester’s worth of material into a quarter, but I have to say that for the social sciences and humanities, they do. Readings might be less because of time constraints but you generally have to write a midterm paper and a final paper of the same length as that assigned in semester schools (and some have an exam in addition to both).</p>