<p>I have a few questions, I hpe someone can answer them:</p>
<li><p>I am a prospective pre-med student. Is the workload for pre-med students very rigorous? (arts/sciences)</p></li>
<li><p>Is there grade deflation/inflation?</p></li>
<li><p>Are there as many resources and opportunities at Penn as, say, Cornell?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>please, i have to make a decision soon.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>workload is rigorous, but not necessarily any more so than at institutions of similar caliber (you’re here to have fun, not just to suffer in a library for 4 years)</p></li>
<li><p>the college has some degree of inflation, but in science courses it’s largely a factor of performance and is not a major concern.</p></li>
<li><p>there’s probably more medical resources and opportunities at penn than at cornell, since penn’s med school and hospital are right on campus, as are all of the biomedical research facilities; cornell’s med school is in nyc, not in ithaca. consequently there’s a lot more research opportunities available, and many students get jobs in labs or in other biomedical research departments throughout the medical system / university.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The workload depends on your major, since if you’re a science major, you can “double-count” your classes for premed (and hence have more room for free electives). If you’re a hummanities major, I think you can still do premed without adding any extra amount of total courses for graduation if you optimize your schedule.</p>
<p>Penn’s health (i.e. medical) system is gigantic and easily suprasses Cornell’s in terms of size, practice and research expenditures.</p>
<p>if you’re going to be pre-med, i’d say it would make sense to do it at penn where you can at least vent to the city instead of… whatev they have in ithaca.
and opps are def more extensive in philly where the medical school&hospital are literally across the street.</p>
<p>All the science classes at penn are graded on a pretty standard curve (top 20% A/A-), so they’re pretty rigourous</p>
<p>Inflation is rampant in a lot of the humanities courses, so the easiest route to take is to major in something other than a science and take your required premed classes (double counting doesn’t really ease up your schedule much because the science majors are a lot bigger credit requirement wise and most of your classes are graded on a curve). One important caveat is that not being a science major will likely impede you ability to get into science research as an undergrad.</p>
<p>And yeah, for research opportunities, volunteer opportunities, etc. Penn>>Cornell</p>
<p>really? getting into science research is difficult if ur not a science major?
well, are there things you can do to overcome that?</p>
<p>The opportunities and resources of Penn blow Cornell out of the water. For heaven’s sake, even Penn is closer to Cornell’s medical center than Cornell’s Ithaca campus is!</p>
<p>Of course it’s harder to get a research position if you’re not a science major. As far as doing menial stuff like glassware cleaning, etc. it doesn’t make a difference, but in order to get a meaningful project going, labs expect you to have a continually developing background with the material at hand, something that the intro classes that fulfill your premed requirements do not provide.</p>