The Last Hurrah

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Final application deadlines are approaching at many of the nation’s top schools, and I want to make sure I have all of my bases covered in terms of my selections.</p>

<p>Applied:
MIT
Harvard
My local state school (financial and admissions safety)</p>

<p>Currently preparing:
Penn
Caltech
WashU
Chicago
Northwestern
Rochester (financial and admissions safety)
Case Western (financial and admissions safety)</p>

<p>What I want to know is: do any other schools in particular stand out as ones that should be on this list?</p>

<p>Selectivity is not a factor here - I have adequate safeties and I am as qualified as anyone else for Ivy-level admissions (perfect ACT/SAT scores and GPA, high-level ECs, decent essays, good letters, etc. - not URM, though - sorry for the vagueness, but I’m trying to be brief).</p>

<p>I am planning to go biochem (bio/chem double if a biochem major is not available) to prepare for medical school. Yes, I do have an intrinsic interest in the subject matter - I’m not just following the premed herd. Before laughing about Caltech, please note that its average graduating GPA is a 3.5 per its own publications. MIT’s premed placement rate is 89% for its UGs - the 74% figure floating around the forums here is for grads and alumni combined with UGs. I am a bit worried about Chicago, though. Thought about Princeton, but mandatory grade deflation seemed disadvantageous to me.</p>

<p>I want a school with massive academic resources, highly intelligent and preferably intellectual and/or scientifically-oriented students, good financial aid, and a strong reputation. It should have strong chem and bio departments and professors who are not too aloof to research with (I have an interest in research). Ideally, fellow students would not be so competitive as to create a hostile climate, but I do like some degree of competition.</p>

<p>I prefer a size between 2,000 and 12,000 undergrads (exemptions for verifiably good honors colleges), with 4,000-6,000 being roughly optimal. With the exception of Harvard (concentrations), I am planning to go for a B.S. degree rather than a B.A. for the sake of contingency planning in the event of medical school admissions issues, so many LACs are not terribly viable.</p>

<p>I am trying for a school that is not in the South - I have nothing against Southern people and have visited several southern states for vacations, but I do not want to live there for four+ years. This rules out Duke and Rice, for instance. I want an urban or suburban school. Other than that, location is a non-issue.</p>

<p>Given that, what else comes to mind? I hope I’m not being too picky…</p>

2

<p>well, for an urban school that’s not in the south, huge reputation,ect. Try Columbia. Also, as a Mississippian, I don’t consider Houston or Durham to be “Southern”. The rural areas of Texas and North Carolina can be fairly “Southern”, but at a school like Duke or Rice you would be completely surrounded by highly intelligent people, many(most at Duke or Tulane) would be from the North. And Houston is a world city, very metropolitan. Vanderbilt or Emory, I would classify as southern. But duke really wouldn’t be that much different from many of the other schools on your list. Oh, also try looking at Johns Hopkins, very good in the medical field, but i hear it’s fairly cut-throat as far as competition goes. well good luck.</p>

3

<p>Duke isn’t your typical Southern school.
Durham isn’t your typical Southern town. It reminds me of Philly in some ways- the Western side, that is.</p>

4

<p>Seems like your list of schools is a good match for what you want</p>