Tufts vs. Northwestern pre-med?

Mastadon
Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:31:35 +0000

In terms of reputation of the pre-med program, I am not qualified to judge, but one of my friends is a professor at Harvard Med School and he is considered a world leader in your field – Neuroscience. He also periodically sits on the admissions committee. One of his children was recently in your position and had to choose an undergrad premed program. Their “short list” contained three schools. Harvard, Tufts and Amherst. In the context of these three schools, he spoke very highly of the Tufts premed program, and the final decision between Tufts and Amherst went right down to the wire. Amherst was ultimately chosen based on better fit (more rural). This should in no way be interpreted as a relative ranking of any schools, but if Tufts was good enough for the child of one of the world experts in your field, who sits on the admissions committee of one of the top med schools in the country, then it will probably be good enough for you. Also note that the final decisions were made based on fit rather any perceived ranking, so that should be an important part of your decision. It should be noted that in Massachusetts, the selection of NESCAC schools over Ivy schools by prominent researchers is somewhat common. It seems to fly under the radar because it happens in the context of early decision and probably does not show up in the cross admit tables. This phenomenon was also mentioned by a local educational consultant on one of the threads on the Harvard board.