University of Washington(UW) vs. Mount Holyoke College (MHC)

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Hi, I’m an international student who has studied in the public high school in Washington State since sophomore year. This is my third year in the U.S. The two colleges I’m weighing against each other now are University of Washington (UW) and Mount Holyoke College (MHC).
The cost is similar for both. UW is quite expensive for International students but I’m considered as a domestic since my father is sent to WA by South Korean Gov’t officially, proven by my visa status. On the other hand, MHC provides me pretty generous financial aid package, thus evening out the monetary matters.
Then my real concerns are about academic aspects which I want to ask opinions of you guys (CC members!). If you’d read through my quick background explanation & questions and give me any comments or advice, I’ll appreciate them much!

  • I intend to major in Biology field, more specifically Cellular/Molecular Biology or Biochemistry and be a researcher.
  • UW is known to be strong in Pre-med & Bio fields because of its medical school. Also it was nominated to be one of the top 5 colleges/universities that spend the most money in research and projects. However, as a large public (State) school, its regular class size is about 400-600 or even huger (probably up to 1,000), according to an UW academic counselor who I had a chance to talk to. She, even though she works for UW, didn’t like that a college class size should be that large and that the people who teach the classes are not even professors but TAs or Graduate students most of the times. (The official statistics published by UW claims the average Student-Faculty ratio is 11:1 but that’s not the class size) Plus, looking at the students who got accepted to UW (and who already committed) from my high school… I’m honestly unsure about the quality of general students who would be my potential classmates, lab partners or roommates in the future.
  • MHC is a liberal arts college in Massachusetts. It is the first Women’s college founded in the U.S., and one of the seven sisters (five of them survived as women’s colleges) colleges. I’m not sure whether MHC, in general, is as known and recognized as UW (most of my friends and teachers have never heard of it), but it has a lot of great features & advantages. Its regular class size is 10:1 (some of the first year’s required classes may go up to 80 but most have about 8~15 students and the most advanced or major-focused classes would have only about 4 people and a professor) and it is a member of Five College Consortium with four other colleges including Smith and Amherst. However, since it’s a small college, I’m not sure whether it would provide many projects or research opportunities that relate to my major. Also, I’m worried that Bio major in MHC is not that strong.

My questions basically are:

  1. Which school would fit better to me? I know this is a super broad and subjective question. So for you, if this were your own situation, which one would you choose?
  2. I plan to proceed to graduate school after undergraduate study and really need a generous amount of financial aid as an international student. It really limits my options to only some of the most prestigious schools (schools like Harvard or Yale which can provide Need-Blind financial aid even for Internationals). Which one b/w UW and MHC would open me a larger chance to be accepted to those schools? Is there any known percentage of the students who graduate from UW or MHC and get accepted to such graduate schools?
  3. Right now, my father may retire from his current job while I’m still in college. Then my status in UW will change into International, and that will double or even triple my tuition cost. MHC’s cost will stay the same but still they don’t provide any more school scholarship or grants to an International student who lost a monetary source (they deny reconsideration of family situation for Internationals). The only way I can continue my study without much disruption would be to transfer to the schools that provide me greater amount of financial aid. It’s not easy, though. Just like Graduate schools, only some of the most prestigious schools like Harvard provide such aids to Transfer+International students. However, I’m strongly considering this Transfer option since it always has been my dream to study in those hard schools. (I already applied to some of those but got rejected or waitlisted) Then, would it be more beneficial/favorable for me to be studying in UW or in MHC? (this includes considerations of receiving good recommendations from professors & my opportunities to have rich experiences that will help my application)
    But don’t worry about my being half-hearted to my first college even though I consider transferring. I’ll always devote my best to the place I’m currently at but will keep looking for the future and better options as well.

Thank you so much for reading all these!! Again, I’ll really appreciate any helpful words, so please do not hesitate to give me your opinions regarding to my situation 

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I checked UW’s schedule of classes and it does appear that they have some 600-student classes. Most of their large intro classes (I checked biology, chemistry, and psychology) tend to be about 250-450 students in size, but the largest section was an intro bio section with 590 students (and it wasn’t full - the cap was 624). I think it’s reasonable to expect that if you went to UW, you’d be in some large sections in your first two years, although they would get smaller in your last two.

MHC is a very well-known women’s college that is usually counted among the best, most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country. It’s probably less well-known on the West Coast, so if you live in WA that might be why your teachers and classmates haven’t heard about it. You’ll have excellent opportunities in biology and pre-med classes. Also, professors at small LACs do research, too, so you will have opportunities to get research experience if you want it. On the other hand, you can get close to professors and get good recommendations at UW too if you make the effort to get to know professors. It’s really a matter of preference.

  1. Since you're asking, I personally would go to Mount Holyoke - but it's cheating, because I went to another small women's LAC for college and I loved it.
  2. No, neither will advantage or disadvantage you for graduate school - they are both excellent, and you can go to an excellent graduate school from either. UW has more cutting-edge, expensive research going on but MHC offers more opportunities for close relationships with professors and smaller classes that are akin to graduate seminars in size and style. You can't go wrong.
  3. If you wanted to transfer to a top school, honestly, it *might* be slightly better for you go to to MHC. I worked with transfer students at Columbia and they mostly tended to transfer from peer institutions - like Dartmouth, Georgetown, Penn, Brown, etc. Not that UW isn't a great institution, though, and that's why I'm uncertain about this one. I do know that top schools have overwhelming preference for transfers from other top schools, because they want students who are going to handle the coursework. Really, top schools like Columbia and Yale emphasize that transferring is really for the student who went to a school and realized that the environment simply wasn't for them - it's not intended for students who want to "step up" from their current school. FOr example, one of my RAs was a transfer from Dartmouth, and when asked why he said he didn't like the atmosphere at Dartmouth and wanted to come some place different.

The other thing to consider is that if you transfer as a sophomore or junior, and you need recommendations, it might be easier to get them if your freshman classes are smaller (like they would be at MHC) rather than very very large (like they would be at UW).

Furthermore, transferring into a prestigious school like Harvard is even more difficult than getting in as a freshman. You’d need to be at or near the top of your class in college (which is more difficult than in high school) and very involved on campus. So I wouldn’t bank on that; instead, I would concentrate on selecting a school that you like the best and could see yourself staying at all four years. The fact that MHC’s costs will stay the same if your father decides to retire is a big plus; even if he loses that income source, you could plan ahead because he knows exactly how much it is going to cost if he leaves.

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Mount Holyoke isn’t very well known on the west coast but it’s very well-regarded on the east coast. (Conversely, UW isn’t known here in New England!)

I really think the decision is about where you think you will thrive: large school or small.

My D is a first-year bio major at MHC. The small class size and very personal attention from professors has been really amazing for her. Here’s an anecdote: During the summer before she matriculated, she had been reading about the professors and was really excited about one particular Bio professor who seemed to have a very similar passion for bio -from a naturalist/evolutionary/field observation viewpoint- as herself (not that the bio department in general is like that - it is also very strong for pre-med). She hoped to one day be able to take a class with him. She was thrilled when she got into his Bio 101 class. Then she found out he was also her freshman academic advisor. The first day of class, they hung out for a while after class discussing the evolution of Trilliums and her passion and theories about specific insects. They have already been talking about internships for the summer in her field. He gave her the keys to the locked biology lab rooms where the upperclassmen do their entomology research. She spends a lot of her free time in there, looking at slides of insects prepared by students in the 1800’s. She has a whole research area of her own in there now, and frequently meets outside of class with the professor. She talks to him not only about career and academic matters, but about her worries and concerns. He introduced a new class for next year in her particular field of interest, and she will be helping TA the class. Looking back on my own college experience, this just seems so wonderful and lucky. She has immediately connected with a professor who shares her passion, is more than willing to spend time with her, and is already helping her pursue her career path. WOW.

She also really loves that the classes are small. There is a very collaborative atmosphere with much discussion.

Graduate schools: again, I don’t know anything about UW, but MHC grads do go to top schools. Somewhere there’s a list, I will see if I can find it. Meanwhile, this is from their website, “When they’re finished here, they take the lead in other places—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, for starters. They earn Pulitzers and Fulbrights. They lead research in biochemistry and cancer treatment. They become lawyers, teachers, and computer scientists. In other words, they make Mary Lyon proud.”

MHC has an amazing alumni network, and in fact the Seven Sisters as a whole tend to help each other out. MHC also provides funding for EVERY student to do an internship after their sophomore year, and helps you find the internship and evaluate the experience afterwards and help put it towards your career goals.

Here’s some great info: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/about/aftermhc

As far as your last question… it seems to me that you would have an easier time getting excellent recommendations from professors at Mount Holyoke, since you will have been working very closely with them since your freshman year, whereas at UW you may never have even met the actual profs at all, having dealt mainly with their TAs.

I’m obviously biased since I’ve been so very impressed with MHC this year. I am sure that either school will be great for your career goals (hopefully some UW folks will chime in!) and it seems to me that the decision may come down to whether you want to be at a large west coast university or a small east coast LAC!

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@psm9619 Here’s some good information for you:

MHC Leadership: More Doctorates in the Sciences

Nearly a third of our students major in science or mathematics. They leave here exceptionally well prepared for graduate work at the nation’s most rigorous and prestigious universities. According to NSF data, our science students are consistently among the most productive in the country.

From 1966 to 2004, according to the NSF’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, Mount Holyoke graduated more women than any other liberal arts college who went on to get U.S. doctorates in the physical and life sciences (356 and 109, respectively). This puts Mount Holyoke in the top 2 percent of all colleges and universities–even major research universities with at least double the enrollment and faculty.

Among all colleges and universities, Mount Holyoke ranks eighth (tied with Stanford and Wellesley) in the number of graduates who earned U.S. doctorates in physics from 1966 to 2004; ninth in chemistry; and sixteenth in biology.

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I have to agree with @juillet and @staceyneil. I have lived both in Seattle and the Pioneer Valley (Northampton for six years) and have been on both campuses many times. While I love Seattle and the UW, for an undergraduate experience, I would recommend MHC. MHC is in a tiny, out of the way town, but it is within the five college consortium, so you can take courses at Amherst or pursue a (possibly) larger research project at UMass, not to mention the possibilities at Smith and Hampshire. (I believe there is a bus that runs among the campuses.) Western MA is beautiful and calm. Although it may not be where you’ll choose to live after undergrad, as an undergrad, it will be a very nice place to be, and while at MHC, you will get the one-on-one attention that UW undergrads can only dream of.

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You need to get a better estimate from your father about his pending retirement, and find out more about how that will affect your family’s ability to pay for your education. Rather than planning now to transfer at that time, it would make much more sense for you to take a gap year, and apply to a new list of solid places that would give you significant merit-based aid for your stats. It really is extremely difficult for international transfer students to find financial aid.

Don’t worry about funding for grad school. If you continue toward a PhD, it should be fully funded. It is very common for graduate programs to fully fund even their international PhD students.

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Wow, Thank you so much for all of you!! I’m so amazed by all of your thorough and thoughtful advice.
I truly appreciate the efforts and time that you took to lighten up my shoulders :smiley:
I’ll soon have a discussion with my family over this matter and your kind suggestions and opinions will greatly help us make a satisfying & happy decision.
Again, Thank you really much!! I hope that, after some time, I can give wise advice to the students who are in hard college decision situation just as you did for me :smiley:

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You should also be applauded for actually applying to truly diverse colleges… The reason you’re facing a difficult choice here is because these two fine institution present a REAL choice. I see so many students apply to a set of schools that are all nearly identical (here in New England, strong prep school students apply to the same set of NESCAC and Patriot League LAC’s over and over again). But the choice between UDub and Mount Holyoke is fascinating, just choosing between South Hadley and Seattle is a fascinating choice. Good luck.

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I agree, take a gap year, explore other options in Europe, and elsewhere where they have close ties with schools in the US. You need to have a 4 year plan of study that is not hindered by financial considerations. Would you be eligible to get into honors at UW, in which case the class size may be smaller?

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