Well, this student is potentially transferring from a school in Minnesota so I’m going to suspect that they’re OK with cold winters.
OP - What does your brother say about the intensity of NU compared to Carleton? Is he also pre-med?
I’m also concerned about your needing to start all over again in terms of relationship building with profs for both LORs and research. It sounds to me like you have a good thing going at Carleton.
(@blossom - “Seasonally appropriate” - LOL! Nearly spit out my tea and so very true. I still have my winter coat in the hall closet because it’s been in the 40s in the morning when I’m out walking. And don’t even get me started on Cubs games - it’s been FREEZING with the wind and our seats are in the shade!).
I agree with other posters who are suggesting there might not be an academic benefit to transferring. Of course there would be a benefit to being at the same school as your brother, but…is that the priority, or is it worth the potential downside transfer risks? Only OP can answer that.
IMO, both Carleton and NU are fast paced, grindy, academically intense schools especially for pre-meds. So, I would expect you would succeed at NU since you are doing well at Carleton. If you are getting quality patient facing opportunities at Carleton and/or in the summers you are in a great spot. You can do research at either school, but that’s not a must the way patient facing/clinical experience is (which you would find in abundance at NU too.) Your med school chances will likely not be greater coming out of NU than Carleton, so I would call that a wash. Good luck, I expect you have to make a decision soon.
As per OP’s past posts, OP’s twin already transferred from Carleton College to Northwestern University. Both applied, but OP was denied while OP’s twin was accepted. This appears to be an “eyes wide open” move.
I understand the desire to transfer from a small-town, fairly rural LAC to a Top 10 National University located adjacent to one of the best cities in the country. Plus, twins often prefer to be together.
My current sense of the OP’s thinking is if it was just about them, they would stay at Carleton, but it is really the twin driving the idea of joining back up at Northwestern.
Again I am not quite sure what insight we can provide on the twin relationship itself. But if this helps, if it was just you, I do not think you would be wrong to want to stay at Carleton, and I agree it is inherently risky to transfer to a college like Northwestern, particularly if you are looking at a very competitive next step like med school.
So this may be a little blunt, but I would observe it is now not your twin facing the risk. And if things went well for your twin, they may not have internalized that risk. But that is just one case, and their results may not be your results. So I do think you need to think about this very carefully and make sure you are making the decision that is actually right for you.
And again, you will hopefully have a lifetime together. So in retrospect, whatever you decide, this is hopefully only going to be a small part of that.
OP- how much energy do you have to do the work required to adjust to Northwestern? Not the academic work per se- but everything else. Showing up at office hours, volunteering to help a professor edit a grant proposal, staying after lecture every time a professor says “If you’re interested in a spot in my lab this summer, come see me after class”?
If you’ve got the energy to start over, AND keep up with your classes-- fantastic. There’s your answer. If you want to capitalize on the investments you’ve already made at Carleton- then stay.
No wrong answer. But none of us know your capacity for getting resituated. And to me, that’s the question- not “will I be happier if I’m near my twin”. You’ll either end up near each other at different phases of your lives or you won’t. You get a residency 3,000 miles away-- in the specialty you want, at the top training hospital in your field. Your twin get a fellowship at Cambridge or Oxford while you’ll be in Houston or Boston for med school.
Hey everyone, I talked to my twin and he also agrees that Northwestern is hard. However, he also has a 3.9+ GPA there which is higher than his Carleton gpa (I think he’s working more tho for his GPA). It’s a hard choice but I think I’m leaning towards re-uniting with him and will try to work harder at university
Regardless of where you are, remember that to be a successful premed getting into med school you’ll need solid health-related activities and activities where you volunteer with people different from yourself.
In other words, your time has to be well balanced between activities and coursework and can’t switch to just coursework. That’s true whether you transfer to Northwestern or stay at Carleton.
Do return in December to let us know how it went and good luck to you
Thank you for your advice. That is true, I’m going to try to balance balance activities with course-work which will be difficult. I will be sure to return in December to let you guys know how it went!
Hey. This is @bluepinkcat123111’s twin. I agree that Northwestern is certainly a challenge for gpa, and adjusting would be hard, but I (along with my parents) really wanted my brother and I to walk the stage at the same time and I’m rlly happy for him to get accepted. I would definitely introduce him to my friends, and I’m pretty sure they would get along nicely. In terms of academic rigour, Northwestern isn’t rlly any different from Carleton, and from my experiences NU is actually easier surprisingly.
I understand wanting to be together for the last two years of college but I really don’t get the desire to walk the stage together as worth all the potential risks of transferring.
Graduation will last a couple of hours (maybe a day) and the walking the stage a couple of minutes. And they don’t always call people alphabetically, so it might not happen anyway (assuming the comment is to be taken literally). (And students in different majors may be called separately anyway).
It’s kind of like the advice people give to brides and grooms: the wedding is only one day, the marriage is (or can be) for a lifetime . So don’t focus on the short term to the detriment of the long term.
I should’ve definitely worded it better, but in my perspective Northwestern is an extremely academically rigorous university, but Carleton was more rigorous for me. I think it also depends on what classes you would take.
That’s true, but my concern was that graduation for NU and Carleton could occur on the same day which would’ve made it extremely difficult. Coincidentally, my twin brother and I are doing the same major
People have babies the day of a siblings wedding. People have non-elective surgery scheduled for the day a sibling graduates from college. People take the bar exam ( a requirement for starting their job as a lawyer) and have to miss a siblings major life cycle event.
This happens frequently in families and everyone works it out somehow. Avoiding conflicting graduations is a very weak reason for transferring. And what if one of you ends up delaying graduation for a semester due to circumstances beyond your control and the notion of being on stage together goes out the window despite the transfer???
and I’m rlly happy for him to get accepted. I would definitely introduce him to my friends, and I’m pretty sure they would get along nicely. In terms of academic rigour, Northwestern isn’t rlly any different from Carleton, and from my experiences NU is actually easier surprisingly.