@ljberkow and @TheTennisNinja : Eh, could be similar. I don’t know. I would argue that introductory biology courses at Oxford are more useful for MCAT preparation and as a better foundation for the lit./research focused intermediate and upper-divisions at ECAS. However, I think chemistry is much better on main (except the labs, but the labs are usually not as relevant for MCAT prep). Physics is better at Oxford. Students at ECAS get to jump into NBB earlier, and I’d argue that the NBB electives offered on main are more plentiful (and are thus there are options to jump into more research based psyche, NBB, etc electives earlier on whereas I think Oxford sticks to sort of classical psyche offerings and core NBB courses).
I think it is probably a wash. There was one point where I may have narrowly given it to main because the introductory biology sequence was stronger on main than today, but it has deteriorated (probably because of who they have teaching. If you have 2 or 3 instructors run 4-5 sections between them, it has sort of a chilling effect on historically rigorous and well-revered instructors. For them to keep their enrollments to an acceptable level, they then have to “play the game”. I’ve seen these phases occur in bio at Emory so much and the rigorous instructors would even admit to it) in most sections to the point where most ECAS students will have to wait till intermediate research oriented courses to get an experience even close to what Oxford students get. There is no doubt that Oxford exploits its size advantage well in biology. At ECAS, NBB and chemistry have just classically had a strong focus on teaching such that they try to their best to make the experience mimic what one could get in a smaller section size and then they can take advantage of the more robust research infrastructure if they want to.
One thing I will say about smaller institutions is that there is likely more quality control. ECAS STEM, like I hinted has more of it in some departments (with chemistry, they’ve gotten really serious because they have to validate the new curriculum) than others and this really matters. My problem is that ECAS provides the double-edged sword of too much choice in instructor and course selection, so students who start on main, transfer in, or continue from Oxford can more easily select trash instructors on main, celebrate how “easy”(or easier) things are and then do poorly or mediocre on the MCAT. ECAS has a way of making these paths look too appetizing and it tricks a lot of pre-meds into believing that they are merely being pragmatic and protecting their GPAs. Oxford on the other hand tends to have more standardization it looks like (Some of the bio and NBB courses on ECAS can be run completely differently depending on who is teaching it. There is no consensus on how to deliver a course or what skills to emphasize. Usually there is just some minimum threshold of content that all instructors agree to cover).
*Note I kept mentioning research oriented courses, because that is the nature of most MCAT sections. They are passages based upon primary literature and research phenomenon and data. Brute-force memorization will get students but so far, so they should take classes/instructors that make students memorize some foundation material and then demands them to then do a lot more with it than achieve a basic understanding.
To your point Tennis: I would generally argue that smaller, selective institutions are indeed more likely to have a good type of rigor in their STEM courses. But fortunately, among private schools (because publics that have competitive or elite admissions always have been solid here) some medium-sized schools like Emory, Rice, WUSTL, and several super elites like Harvard, Duke, Stanford, etc have actually spent a lot of money “keeping things fresh” ensuring that size doesn’t necessarily dilute the type of rigor that should given to students, but if you look at some of Emory’s (or these schools’) other peers and their STEM courses, you will literally ask: “What the hell is this? Are we in the dark ages of teaching? This is a scam”, and that is especially the case for the 1st and 2nd year pre-health courses at said places. Yet students at said schools will tell others that “things are so rigorous here”. They’re really being exposed to a less useful sort of rigor but don’t know any better. Kind of sad.