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Schools: Williams College and Cornell University
Intended major: Biomedical Engineering for Cornell, Chemistry and Economics for Williams
Similarities: Both are rural, have good track records of getting people accepted into med schools.
Both are affordable, but Williams costs 10k less per year.
Williams
School 1 Pros:
- Small class sizes and more intimate relationship with teachers so I can get better rec letters
- Probably less weeding out
- Very few graduate students so I can maybe get better research positions
- amazing alumni connections (but this mainly applies to finance)
School 1 Cons:
- Very rural and small (the town has like 7,000 people). I come from a high school with 5,000+ people so I might feel suffocated at Williams
- less well-known for stem/pre-med
- can’t study engineering (I’ll have to apply for a 3+2 program if I want to be an engineer). Engineering is my backup career.
- fewer opportunities/clubs because it is so small
Cornell
School 2 Pros:
- is a big school like I’m used to
- has engineering opportunities I’m interested in like iGEM and Formula SAE
- I can take more interesting classes because they just offer more classes
- amazing food
- more diverse
School 2 Cons:
- big school so my professors probably won’t know me especially because I’ll be in engineering classes so I could have worse rec letters
- somewhat has grade deflation
Tiebreaking considerations:
- how competitive pre-med is at Cornell
- the relative strengths of each school’s pre-med advising office
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