Applying To Colleges

[TJ in Oregon]

I just spent a couple hours this afternoon starting the application to Notre Dame's graduate school. I'm planning to apply to MIT, Ohio State, and SUNY Buffalo also. In case anyone is wondering at the odd selection, those schools happen to have particular Chemical Engineering resources I'm interested in. (There's a method to my madness... )

[TJ in Oregon]

How sure is she about what field she would like to get into? A ton of kids go off to college and find out they really don't want to major in what they thought. If your sister goes to the lesser school with the more focused program, she will need either be completely sure about the program she wants or have some other back-up plan there in case she doesn't like it. She's not going to need to worry about that as much at the better school with a less focused program.

[TJ in Oregon]

One thing about a larger school that I don't like as much as when I was at a smaller school is that at a smaller school you will know a decent fraction of the people you walk by going to and from places whereas at a huge school, you probably won't know nearly as high a fraction.

I do think that as an undergraduate in a hard science, you have an advantage in getting research at a smaller school because the professor to undergrad ratio is often larger and the school is designed to give you that opportunity as much as it is to teach you. I'm not sure how social science research is structured at all.