Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
The better you know prospective campuses, the better you can figure out which might fit in with your postsecondary expectations. If you don’t have any or few expectations formed as yet, doing some research will get your thoughts of college into motion.
A good place to begin a search is with guides such as Fiske, Princeton Review, The Ultimate Guide to America’s Best Colleges, and the Yale Daily News Insider’s Guide to Colleges.
If you’re a serious science student, one who might want to someday get a PhD, teach, research, become a member of the National Academy of Sciences, or vie for a Nobel Prize, it might best serve your interests to attend a major research university, such as UCLA, USC, Stanford, Northwestern, Yale, or Duke.
Small liberal arts colleges just don’t have the resources available to do meaningful research. Don’t, though, feel too confident in this belief. Just review the resources available to undergraduates at, say, Hamilton College’s Taylor Science Center and the list is enough to dispel the resource limitation concern.
Even in the sub-zero frigidity of a Minnesota January, brains are exuding energy in Northfield, a town about 40 minutes from Minneapolis and St. Paul. ‘Carls,’ Carleton students, also known as “northern commies” by more conservative elements who find their politics a touch too left leaning, have just begun their second trimester. If you can weather the Minnesota winter, and find enjoyment in talking with some of the most intellectually engaged students in the country, “serious students who don’t take themselves too seriously,” then Carleton College might warrant being added to any application list
