DS is interested in going to a liberal arts college for biology and cs with the goal of going to grad school for computational biology or something along those lines- premed is not off the table yet. No interested in finance or economics!!
He’s looking for good student culture and a happy environment over a massive academic crunch, since he’s had a lot of that in his magnet school |
I’ll be the first to say the obvious answer that you’re looking for Pomona. Whether you can get in or not is a whole other affair but that would be ideal for your son. Then Swarthmore and then Williams. |
Off the top of my mind, Harvey Mudd MCB (math and computational biology) would be the perfect fit. It's an inter-disciplinary between biology and CS.
What's the meaning of "happy environment"? Does pursing knowledge make him happy? If yes, then perfect. |
Students have lives outside of their work, weekends aren’t entirely spent in the library, you can see students out and about during the day, big cultural activities are outside of just school. It’s great to have a difficult school, but he’s also looking to enjoy his 4 years in college. |
Agree on Pomona and would consider Amherst. Williams and Swarthmore do not sound like fits. If Claremont McKenna had integrated sciences for a longer time, I actually think that would be the best environment of any top LAC. May want to look into Davidson, Bowdoin, and Occidental. |
It seems difficult to take CS courses at Pomona. There was a post a while ago discussing that issue. Worth looking into it.
Bowdoin may be a good fit if Harvey Mudd is not. |
Pomona fixed that issue. They’ve actually hired 4 new tenure track faculty members in the past 2 years, have eliminated the lottery for this next year, and are planning to hire even more faculty. They even have a CS intro for non majors because of the new faculty! |
Haverford and Carleton sound perfect for a happy but still rigorous school. |
Warning that Haverford is tiny and smaller than all its peers. It also isn’t WASP level and is behind Bowdoin/Carleton. |
Sorry, I am confused. Are you OP or DP? |
DP, but our family looked at Pomona and were scared until we got in contact with cs faculty (through admissions) that there were many changes we didn’t know about. |
Carleton is a very academic and rigorous environment. Not much to do all the way out in Northfield. |
Yes, it's very academic and rigorous, but students find plenty to do. |
Stay away from rural colleges. Profs tend to overload/dump work on students- sorry Williams- to keep em busy so they don’t lose their minds. It’s great to be focused, but many students want to also have chill time and discover their environs for college. Access to a city or nearby geography really helps with that. |
-1, there’s so much to do in Williamtown other than study! So many haters |