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hello everyone

I am an incoming senior in a suburban public school and I am looking for a college with a good chemistry department, please give me your suggestions.

My profile
SAT: 1600
SAT II chem:800
SAT II math IIC:800
SAT II Bio:800
SAT II U.S. History: 790
and I am taking writing in the fall.

GPA: 3.9 unweighted
Rank: top 1%

average extracurriculars and awards

please help me, thank you very much

By Sunset_Yellow (Sunset_Yellow) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:11 pm: Edit

please help

By Shennie (Shennie) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:15 pm: Edit

There are LOTS of schools with good chemistry departments. You need to be more specific about what you are looking for.

By Mini (Mini) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Take the top 50 liberal arts colleges (and a few more), and the top 50 universities and throw darts. With rare exceptions, they all have reasonable chemistry departments.

You must have some other criteria?

By Sunset_Yellow (Sunset_Yellow) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Thanks, Shennie, for replying, I am looking for a big school, preferrably urban.

By Jab93 (Jab93) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:24 pm: Edit

Any school in the top 50 will have a strong chemistry department... its not like chemistry is some obscure major. You need to start making more important PERSONAL decisions:
(1) big research university VS. liberal arts college (you can still get great undergrad science education at the small colleges!)
(2) rural vs. suburban vs. urban
(3) region of the country (some people want to stay close to home, others want to explore something new or far away, others don't care either way)

You can't expect strangers to tell you what is best for you until you do at least the basic research yourself... you're clearly intelligent from your scores... now YOU have to do the basic research

By Jab93 (Jab93) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 05:33 pm: Edit

Big urban schools... better... that narrows things down a bit...
Here's a dozen big, urban schools to get you started (in no particular order)... good luck
researcing them:

Northwestern, UChicago, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, MIT, UPENN, Columbia, Washington U (St. Louis), Brown, Emory...

By Sunset_Yellow (Sunset_Yellow) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 07:35 pm: Edit

Thank you very much for your suggestions, I think MIT probably have one of the best chemistry departments, but is MIT too big of a reach for me? Also, since I am an immigrant and have only came to America for 5 years, do you think whether I should take Writing or Literature? Which one's easier?

By Flopsy (Flopsy) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 07:42 pm: Edit

UC Berkeley

By Jab93 (Jab93) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 07:47 pm: Edit

Regarding any school in the top 10: they are reaches for everyone, no matter how good you are.

That said, you have virtually perfect scores...
so although that doesn't guarantee anything, no school is too much of a reach for you. Is M.I.T. a reach? YES. "Too big of a reach?" NO.

Regarding which SATII... I have no idea... you need to research the schools... Some of them may actually require Writing... so you probably should take that...

By the way, since Chemistry is your thing... you might want to add U.C. Berkeley... their graduate program is ranked #1... and at Berkeley, they have a separate College of Chemistry which has unrivaled facilities.
And if you're a resident in California, it is a great bargain to boot.

By Sunset_Yellow (Sunset_Yellow) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 08:31 pm: Edit

thank you for all your input, I just have one more question. Since MIT focuses on sciences and math, then it probably cares about AMC and AIME... I took the AMC and got 109, which qualified me for AIME, but I did horribly on that and of course didn't qualify for USAMO. Then should I even bother to put AMC in my application?

By Sunset_Yellow (Sunset_Yellow) on Sunday, July 11, 2004 - 12:05 am: Edit

please make any suggestions. thanks

By Dukedreamer (Dukedreamer) on Sunday, July 11, 2004 - 11:56 am: Edit

1. University of California-Berkeley
2. California Institute of Technology
2. Harvard University
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5. Stanford University
6. Scripps Research Institute
6. University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
8. Columbia University
8. Cornell University
8. University of Wisconsin-Madison
11. University of California-Los Angeles
12. Northwestern University
12. University of Texas-Austin
14. Princeton University
14. University of Chicago
14. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
14. Yale University

By Eightpinbowling (Eightpinbowling) on Sunday, July 11, 2004 - 01:39 pm: Edit

I think 109 on AMC may be a bit weak, but if you're not going into the mathy subjects like chem, then you might as well put it down. Don't worry too much about AMC and AIME.

By Eightpinbowling (Eightpinbowling) on Sunday, July 11, 2004 - 01:40 pm: Edit

* unlike chem :-P

By 5st (5st) on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 08:34 am: Edit

As Shennie and Mini wrote, there are lots of good Chemistry Departments. The rankings provided by Dukedreamer are almost certainly for the graduate program, and those rankings probably does not correlate well with those for the undergraduate program. As people have said in other forums here, look at the atmosphere of the entire college.
I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is a great little city, and is close to Detroit if you need a big urban environment. The Chemistry Department seems to pay some serious attention to the quality (as well as the rigor) of the undergraduate education.

By Alexandre (Alexandre) on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 09:49 am: Edit

With your grades and scores, I would look into Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern and Michigan-Ann Arbor. Great college atmospheres, great academics and you are bound to get into one of those 6 universities.