College classes are very different from high school classes. In high school you basically get homework or something everyday. In college you don’t really get homework and it’s up to you to learn the material, especially in the big classes. Also college courses will try to teach you a lot of information in a short amount of time. It’s not that you’ll get more work in college, you’ll just get a lot more stuff to learn. The pace is just much quicker. And believe me, if you do go to Berkeley your advisers will definitely recommend that you do not take more than 4 full courses your first semester no matter what you took in high school or how well you did.
The homework question actually depends on where you go. At my college, Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, homework appeared regularly in most courses. Most of my off-campus classes also had homework, though usually not as much. On the other hand, my parents who teach at the University of Kentucky don’t assign homework. I think that most social science courses at big public universities tend towards having three or four papers per semester, but no regular weekly assignments.
My experience was that freshman and sophomore classes were fairly easy (not too much out of class work). But the junior and senior level courses were much, much more difficult. I wasn’t surprised on the FIRST day of class in a junior/senior level course to be told … for the next class, read chapters 1-4 and do the following 20 problems. In many of the senior level courses the pace and workload was applied as if that’s the only class you were taking.
any other comments?
Neuroscience is getting interesting here at Michigan. But then that’s true at a lot of places who are getting into life sciences in a bigger way.
Very good friend of mine is a Colgate alum. Really loved it.
Why not Occidental? Too close to home? Lewis & Clark, maybe? Don’t know a lot about their science programs, but I know some very happy, interesting, and well-educated alums.
Trinity in Texas might be worth a look. Medium-sized place, IIRC.
So many interesting schools to recommend…and I’m drawing blanks here!
It seems like everyone is recommending Occidental to me. I recently added it to my list but you are right in assuming that its a bit too close to home. From what I hear, trinity is definately an under-rated college. It is also free to apply to on the common app so ill probably just end up applying there. How do you like Michigan? What were your stats when you were accepted?
Can’t help you there. I wasn’t at Michigan as an undergrad. I came here for grad school.
I worked as an admissions counselor for three years and travelled all over, often meeting other reps from colleges; hence my interest in the topic.
Come to the UK!!! (our universities need the money 
)…
Neuroscience courses are listed here