Neuroscience

Why did you choose Lake Forest College?

I chose Lake Forest College because I wanted the “small liberal arts college” experience, and because I was attracted to the wide range of majors and minors offered. Lake Forest College has given me a lot of opportunities to explore other interests, and its proximity to Chicago made it easy to pop into the city for a day or to take a train home for holidays. 

What attracted you to the Neuroscience major?

What attracted me to the Neuroscience major was its structure: not only does it encompass many topics I enjoy studying, but the courses themselves integrate and build on each other in a very logical way. The Neuroscience major thus suited me both as a high school senior vacillating between a couple of different areas of study and as a student progressing through my undergraduate years.

What are your career goals and how did Lake Forest College help you arrive at and achieve these goals?

After I graduate from Lake Forest College, I will be joining a postbaccalaureate program at Washington University in St. Louis. I plan to eventually attend graduate school and pursue a career in research. The Neuroscience Program helped prepare me by exposing me to primary literature starting freshman year; as early as my second semester of college, I was giving poster presentations and partcipating in journal clubs. Moreover, the emphasis on hands-on experience gave me the lab skills to succeed in the academic environment.

How have the opportunites in college helped shape your college experience?

My college experience was shaped by the opportunity to do research as an undergraduate, directly alongside professors and other students. My first tme conducting research was as a Richter Scholar. The Richter Scholar Program provides summer scholarships to freshmen, and (though mine was deferred due to the pandemic) this opportunity shaped my college experience because it enabled me to connect with a professor right off the bat and gave me more confidence in the laboratory.

What are one or more distinctive experiences in your major that make it stand out?

One distnctive experience is the frog heart lab. In this lab, which was part of the third-year biology core course when I took it, we observed the effects of temperature and drugs on frog heart rate using electrocardiography (ECG/EKG). This was exciting because we got to handle a frog hearts (there was a dissection for which our respective lab groups were responsible) and  electrocardiography equipment.

Experiences like this make the major stand out because we were never just manipulating different variables and measuring nervous system responses to see if data align with expectations—our experiments were always targeted towards improving us as scientists. We were able to recognize that the frog heart rate sometimes raced when it was supposed to slow, and this compelled us to look back to earlier in the semester to articulate why. In lab, applying concepts discussed in lecture helped me cement my knowledge. In the Neuroscience major, students typically work in small groups with a peer teacher and their professor, and I was always comfortable seeking assistance when something went wrong because I knew everyone else in the room. 

What advice would you give to a high school student looking to pursue neuroscience who is considering Lake Forest College?

My advice would be to consider what they value—or what they want most out of their college experience—and to pore over the program’s webpage. To me, it was important that I have options and variety, and one aspect I liked was that there were numerous electives in multple, cross-listed disciplines.