Salk enrolled in CCNY, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934.[17] Oshinsky writes that "for working-class immigrant families, City College represented the apex of public higher education. Getting in was tough, but tuition was free. Competition was intense, but the rules were fairly applied. No one got an advantage based on an accident of birth."[16]
At his mother's urging, he put aside aspirations of becoming a lawyer and instead concentrated on classes necessary for admission to medical school. However, according to Oshinsky, the facilities at City College were "barely second rate." There were no research laboratories. The library was inadequate. The faculty contained few noted scholars. "What made the place special," he writes, "was the student body that had fought so hard to get there… driven by their parents…. From these ranks, of the 1930s and 1940s, emerged a wealth of intellectual talent, including more Nobel Prize winners—eight—and PhD recipients than any other public college except the University of California at Berkeley." Salk entered CCNY at the age of 15, a "common age for a freshman who had skipped multiple grades along the way."[16]: 98
As a child, Salk did not show any interest in medicine or science in general. He said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement,[18] "As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that."