Hi everyone! Just wanted to get some different perspectives on the colleges that I’m considering for the Fall of 2021 (SLU with Medical Scholars Program, Pitt with Honors College, Duke, and UW-Madison). Here’s a little background on my current situation:
- I’m an Indian-American female from Wisconsin
- Aspiring physician-researcher
- SLU w/Medical Scholars estimated out-of-pocket expense after scholarships: ~$8,000/year
- Pitt w/Honors estimated out-of-pocket expense after scholarships: ~$10,000/year
- Duke estimated out-of-pocket expense (no scholarship received as of now): ~$55,000/year
- UW-Madison estimated out-of-pocket expense after scholarships: ~$2,000/year
- Some things I want to be involved in: research (want a publication), community involvement/service, patient interaction/clinical exposure, HOSA (I was very, very active in HOSA in high school), Bollywood Dance team that is active
Any insight would be extremely helpful! I would love to go to a place that would help me achieve my professional goals and at the same time help me stay connected to my Indian culture and succeed academically. If you would like more information/clarification, please let me know! Thank you 
Medical Scholars at SLU isn’t that valuable. Therefore, I think Wisconsin dominates both SLU and Pitt. Unless the extra $200k means little to your family, I would stick with Wisconsin.
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SLU Medical Scholars is unnecessarily restrictive - you must apply to Med School Junior Year* and CANNOT apply anywhere beside SLU’s Med school! (* Most Med school applicants apply Senior year or take more glide years to build clinical experience). Plus, maintaining an A- average in Biochem and Orgo is incredibly difficult, even strong students struggle to get a B despite A’s in science courses. I’d cross it out.
Have you applied to UWisc’s Honors College?
Have you applied anywhere else?
Pitt and UWisc are the best proposals, and if you want to go OOS Pitt Honors for 10K a year is a terrific choice.
Things you can do:
Research average or median grades in General ChemI&II, BioI&II, Orgo, etc. at all universities.
Email all colleges’ Pre health advisers, ask if they can put you in touch with current juniors premed with various majors, if their university sends “general support” volunteers to RAM.
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Thanks for the advice! I was actually planning on applying out my junior year if I chose SLU Med Scholars, thus forfeiting my guaranteed spot. I’m not too keen on going to SLU Med School, but was under the impression that the program was good for pre-med students, so it climbed to one of my top choices.
To answer your questions, I didn’t apply to UWisc’s Honors College. I did apply to other universities, however, I’m not as enthusiastic about going to the others as I am to these four that I narrowed my options to.
I would prefer to go out of state, however, UWisc is still a terrific choice! Thank you for providing me with things I can do; I will get on that and let you know what I find out!
Can you still apply to UWisc Honors/why wouldn’t you apply there? For premeds it matters because generally Honors classes aren’t weedout (since students are pre selected before they start, they aren’t selected along the way) and mentoring, advising, access to opportunities are always better than for “regular” first years. Considering you want to do research it’s just odd you didn’t apply, unless you wanted an excuse not to go?
Is Pitt affordable for your family?
It’s well known for its health sciences and access to hospitals, it’s out of state, and Pittsburgh is a cool city. That being said, Madison is a top college town and UWisconsin is world class so you can’t choose wrong between these.
(When do you hear about FA at Duke? Had you run the NPC, what did it say? Why Duke, are you into Greek life or is it prestige and good weather or…? …)
I can check to see if I can still apply to UWisc Honors! I want to say I would only be able to apply next year now because the application deadline for this year has probably already passed, but I will check it out. If I can only apply for my sophomore year in college, would it still be worth it to apply to Honors at UWisc?
Pitt is very affordable for my family. I got a half tuition scholarship and have another scholarship that is about $11,000 per year. I also have some scholarships here and there that would cover a lot of the costs!
I will hear FA at Duke by the end of the month. I was a semi-finalist for the Robertson Scholars Leadership Program, but unfortunately, didn’t get chosen to proceed in the process. Could you explain what NPC means (still new to all this lingo haha)? Duke primarily attracts me for prestige and good weather as you said, but also the pre-med opportunities and strong Indian culture!
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you can apply UW honors program now, or after you enroll.
You should have gotten an email of invitation to honors program if you are accepted EA.
Did you get accepted by Duke? Likely letter? If ED, you are binded. If not yet accepted, it is too early to say.
Turns out I could still apply for UWisc Honors! Just submitted my application reusing an essay I previously submitted with the same prompt (just a little bit of editing).
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Excellent !
Npc= net price calculator
The calculator you run on each college to see whether it’d be affordable. You can still do it.
Thanks! I haven’t gotten accepted by Duke, but since I was a semi-finalist in the Robertson Scholars Leadership Program, I’m thinking an acceptance is likely.
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Sounds good! I’ll check it out
Thank you! I will look at that as well. My parents are very, very open to covering college fees (and have the financial means to do so), but I still wouldn’t want to pay the full price anywhere per se because I wouldn’t want to be in loads of debt after medical school.
I think you should choose between UW and Duke, even they have a gap in between. Just wait for all scholarship and FA packages and decide later. Congratulations!
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Hi! Can I ask why you think the medical scholars program at SLU is invaluable? We are also considering it and want to see multiple perspectives of the program. Thanks!
I unfortunately can’t find the average or median grades. I feel like even if they could capture those numbers, I’m not sure what sense I could make of them given not only the wide range of students who take these classes but the wide range of professors who might have their own grading philosophies. Thoughts?
I did get in touch with two current students at SLU. What things should I be asking them?
Not all schools publish these but I thought UWisc did.
It’s just another data point, perhaps not worth knowing.
Getting into the weeds on this:
For intro premed courses, it’s really not about professor’s philosophy, it’s all above whether the average is B, B-, or C+. The Dept will have a % for, say, General Chemistry. So, about 20% get an A, 30% get a B, 30% get a C, 20% get D or F as long as the section has an 80 average, this type of thing. But it could be 10%/20%/40%/30%… or there could be no such curve at all.
The variation is likely to be between 2.9 and 3.2 about everywhere, but you want to see if some universities are higher or lower than that, overall, for the General Chem, Gen Bio, and Calc 1 courses.
“weedout” classes are curved in a specific way, designed to make a certain percentage of the class fail or fail to reach B or higher. It’s different from students “getting weeded out”, meaning they didn’t reach the threshold to have med school worthy grades, which can be related or unrelated to the way the class is curved.
For the SLU students, I might ask…
what percentage freshmen kept the required 3.65 GPA?
how many Medical Scholars were there their freshman year? How many are there now? Are they tight, do they help each other or are they competitive? Do they have a lot of common activities?
Do they personally want to go to SLU Med School?
What’s their best experience? Worst?
What other choices did they have beside Medical Scholars and why did they choose it over their other choices?
I think you are looking for the course-grade distribution report from this page.
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@subkiamma the reason I think the SLU program provides little value is that for most BS/MD programs, the University gets a stronger student for both their undergraduate and MD programs in exchange for a MD spot if explicit criteria are met. I don’t see that with the SLU program. All the student gets is to go through the process early, but it is binding. I don’t see a clear benefit.
Add: It looks like anyone can do their ED decision. Even less value.
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