I’ve having a hard time deciding where to apply early this fall. I come from a highly competitive high school where there is a lot of pressure to apply early. I know I want to ultimately become a physician, but I need some advice. What top colleges give you the best advantage for applying SCEA or ED? I’m looking mostly at the Ivies and other T-25 colleges. Also, which colleges have the best track record of placing students at top medical schools. I found the college transition site data they pulled from Linkedin but there are no rankings just a long list. What would be your top ten colleges for medical school admission likelihood? My two top choices right now are Brown and UPenn. How would you compare the premed programs at both. I don’t think I’m PLME quality.
“PREMED”
“I’m looking mostly at the Ivies and other T-25 colleges”
This topic has come up a lot on CC.
It is not at all clear that you will maximize your chances of getting into medical school by attending a “top 25” university.
It is clear that some top universities get a higher percentage of their graduates into medical school. However, there are multiple reasons for this. One reason is that top universities are very selective in terms of which students they accept in the first place. Another reason is that some universities restrict which of their seniors or graduates are encouraged to apply to medical schools.
Consider the student who goes to Harvard, is in the bottom 50% of the premed students there, and does not get into any medical school. Suppose that student had gone to U.Mass Amherst instead and had worked very hard. Would they have been in the top 20% of the students there? Would they have gotten into medical school in that case?
I do not think that we know. I have family members whose majors overlap with premed in terms of the required courses, so they have a lot of friends who are premed and have seen what premed classes are like. Based on the discussions here and what little I have seen I doubt that your chances of getting accepted to medical school will be much different whether you attend Harvard or your local in-state public university. Your resulting debt load however might vary quite a bit.
When you get to university and start taking premed classes, you are going to discover that the other students in your class are very strong, and the classes are tough. As one example, one daughter started off as a freshman taking “biology for biology majors” and the class average on the first midterm exam was in the low 40’s. I took this as the school trying to do the students a favor: Since most of the class are not going to get accepted to any medical school, they could give the students a strong hint early on whether they are likely to have a chance, and thereby encourage students who are not going ever get to medical school to consider other career options.
Some people interpret this to mean that you are better off attending a university where you will be in the top 25% of incoming students, because you are going to need to be in the top 25% of graduates to have a good shot at medical school.
Certainly students who were the top student in their high school who show up as freshmen at MIT or Harvard will usually suddenly find themselves to be average. If you had a few 800’s on various SAT tests, you can expect to be average at MIT (I have some personal experience here).
Medical school is insanely expensive. You need to keep your budget in mind from the very beginning. You need to budget for 8 years, where the last 4 are going to be expensive.
There are a lot of universities with very good premed programs, hundreds of them. You should keep an open mind and do not just look for a high rating.
For ED, the answer is easy. If you don’t have a clear favorite that has ED, don’t ED.
There are hundreds of colleges where the variance between them is virtually zero in preparing you for med school. How your personal interaction with the school goes is more important than what the school does by itself.
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Unless your parents can (& will) write the check for all 8 years, take finances into account. It is a lot less exciting to announce “I’m going to the Honors College at State U”! or “I’m going to X LAC on the Y Fellowship!” than “I’m going to Brown!”. But, if your 100% goal is medical school, and debt will be required for med school, this is the functional equivalent of the famous ‘marshmallow test’*: do you have the ability to take the long view, or is instant gratification irresistible?
Realistically, you will be the biggest difference between the pre-med programs at any of the places on your list. All of them- and dozens more- will give you more opportunities than you can take advantage of in 4 years. Pick school(s) where you are likely to shine- in all parts of your college adventure, from academic to social. Look at the specifics of each pre-med program and how they would work for you.
(*yes I know that there are disagreements about those outcomes)
Here’s a list of schools supplying the most applicants to medical school:
https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2019-11/2019_FACTS_Table_A-2.pdf
And if you are serious about pre-med, I strongly encourage you to visit aamc.org; it has a wealth of information regarding the entire pre-med journey.
And which school is better for pre-med? Pretty tough to say, as all UGs make that information as opaque as possible. There isn’t even an agreed-upon definition of “pre-med”; is it all entering freshman who express an interest? Is it students who take the MCAT? Is it students who actually apply to medical school? Does it include alumni who apply years later? There isn’t even an agreed-upon definition of “medical school”; some UGs count any health program(e.g. podiatry), not just MD or DO programs. With no agreed definitions, accurate statistics regarding successful applicants are almost impossible to come by.
As noted above, the only variable in this whole process you can control is…you. Based on your stated preferences, you will be attending school with many intelligent, motivated, goal-directed classmates who also want to attend medical school. So the best bet is to pick the school, as best possible, which fits you best. Students who are happy at their school tend to do better.
One online site ranks Brown 10th for premedicine: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/2159868-per-the-savvypremed-site-highly-selective-colleges-among-top-choices-for-medical-school-aspirants-p1.html.
You’d be well-advised to ignore all lists of “best” pre-med schools; none of them offer any objective data which can be compared among the schools. You’d be much better off selecting a school which is the best fit for you.
If you’ve got a lot of time to waste, read through the posts from the link above, which show the list is prepared-you guessed it-from someone wanted to sell you their services. And the posts thoroughly debunk the list as objective data relevant to anything.
Although #5 has been posting the list at least since October 2019; you’d think they’d have a new list by now…