<p>Stanford
Columbia
Brown
John Hopkins
U Penn
Cornell
Duke
Vanderbilt</p>
<p>I want to go into medicine. Are these good colleges for pre-med? I will apply to safety schools, but these are my top choices.</p>
<p>Most people, when they say “good,” mean a high % of the pre-med kids get accepted to med school. (Last I heard, the bit is “% accepted to one of their top 3 choices.”) Do you realize that, to make that high %, the college can put you through brutal weeding? They don’t tell you how they cull through all the med school wannabes in the first year or two. Slash and burn. They want to end up with a very select few.</p>
<p>Good colleges for pre-med are those with</p>
<ul>
<li>Low net cost (save money for expensive medical school)</li>
<li>Pre-med courses that prepare you well for the MCAT</li>
<li>High grade inflation relative to student competitiveness</li>
<li>Research and internship opportunities</li>
<li>Convenient pre-med extracurriculars (volunteering and shadowing)</li>
</ul>
<p>lac’s are probably better for pre med! more supportive professors their to teach, no TA’s and probably less cut throat students! you still need to have what it takes and step up on the study/classwork! but, IMO LAC’s would be better for pre-med!</p>
<p>ucbalumnus and zopbroward are both on the money. There is very little advantage to attending a prestige school if med school is your goal. Ironically one of the most critical factors is your state of residence - many state medical schools (which are the cheapest option) give a lot of weight to their residents - some accept virtually no one from out of state. If you are lucky enough to be from one of those states, your situation is entirely different than if you are from, say, California, where there are very few seats in-state relative to the number of in-state applicants.</p>
<p>Yup, I’d pick an LAC. And if finances are an issue, pick one outside the top 20-30 that is known for high med school placement rates AND might offer you merit aid if you have the stats. Knox, Hendrix, and Earlham are several that I know do very well preparing kids for med school.</p>
<p>I went to an LAC so I’m biased, but you can get a good solid premedical education at a public university, too. And it’s probably less expensive. Look at your state’s flagship public universities.</p>
<p>Are those colleges going to provide you with a solid pre-med education? Sure, they will, but so will a lot of less expensive schools. Personally, I am a grad student at Columbia and it feels like half the undergrads here are premed, and the competitive atmosphere is a little crazy. The kids are already stressed out; the premed ones are even more stressed out.</p>
<p>Go to a school with less competition. Med schools don’t care where you went to undergrad, just your GPA.</p>
<p>LACs can have TAs, too.</p>
<p>^^^generally LACs don’t have TAs (I visited a dozen last year with my D and not one had TAs). Not saying it can’t happen, but it would be highly unusual (especially since LACs have no grad students).</p>
<p>Agree with happy1–I have never heard of an LAC with TAs.</p>
<p>Holy Cross has a very good pre-med program.</p>
<p>D2 is at a top LAC and had TA’s in both intro chem and intro bio. No grad students; these were very bright senior majors.</p>
<p>Holy Cross has TA’s. Mills College, Haverford, Carleton, etc.
Not the same as a grad student’s level, but they exist. Some may function more as helpers that what we think of as TA’s. Or, some could possibly be local grad students from other schools-?</p>
<p>Actually, in pre-med, especially at a weeder school, I think the position has merit. Let’s not confuse the idea floating around that they replace a prof, with the reality that most lead discussions or study groups and give plenty of advice.</p>
<p>I’ll recommend Earlham College. We have a very strong pre-med program, and a great, collaborative group of students that study for the MCATs together. >90% are accepted into med school, and 80% of those accepted get into one of their top 3 choices (2 out of the last 3 years, we have sent a student to Harvard Medical on full academic scholarship). There are plenty of opportunities to do research on campus, professors who write great letters of recommendations, and free transportation to the local hospital for volunteering/internships. Come check us out! If interested, the admissions department will fly you in for free (if you have financial need). :)</p>
<p>Oh - and we do have TAs, but they’re usually junior and senior TAs for labs. It’s a great way to learn your subject better! TAs almost never teach classes - that’s just for the profs.</p>
<p>Lookingforward, your data is not totally accurate. Holy Cross does not use TAs:
[Office</a> of Administration and Finance | College of the Holy Cross](<a href=“http://www.holycross.edu/academics/faculty/]Office”>Faculty | College of the Holy Cross)
<a href=“http://offices.holycross.edu/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/planningbudget/CDS20112012Publishr1.pdf[/url]”>http://offices.holycross.edu/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/planningbudget/CDS20112012Publishr1.pdf</a> Section I1</p>
<p>I think most LACs do not use TAs. That’s certainly true of my two DDs and my own experience.</p>
<p>…shrugs shoulders.
I saw this. It’s just not worth arguing over. One’s kid’s don’t have 'em, another’s do.</p>
<p>HolyCross.edu
MATH 133 – Intensive Calculus for the Physical and Life Sciences 1
Teaching Assistant: Marissa xxxxx (e-mail: mxxxx at holycross.edu). Marissa is a senior mathematics major. She will hold weekly problem sessions, time to be arranged.</p>
<p>No idea what this is. Maybe they don’t have “Teaching Assistants,” but have humbler and more generic “teaching assistants.”</p>
<p>To be honest, having the opportunity to be a “teaching assistant” as an undergrad is a great thing - I’ve found that it helps me really internalize what I’ve learned from the class when I took it previously. This isn’t to say that I think teaching assistants should be the ones teaching the lectures, but it’s nice to have them as helpers within the lab, running study sessions, etcetera.</p>
<p>As you say, not worth arguing over.</p>