I have just finished my junior year of high school (praise GOD) and I am interested in pursuing a medical career! I have looked a little bit into certain colleges, but am hoping that you would be able to give me better insight on my choices, my chances of acceptance, or recommend others!
For your benefit, here are some of my statistics:
10-12 Weighted A-G GPA: 4.68
Cumulative Weighted GPA: 4.45
Cumulative Unweighted GPA: 3.98
SAT Score: 1530
Notable career-related classes over sophomore/junior year:
Honors Chemistry
AP Chemistry
AP Biology
AP Calculus AB
And finally, the list of colleges I have compiled:
UCI
UCSD
NYU
U of Washington*
USC
UCLA*
U Chicago*
Duke
Northwestern*
Johns Hopkins
*stars are my more preferred choices (I laugh)
What is your home state? What can you reasonably afford for college with as few loans as possible? Medical school is going to be very expensive, and some of the schools on your list offer zero financial aid for OOS applicants. Even if they’re affordable, I question full pay for undergrad when you have medical school plans.
As for your list, they are all good schools and you are competitive. However, there is no guarantee so I’d look for more match and definitely safety schools. Perhaps ones that give you a lot of merit for your stats as they are impressive…i don’t have many suggestions but hopefully other posters will.
Med schools don’t care where you went to undergrad. They do care about GPA, MCAT, and if you have some experience in the medical field such as internships, shadowing, volunteering at a hospital, etc. Agree 100% with above posters; save your money for Med School, go to an affordable college without worrying about how impressive its name is. Best wishes to you.
Inferring that the schools you like best are mid-sized, urban or urban-adjacent top-tier universities…
Consider Rice, which is extremely strong for premed sciences and has fabulous opportunities through the ginormous med center complex that’s in walking distance from campus. Great undergraduate quality of life on the outskirts of a diverse and progressive city, with residential colleges like UChicago’s. Texas may not be on your radar in general, but Houston is a straight-shot flight from the CA hubs.
As far as SoCal goes, how about the Claremont Colleges? (Smaller classes and less weeder-ish premed experience than the UC’s. UCLA premeds tell of fixed grade curves that are skewed by high numbers of students retaking the same classes for a higher grade, which is of course a self-perpetuating phenomenon.)
If you like Duke and Hopkins, other possibilities to look at would be Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Emory.
Tulane, CWRU, URochester, and Pitt could be good low-match/safeties.
You have a good chance at all the UC’s but of course UCLA will be a tough admit. UCI and UCSD are very likely. USC is also within Reach as long as it is affordable. Worse thing you can do is go into a large amount of debt before applying to Medical school.