<p>I am currently a High School Sophomore. I go to a difficult school (comparison to others) that is not exactly recognized as a great school. This Fall I can either continue with my Junior year or go to Bard's College at Simon's Rock and then transfer after 2 years to another school. I plan on going Pre-Med and if I wait I have a potential at a 6-year. Unfortunately transfers (especially to good schools) are few and far between. I could stay in a mind numbing HS or go off to a college that could potentially limit my options. Please help.</p>
<p>I never really understood what was the rush for these 6-7 year accelerated medical school programs. The extra year or two, in the long run, is not really a whole bunch of extra time.</p>
<p>But also - think about this. If you go to Bard College at Simon’s Rock next year (when you are presumably 16), you will graduate from college at 20. Assuming you get into medical school directly from college, you will finish at 24. OR you could wait 2 years and go to an accelerated 6-year medical program, which you will begin when you are 18 and finish when you are 24. You aren’t saving any time, nor are you “limiting your opportunities”. The only difference is that in an accelerated program you don’t have to apply to med school, but that’s because those programs are ridiculously competitive to begin with. You’re giving up a bird in the hand for two in the bush, except the birds are the size of grains of sand and the bushes are redwoods.</p>
<p>If you are already bored and feel that your college is “mind-numbing,” then go and get intellectual stimulation at Simon’s Rock. It is consistently rated as an excellent college; they have a variety of [cool</a> off-campus study options](<a href=“https://simons-rock.edu/academics/study-at-bards-other-campuses"]cool”>https://simons-rock.edu/academics/study-at-bards-other-campuses)to enrich your education, and I get the sense that students transfer to some very highly-rated colleges and universities after their first two years there.</p>
<p>I go to Bard College at Simon’s Rock and I just finished my first year here.</p>
<p>In no way will coming here limit your pre-med opportunities. The school has a series of courses for pre-med students who want to transfer after two years. For students who do well in those courses, we have a medical school acceptance rate of 100%. By no means will you be limiting yourself by coming here.</p>
<p>If you are still interested in applying, we started using rolling admissions this year, and you can go ahead and call the admissions office during the summer and apply. </p>
<p>My friend’s kids went to Simons Rock and did not end up at as good of a college as he probably would have if he stayed in our HS and applied to colleges as a freshman. He tried to get into some really top colleges as a transfer student and the many seemed hesitant to accept some of his credits, especially in the sciences. He might have had better luck had he applied as a freshman and just taken whatever credits they were willing to give him from Simons Rock. That said, he really did enjoy his time at Simoon’s Rock and I’m not sure if he’d do things differently given the chance (he ended up at a very good college, just not what he initially was aiming for). I’d just look carefully into where their students from Simon’s Rock have been accepted and if they generally apply to college as freshmen or juniors.</p>
<p>My thought on the last response is that getting in to your dream college isn’t the end-all and be-all of life. Succeeding in life is the end-all and be-all of life. If Simon’s Rock can get you where you want to go, who cares if you go to a great school that isn’t your dream school? BTW, I would not underestimate the network of a place like Simon’s Rock either. I don’t know what the HS alternative would have been, but, for instance, I went to a public magnet HS (with a small but tight student body), and that network has actually been more helpful in my career than the network of the Ivy-equivalent that I attended.</p>
<p>BTW, one thing about those accelerated “guaranteed” pre-med programs is that they often require you to maintain a pretty high GPA. A GPA which,if you got them at a good school and you had high MCAT scores, would almost certainly get you in to med school anyway.</p>
<p>Really, those “guaranteed” pre-med programs are only good for those folks who are sure they can maintain a high GPA but underperform their abilities on standardized tests (but if you’re one of those folks, it’s virtually impossible to enter those programs anyway).</p>