<p>I think that it is style versus substance thing. Strongly worded posts without a disclaimer could seem unnecessarily aggressive but more importantly, be viewed as universal truth rather than merely anecdotal information. I don’t think we can assume that every young college kid (or their parents) coming here for information will know the difference.</p>
<p>But thinking logically, we cannot possess universal experience, well take it back, if one has some 20 kids spread around the country at various UGs and Medical Schools, then this family will have close to universal experience. Most of us here have one and as an exception maybe 2 kids in Med. School. Not sure how people coming here will asume that we speak for the rest of the world, not that it is not possible and large families with multiple students at different Med. Schools exist (i guess, i will have to add disclaimers, sorry to bore)</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, I think it’s how you convey your thoughts on the board. You seem very rigid and definitive in your responses. Maybe if you prefaced comments with IMHO or “I believe” or “in my daughter’s experience” others would not feel the need to challenge you. Try going back and reviewing some of your previous posts and you might understand. ;)</p>
<p>I cannot change my style, I just present facts, I am trying to stay away from opinions. I could have been unsuccessful in this, that is another point. But it was not my intend to state my opinion, completely irrelevant, just sahring experiences. If I offended others by sharing experiences, I am very sorry for that. And again, there is ignore funciton on CC. Anybody who feel offended, can put me on their ignore list and you will never see my posts any more. Remember controling what is under your own control is much easier than controling others in any life situation.</p>
<p>Miami and All,</p>
<p>I find most posts on the forum very helpful and send some to my son from time to time. For him, the hardest freshmen course is Gen Chem honors. ;)</p>
<p>^Just another proof that everybody is different and UGs are different. To make it even more complicated, there are different first Gen. Chem at specific school. Again, to make i even mre complicated, at D’s school, you could take only the class that would correspond to you Math placement test, the one that she had to take before registering for first semester freshman year (along with Foreign Language test).<br>
Based on her experience, unless your major requires , there is no reason to take harder class than needed, however, it has to be enough for MCAT. Again, D’s situation was somewhat unigue particularly in regard to Gen. Chem. Maybe she had a great HS teacher (at least whe thinks so), but she was in better shape than most others and ended up being hired as an SI, which led to the fact that she did not have to prepare Gen. Chem for MCAT (which again indicated that she took the correct class at the correct level). That is all I know. And it did not help her a bit with any other Chem. Orgo was extremely hard, but she just worked harder, what else one can do when it is hard, I do not know.</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>I’m sorry that I didn’t realize that you operated under the assumption that everyone recognizes we are just sharing our personal opinions. I will keep this in mind when reading your otherwise very helpful posts but will continue to provide counter examples to yours where appropriate especially since I don’t think many of the younger/less experienced readers will know to read your posts with this grain of salt. For example, it is hard to see that assumption when you quote a student’s perspective and say “No, this is not the case.”</p>
<p>I read an old post from pricessND in which she expressed her opinions about Honor Program at a slightly lower ranked UCSB vs a higher ranked UCLA.</p>
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<p>She also spoke in favor of attending more well known schools and against attending community college unless you have to (in another of her posts). Of course, these are her opinions due to her past experiences. ALthough she is good at talking about this somewhat controversal topics in a good/constructive way, she still has her “norcalguy” moment, which is to speak to the hard truth (i.e., what she believes in) no matter how unpleasant it could be to the ears of some CCers.</p>
<p>Her point about “Acceptance (to an Honor Program) is often based on SAT scores which have little predictive value of one’s success in college” is interesting but is somewhat contradictory to her point “attending a higher ranked college could be useful.” This is because acceptance (to a high ranked) college is often also based on SAT scores. The difference between these two is the top colleges could place more emphasis on EC achievment as compared to the typical (i.e., not extremely highly regarded one) honor programs at a typical college. If this is the case, the achievment in EC at the high school level trumps an excellent SAT score. The students doing great in ECs at the high school level could more likely continue to do great in ECs at a top college. After all, achieving at the state or national level at the high school level is more challenging than be born into a “cultural rich”/“highly educated” family (which influences the SAT score a lot, IMHO) in term of persopnal drive and talents.</p>
<p>@OP</p>
<p>haha wow i just recently switched from CS to bio as well. I did it because I found CS uninteresting though. not to mention at my school there is no overlap whatsoever between CS and premed</p>
<p>If you child is interested in studying medicine, then you need to know that in the US, medicine is a graduate degree program. Your child will need to complete an baccalaureate (4 year undergraduate) degree first before he or she can apply to medical schools. </p>
<p>It is extremely difficult for international students students to be accepted into US medical schools. Many US med school will not consider international students for admission, and, of those that do, very few offer any financial aid. Medical school in the US is extremely expensive. ($250,000-$300,000 would be a good estimate.)</p>
<p>If you are looking for undergraduate programs in the US for science and business—you might find more help in the International Students forum.</p>
<p>[International</a> Students - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/international-students/]International”>International Students - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>It will be helpful if you could narrow down the areas of your child interest. Science is pretty broad. Do you mean biology? physics? geology?</p>
<p>Also if you can post your child’s stats—grade point average, IB exams, SAT score, TOEFL score–and how much your family afford to pay each year for college. This information will help posters identify colleges that might be a good match.</p>
<p>Did someone’s post get deleted? You currently look like you’re posting a non sequitor on a thread that hasn’t been active in 9 months.</p>
<p>^^Apparently. There was intervening post asking for school recs for a student from Colombia interested in science [medicine].</p>
<p>Sorry folks, no message is being shown as deleted, some sort of internet glitch perhaps?</p>