Best PreMed Programs

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Doing this would essentially label the student as not admittable. This would be way worse than a bad MCAT score. There are so many well qualified students that sending a letter like this would be cruel

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<p>But only if the label is recognized as such. Like I said, I highly doubt that it would be. Again, put yourself in the shoes of a med-school adcom officer from Ponce. A Hopkins applicant package (the only one in this particular admissions cycle) has the form letter in it. Honestly, do you know what it means? You might contact Hopkins, but they would give you no useful information. So how do you know that what you are seeing is a 'bad label'?</p>

<p>You're presuming omniscience among the adcom officers. Yet the fact is, if adcom officers were truly omniscient, they wouldn't even need to see your application, as they would ALREADY know whether to admit you or not. They wouldn't need to waste time in interviewing you or checking your rec letters, because they would already know whether you're admittable or not. The truth is, there are tremendous information asymmetries at play in any admissions process. You, as an adcom officer, only know what the applicant and the undergrad school tell you, and if they don't tell you everything, you rarely have the means and wherewithal to find out. </p>

<p>Let's be honest and admit that adcom officers are imperfect human beings operating with incomplete information under principles of bounded rationality. Some students are admitted who shouldn't be admitted, and some students who should be admitted are not admitted. This happens at every school.</p>

<p>With the usual protest from me that I don't think UCB's numbers can be trusted, since they're dramatically incomplete.</p>

<p>How are Northwestern and Swarthmore for premed schools?</p>

<p>I don't have data on Northwestern. I have heard that it is a very competitive grind, but that is anecdotal, and perhaps an unfair characterization. Interesteddad has the data on Swarthmore. As a small school, the numbers vary from year to year. Overall, they do quite well, but stiff grading policies hurt, and S is very hard work for everyone, not just premeds. </p>

<p>Those two schools are close to polar opposites among elite colleges. I suspect there is not a lot of overlap in their applicant pools. Are you sure you are interested in both?</p>

<p>I feel really embarassed to ask post this message:
I read what you all wrote and feel dumb academically. My cummulative GPA so far is 3.5 weighted, and 3.0 unweighted. I am a B+ average student. Fortunately our school is the know as the best in our city/state (washington dc) we have grading scale of 95+ = A. In math and science, i got As freshman year, Bs junior year , and now the first quarter turn out to be Cs...I can see it is going down, but i am determined to work harder maybe by the end of the year i can get a B or A final grade. I am interested in premed because i am SURE that i want to be a doctor (without borders). I like to stay near Washington DC area, do you recommend some schools strong in premed and fit my data? Thanks alot.</p>

<p>I am wondering if any of you could help me:
I am a junior with a 4.6 weighted GPA and a very rigorous schedule (no lunch, 4 AP's, 2 honors, gym and spanish). I am on my school newspaper (editor, possibly editor in chief next year) and the math team (frequently place highly at regionals and state) and I also volunteer regularly. Additionally, I have a pretty good life story to put on my admissions essays. I have not taken any SAT's yet. I would prefer either an engineering or a language major, but I don't really care in the long run, as long as I can get into a med school. What schools do you think I should apply to? The University of Chicago is very appealing to me because I'm getting an automatic 50% scholarship there if I get in. Plus, I live quite close to Chicago, so I wouldn't have to go far. Does anyone know the stats for admission into med schools of Chicago students? Thank you.</p>

<p>You need an SAT, and then you need to go to the "What are my chances" forum for a better assessment. We're all pretty far away from the undergrad admissions process.</p>

<p>do u guys have any info about the premed/bio/chem programs at UVA, Vandy, Rice, NW, and Brown? If you could choose one of these schools for premed, which would it be?</p>

<p>Medical school acceptance rates from undergraduate universities are horribly fickle - there is no standard calculation - and they are easily misrepresented.</p>

<p>ckmed...point well taken. Given those same schools, which would you consider to have the best life science departments/programs? the worst?</p>

<p>best premed is UVA</p>

<p>really?...uva is a state school, why would it be better for premeds than rice, nw, brown, or vandy? i'm not saying its bad, i just want to know what makes it better...i do believe all the privates i mentioned have a higher med school acceptance than uva, which is around ~70% i believe</p>

<p>There are a million posts by me and BDM saying the same thing, but here I'll say it again.</p>

<p>1) Acceptance rate is the absolute worst metric ever used to determine how good a school is for pre-meds. As stated it's unbelievably fickle. Schools that don't pre-screen potential candidates are automatically at a huge disadvantage because anyone and everyone who wants to apply can with little regard to their actual qualifications. I've oft told the story of one of my good friends who absolutely knew 100% that she wasn't going to be accepted anywhere b/c of her GPA and MCAT scores, but applied to only our home state school in hopes of getting an interview. That was it, that was all she wanted, and that would have been closure to her. But her school would be "punished" by the Acceptance rate criteria because it didn't prevent her from applying. Total BS.</p>

<p>2) Choosing a college based on how good you think it's going to be for getting into medical school is a horrible idea. Simply looking at the numbers, most people who start pre-med aren't going to finish as pre-meds, let alone get accepted to medical school. Choosing a school that isn't a good fit for you as a whole person could mean disaster if you decide that medicine is not for you. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to "ruin" your life if you change your mind (which the statistics say you'll do).</p>

<p>3) Quality of academics is important, but not as important as you'd imagine, at least when looking at the big picture. There are probably some medical schools who do place a greater importance on being from Harvard vs. Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska. However, there are also schools that probably ignore, for better or worse, where an applicant finished their degree. Even for the medical schools that do place an emphasis on where one completed undergrad, is it really possible to quantify what a 4.0 at Fort Hays State in Hays Kansas is equal to at Harvard? A 3.8? a 3.6? Who really knows!?! So since you're probably going to be applying to a myriad of schools all with different weights of undergrad importance, it's probably safest to say that it doesn't matter that much...</p>

<p>4) this is not to say that there aren't schools that are better for pre-meds than others. But the things that make them different are largely impossible to measure in any real meaningful way, and most of the items are nearly impossible to judge from an outside perspective. Things like the quality of advising, the opportunities for getting involved on campus and in the community, the research opportunities, the volunteer opportunities, and the preparation for interviews all vary from school to school, and there is some place out there that has the best combination, but how do you figure that out?</p>

<p>5) Even if you could figure out that UVA or Central Missouri State, or Grinell or the University of Puget Sound or Creighton or Brown or Baylor or UCLA had the best combination of the above criteria, that still wouldn't mean it was right for every pre-med student. Fit and balance are two very key things in finding a school where you can be as successful as possible. That means success academically, socially, physically, and emotionally, with all areas having a good balance. The school that fulfills this criteria is actually the best pre-med school, because it's going to put you in a situation where you can excel. And as I've said many times (though not recently) doing well is a panacea for med school admissions.</p>

<p>ive noticed most of the programs being discussed here are the top-notch universities, but which university of california would you guys say has the best premed program?</p>

<p>Cardene: swarthmore releases medical school admissions data. here is a summary of the 2005 figures.</p>

<p>Acceptance Rate for Graduating Seniors: 100%
Acceptance Rate for Alumni: 86%
Average GPA of Accepted Student: 3.47
Average MCAT of Accepted Student: 32.8
Average GPA of Accepted Student to Ivy league Medical School: 3.72
Average MCAT of Accepted Student to Ivy league Medical School: 35.6</p>

<p>Swat has a Guide to Premedical Studies that tells you all this. you just need to look through it to find all the info. if you want to look at the guide here is the link: <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/health_sciences/first_year_guide.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/health_sciences/first_year_guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Any school that has a 100% should generally arouse suspicions of screening.</p>

<p>7 graduating seniors applying and 36 alumni? That's highly unusual. I wonder why so many applicants are taking time off after undergrad from Swarthmore.</p>

<p>I agree, highly unusual. My school, smaller than Swarthmore, has several times the number of applicants with around the same success rate. I wonder if their curriculum is set up in such a way that most students can not get the required courses in until they complete all 4 years, forcing many to apply after they graduate.</p>

<p>acceptance rate of 100% is only for graduating students. the overall (which includes alumni) is 88%. </p>

<p>I go to swarthmore and am a pre-med student. it's a tough school and it's hard to get the A's that medical schools look for, but as for finishing the requirements it's not that bad. personally, i am going to finish all of my requirements by the end of sophomore year. i would say a majority of the people here are not interested in premed or prelaw (from what i have personally seen and heard). a majority of students from swat end up going to some type of graduate school and end up in research-type fields.</p>

<p>as for why so many people take time off? honestly not too sure. maybe the students feel burnt out and want to take a break? </p>

<p>according to the website about screening:</p>

<p>Is there a GPA cut-off for getting a Health Sciences committee letter of recommendation?</p>

<p>No, there is no GPA cut-off for getting a Health Sciences Advisory Committee letter of recommendation.</p>

<p>Screening is usually considered to be done implicitly, which is why explicit policies like the one at JHU are so shocking.</p>

<p>"It's not that we won't write you a letter, Mike, but you have to understand that we can't honestly support you in this endeavor. Here, have a brochure for PA school."</p>