From what I gather, Davidson practices grade deflation, too, @boatlift!
How serious is your DS about med school? UChicago will open up a huge academic world to him, but his classmates will all be topnotch too. WashU and Emory may be worth seriously considering as something in between.
I can’t speak to the culture of the colleges (other than we live near Emory and it’s a really cool area and the rep for Emory is rich kids, Jewish kids, and smart kids, and older DD did her first summer of TiP at Davidson and loved the food and the town), but I know others can.
@curmudgeon Hi, hoping to drag you into this conversation based on the note from @momof3sons above. She recalls that your D went to Rhodes and ended up at Yale med. Per my notes above, my S is interested in med, and is deciding between UC and other less high flying alternatives including Rhodes. Would love your perspective. Thanks!
Seriously, don’t assume some smaller college won’t be brutally weeding. What helps is to learn whether the pre-med courses at a particular college are considered cooperative or competitive. That’s different than making assumptions based on the general student population. (Sometimes, you can learn this via the Pre-Med forum, but sometimes some posters just want to humble brag it was all a breeze for them. Just saying.)
In part, I work with med students in a competitive program. The ones best able to tackle some of the important analytical and interpersonal tasks are those who studied more than STEM in UG. Granted, they also achieved what it takes to get admitted to med school. But it’s not always the size of their UG, nor public or private. It’s their fuller academic experience.
And there’s also the opp for a post-bacc.
All UG’s weed out from pre-med crowd. Only about 15% of initial pre-meds will ever apply to Med. School and about 40% of those who applied will be accepted. And as I mentioned earlier, the name of the UG will have no role in this selection. Med. Schools are aware of brutal weed out at absolutely every place. No pre-med committee at any UG wants to have high % of unaccepted applicants to med. school. In fact, D’s Honors college boosts 100% acceptance. How that 100% happens? I would refer back to my previous post - but simply stating the facts - the ones who would not have a chance get weeded out. The sign of a good pre-med program is having the brutal weed out class in the very first semester of the freshman year so that those who are not up to the stepping up efforts are weeded out right away without wasting too much time on the wrong for them career path. And if you think that this is brutal, this all nothing, not even close to the academic efforts at medical school and all aspects of med students lives being stretched to absolute limits. As my D. commented when she was interviewing potential med. students at her med. school: “Poor things, they do not know what is ahead”. We did not know either…had no idea…so brutality of the pre-med’s weed out is very well founded - survival of the absolute fittest
In regard to other interests, again, based on the experience with my D., the wide range of unrelated interests is very helpful. It gives them all so needed R&R, the break from the very challenging classes and an 'edge" of “thinking out of box” I have no idea how it all works, but D. was claiming that her Music Composition minor was helping her in Physics classes, she felt more creative in solving the problems than others. Whatever helps, they need it…everybody is different here. D. did not have much chances to watch TV though, somebody else may give it a higher priority, they need to know themselves well enough to figure out what relaxes them, they will need it.
Perhaps a better description is “big fish in a pond with small fish”.
Examples:
Amherst: small pond with huge fish
Stanford: medium size pond with huge fish
Michigan: big pond with mostly big fish
Arizona State: huge pond with lots of small to medium size fish but some big fish
Why did he choose U of Chicago? I’m sure it was not because he is interested in medical school- for that just about any undergrad school will do. Does he have specific reasons to go there? Does the required curriculum set of courses intrigue him? Are there any majors/departments he is interested in? He definitely should go there if he wants what they have to offer him freshman year and it is affordable (seems likely since his entire list is private schools). Does he want to be intellectually stimulated and be with peers, perhaps no longer be top of the heap (btw- he could find this at your state flagship)?
If he chose U of Chicago for its prestige he definitely needs to rethink this choice. If his primary goal is becoming a physician any school will do. What is his planned major? Just generalized biology or something many premeds choose (neuroscience has been big lately) indicates the goal, not the major, is important to him (I was first a chemistry major then chose medical school over grad school unlike those who chose a major because it was needed to get the degree before medical school).
Washington U is where a couple of inlaw relatives went- now into medical school. Many premed students there. Being the big fish can backfire- a neighbor chose a local yokel college because he thought his chances of getting into medical school were better than at our top flagship. He didn’t get the highest gpa and ended up at a DO school later. Chances are that your son could get the same gpa at a “lesser” school.
Bottom line. Do not choose the school to game the system for medical school admissions. He will be happiest and do best at the school he most wants. He may discover other passions once exposed to them in college. If he is having reservations/doubts about Chicago it may not be the school for him. If he is passionate about it but scared he may not get the grades and be competitive for medical school that is different. He can always go there for freshman year and transfer if he dislikes it or feels it is not worth the effort.
btw- as physicians we did not encourage our son to be one. And since his last chemistry course was in HS and he has his undergrad degree it is unlikely he will ever do that. Others we know with a physician parent did choose medicine and it works for them. A matter of personality and interest.
@ucbalumnus, we need a fish thread. I love your examples.
The contacts and friends for life he would make at Chicago would be invaluable. I would not try and live too far in the future since a lot can happen. A lot of people who tell you not to go to Chicago are people who never got in to a good school like Chicago so their opinion needs to taken with a grain of salt.
I would not chose a college simply to be the "big fish: as you don’t know how that will work out for the student. I have seen kids go to small, supposedly nurturing colleges and get little support, especially when it comes to job placement. Certainly, most of the time a small school is more nurturing than a big one, but it depends so much on the kid and whether he/she wants to be nurtured and how they are motivated.
If UC is his tribe, there will be no better place. Based on your description, I wouldn’t worry too much about his GPA. He will most likely continue his high achievement. If he doesn’t, he will figure out what to do instead.
"The contacts and friends for life he would make at Chicago would be invaluable. "
Unless I’ve missed something, we still don’t have a clear answer to this.
U Chicago has a yield rate of over 60 per cent. That must tell you something about the school. Always try and achieve the best you can. I agree with @mom2and . Most people make life long friends in college I am sure there are a few that dont. Part of it depends on what you want to major in
Some UG colleges have connections with medical school, both for summer work and for ease of entry. I would look into which colleges offer such programs.
You want an ungraduate school that:
I agree with much of what’s been said already, especially about students changing their minds. When I was a freshman at a top private school many years ago, at least half the incoming freshmen in my dorm were pre-med, absolutely certain that they wanted to become doctors. By the end of the first year, only a handful were still on that track.
Also, when I was a senior, I knew several people who applied to medical school. Only two got into places that I, as a humanities major, had heard of and would think of as having some prestige. Those two people seemed to spend almost all their time studying. After I graduated, I happened to meet a student from a large, highly regarded public university who had gotten into a top medical school. She had done very well as an undergrad and seemed to be a happy, well-rounded student.
So, if a student’s top priority in choosing a college is getting into a good medical school, the student might be better off being a big fish in a small(er) pond. But if your son really wants to attend Chicago because of the education and academic environment (“life of the mind”) it offers, then going there might be worth the “risk”—especially since, statistically, there’s a good chance he’ll change his mind about his major/career.
Unfortunately, I think it’s really hard for high school seniors to turn down prestigious schools for “lesser” ones that may be better fits. As a parent you can encourage your child to think about all these issues, but for most high-achieving students today with their sights set on top-tier schools, passing up the chance to attend one of these schools is next to impossible.
It can also be hard to predict how a particular student will fare at a particular school. Even with a stellar high school track record and an ability to swim with the biggest fish in the biggest pond, a lot of unknowns, both academic and social, can affect how well a student actually does in college, regardless of which college that student attends.
I would add two additional points:
I would also second mom2and’s comment about assuming a student will get better grades at a “smaller pond” school. This is not always the case. I attended what is considered a middle-of-the-road UC school, and the biology program had brutal weed-out classes. I had several friends who were biology majors with med school dreams, and they used to tell me horror stories about the curve on their exams - like 97% being a B.
Not all colleges brutally weed. But it’s a matter of their philosophy, not size or Uni vs LAC.
I’ll comment on this based on the experience of my son and his girlfriend as premeds at Chicago in the class of 2011 (so a while ago now). My son went to college with the express intention of going to medical school, but his commitment to science was always a little suspect. He loved the idea of helping people, got good grades in science in high school, and volunteered in a paleontology lab (where his work a lot like that of a carpenter’s apprentice, and there was a fair amount of sitting around talking about theories of evolution). There were many aspiring pre-meds in his class at Chicago. There was also a certain amount of hostility to people like him at Chicago – the general spirit of the college is in favor of knowledge for its own sake and against pre-professionalism, even if everyone knows that a high percentage of graduates will eventually wind up in professional school somewhere.
The basic science professors, especially in Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, seemed to take a kind of glee in making life difficult for pre-meds, hiding the ball on material and forcing them to work very hard (and learn a lot) to get the coveted As or even A-s. The basic pre-med required courses, in their non-honors versions, were all curved to B-, so that well less than 25% of the class got A-range grades. (The honors basic physical science courses were graded more gently, but covered significantly more material, so the sheer hours to keep up were greater. They were seen as havens for “real” scientists to get away from all the pre-meds, and pre-meds were encouraged not to take them.) There was a lot of weeding out; my son was among the weeds.
My only regret about his college career was that he held on to the medical school idea a couple of quarters too long, in part to please his parents. Once he accepted that he wasn’t headed for medical school, he started learning much more and being much more excited about what he was learning. He loved his college, except for those last quarters of being a pre-med.
In my son’s cohort, there was 100% or near 100% success rate for those who applied to medical school, but the number of people applying was less than you might have seen at peer colleges. There was (and is) a separate pre-med advising team, and they saw their job as counseling out anyone who was not getting all A-range grades in pre-med requirements. There was lots of unhappiness with the pre-med counseling, and I gather that it’s gotten somewhat less harsh since 2008. I don’t know about the perceived punitive nature of the non-honors Organic Chemistry course.
Grade deflation at Chicago has long been more myth than reality. In my son’s class, about 2/3 of the class had a GPA at graduation of 3.25 or higher. The median GPA was somewhere north of 3.4, which is consistent with most peer colleges, although Brown I think had . A 3.8 put you in the top 10% of the class. That may be a little lower than at some colleges. There are some students with 3.9s, but not many. The ethos of the place is that people do not duck challenges in order to preserve their GPAs.
My son’s girlfriend stuck with the pre-med program, while doing a social science major. She is now finishing up at her home-state public medical school, and is apparently a hot property on the residency market (she has had interviews at 20 hospitals coast-to-coast in the past 7 weeks, many with recognizable brand names). She is an enthusiastic Chicago alum.
Re: curmudgeon’s daughter. IIRC, she did not go to Rhodes to be a big fish in a small pond. She went to Rhodes because it was much, much more affordable than her clear favorites, Yale or Amherst (an even smaller pond,). It was a very difficult choice, and made entirely for economic reasons, although she was impressed by Rhodes as an applicant and loved her time there. (Also, her family could watch her play basketball more often.) She entered college a couple of years before all of the top colleges adopted much kinder, gentler financial aid policies, and (again, IIRC) her father had a small ranching business (in addition to a law practice), which was (and probably still is) a kiss of death with financial aid offices. Going to Yale College would have required $100,000+ in debt.
My 2 cents, as a former med school admissions committee member and current residency admissions committee member: Med school cares MOST about your UG GPA. Second is MCAT. So it is even more numbers drive than HS. I do not think “tier” of school is nearly as important as CC posters tend to think. There are many MANY paths to med school. Actually only about 50% of current med students follow the traditional path (this does vary by school). So if you go to UofC, there is not “one” way to get where you are going. Also, some kids do graduate UofC with a 4.0–and those kids have more doors open (in general). I am encouraging my own D to follow the “medium fish” path. But her younger brother I may push to “small fish, big pond”–different kids, different strengths.
By the way, medicine/law/business school are very very different than PhD education. Numbers are much less important for that. Then, it will be much more about UG research experience and letters from mentors.