<p>I recently committed to VCU. I am a very good student, and sadly, I had to turn down Johns Hopkins for financial reasons. I know I have a couple years, but I really hoped to get into Johns Hopkins Medical School or Columbia Medical School. </p>
<p>Is there a chance for me to get in, even if I went to VCU over Johns Hopkins?</p>
<p>Get good grades, be involved in extracurriculars, try for some undergraduate research, and destroy the MCAT (in a good way), and you should be fine. You can make any school a great school.</p>
<p>Medical schools are focused far more on GPA and MCAT scores rather than on the name of the college you attended, so going to VCU makes sense in lots of way: 1) Saving the dollars because med school is very expensive and there are very few scholarships 2) Your GPA may be higher at VCU than at JHU, where there are lots of sharp-elbowed red-hot pre-meds and 3) it will be easier to get recommendations and stand out to the faculty (see 2 above). </p>
<p>Both the medical schools you mention are very research-oriented, which means they want students with a strong research background who want a career in academic medicine. If that’s you, then go for it - but there are many other medical schools that are also focused on academic medicine so these aren’t the only two.</p>
<p>The gold standard for pre-med advising is at Amherst:
<a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part1[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part1</a>
<a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part2[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part2</a></p>
<p>Note that Amherst also has an extensive list of places where students can apply for summer research positions (but applications are generally due by February of the preceding summer).</p>