<p>Your college GPA
Your MCAT's
Your professor rec's
Your research experience</p>
<p>What you don't want is to be lost in the crowd, with a lackluster GPA (which is why I'm not putting JHU on the list). </p>
<p>My son is also interested in med school - his list included Brandeis (good med school admissions), UChicago (where he's going this fall), Case (this would be a safety for you, probably merit aid!), Bowdoin and Carleton (good sciences and research ops). </p>
<p>I like Rice for you, also Northwestern would be in the match (but not for sure) category. If you are in the Boston area, also look at Tufts.</p>
<p>Thanks flopsy, and Ohiomom, you have been extremely helpful.</p>
<p>Flopsy, you seem to be the guy to ask about the UCs. Is UCSD easier than UCLA? The acceptance rate sure looks higher. How bout UC Berkeley? How am I for those schools?</p>
<p>You're right Ohio_mom, I don't want to be an average kid or below average at the college. I want to shine and impress my professors so I can get good recommendations for medical school.</p>
<p>Northwestern would be a possible match? That's a great school.</p>
<p>UCSD is definitely easier to get into than UCLA (unless it's Bioengineering), and Berkeley is equally difficult to get into as UCLA, especially at the out-of-state level. UCSD would be a Safe Match for you, even for out of state, and Berkeley would be pegged as a Slight Reach. The thing about your (great) stats is that I think you'll get into at least one of either UCLA/UCB.</p>
<p>The med school and undergrad have almost no association in most cases. You can't really take med classes as undergrad anyway. If you want to be calculated about being premed, the better strategy is to look at schools with high med school admit rate in the recent years. UCB, believe it or not, doesn't have high admit rate. By high, I mean high 70s and 80s%.</p>
<p>Your ECs are a bit weak. So, you'll need pretty high test scores to pull private schools like lower Ivies, northwestern, duke and washU within "slight-reach" category. Princeton will be a big reach for you. UCLA/UCB doesn't look into ECs as much, so raise your GPA and you'll have a fair shot for them.</p>
<p>If I wanted to go to an ivy league it would be Cornell probably. I'm not very interested in Princeton. Also maybe Brown because I have relatives nearby.</p>
<p>Believe it or not though, the ivy leagues are not where the good medical schools are. The top medical schools seem to be located at the west coast top publics, as well as a lot of schools in Texas, then also north central US. By that I mean Case Western Reserve and the Mayo Clinic. That's where the good medical scene is.</p>
<p>Well you misunderstood my reason for wanting to attend a school with a good medical school. It's because I'll probably make a lot of friends in a premed program or some other field that lends itself to getting into medical school. Then I may not be ready to leave the school and head off to another good medical school.</p>
<p>If I went to Case Western, I could stay there. Same with UCLA/UCSD.</p>
<p>I know the quality of the medical school of your undergraduate school has nothing to do with admission to medical school.</p>
<p>Well, Case is actually a good school and it has unsually high acceptance rate for its caliber. So it's a great match-school anyway. I think I read somewhere it has decent med school admit rate too.</p>
<p>Yeah I had always heard of it as being a good school. Then I went to Collegeboard.com and looked it up and I was like "What the hell." I mean acceptance rates don't always determine the greatness of an institution but it does have a rather high one.</p>
<p>Rochester is another good school with med on par with case. they have a premedical scholars program.</p>
<p>I have to urge you to not just look at how med-oriented the school is. Usually it just means intense competition with the people around you for a good GPA. Case has very tough grading and JHU seems pretty brutal.</p>
<p>Check out the Ivies (Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth) and any top liberal arts colleges that pique your interest.</p>
<p>I hope so, a full ride would be nice lol. CWRU has an expensive tuition, $28K a year so I'm hoping I can grab as many scholarships as possible. I have a connection their too. I know one of the guys that is in their alumni book, which is basically the set of the most successful and notable graduates of the university. If necessary I could get a reccomendation from him.</p>
<p>Now, what city is CWRU in? I guess I can go look that up myself. Anyone know anything about the city, what's it like?</p>
<p>It's in cleveland, ohio. I live about 10 miles from it. It's not in like downtown cleveland, but i think 12 miles away from downtown. It's a really nice neighborhood, right by severance hall (home to the best orchestra in the world) and art museums and stuff. I've been on the campus as well and it's pretty good. Do you live in Ohio? It's pretty easy for people from Ohio to get in, most top students here end up going there if they don't get into ivys. But, I've heard of a scholorship where if you get above 1500 on SAT you get a full ride (after they check your grades to make sure they don't suck). My friend's brother got it. I hope it's true because I have 1500+ on SAT as well and want the full ride.</p>
<p>Perfect, I have relatives in Cleveland with a humungous home in which I could live.</p>
<p>Perfect it's near a good orchestra. I play piano and guitar, not exactly orchestra instruments but I'm into music. I read that they offer music scholarships. I don't want to major in music but some colleges offer scholarships for non-majors anyway, I wonder if they do. Anyway it wouldn't matter if I can get the full ride.</p>
<p>This year, 1500+ and top ten percent was the cuttoff for the $25,000 scholarship. I'm not sure if this will stand next year - recruitment was very good this year. </p>
<p>Leadership scholarships are also given - seems like you get an application for one if you have a lot of leadership stuff on your application. </p>
<p>Many op's for music at Case. It just down the street from the Cleveland Institute of Music - lots of affordable concerts.</p>
<p>Well I've switched schools in my academic career, and due to the difference in classes offered, I won't make top ten percent if I stay at my current school. Though on a year to year basis I'm probably in the top 6-7%.</p>