Hello, I’m Senior High school students who is interested in Science and hopes one day that I’m going to enter the Pre-Med Program
SAT: Didn’t have the chance to take it.
EC’s: Through out my High School career, I have participated in Science Club, Key Club (this year) Math Team, and History Fair (NHD) project, I have been in a 3 day job shadowing, mini internship through out my local hospitals, and did volunteer activities.
GPA: 4.0 UW, 4.12 Weighted, College GPA which is separate transcript is 4.0 GPA too.
Classes: Did mixture of advanced and College Prep Courses.
Honors Microbiology, College Psychology, College Biology, Honors/AP Chemistry II, Honors/AP Government, and College English and Composition 101 by next semester.
Regular College Prep Math: Accelerated Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, Trig-PreCalc
Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics
I have multiple of awards: High Honor Roll, Top 10 students, Congressional Global Awards, and pretty sure new Award this year
I have LOR’s: College Psychology, AP Chemistry, and Honors Microbiology
Top 20 universities are reaches for you. Top 20 universities are entirely unnecessary to find a strong premed program.
There are hundreds of colleges and universities in the US that have very good premed programs. However medical school is both very hard to get accepted to and very expensive. Being able to afford 8 years of university is challenging to most students who make it to medical school.
Are you a US citizen or do you have permanent residence in the US? If not, then what is your visa status?
What state are you from?
What is your budget? How much can you afford to spend over your first four years without taking on any debt whatsoever?
The things you note are not the whole that T20 adcoms will use in evaluating you. If you really want this, you need to be the sort who digs in to understand what that “more” is. With the number of top applicants, this is a fierce competition.
And get a good guide to colleges. Fiske or Priceton Review.
Rankings are completely useless. If you want medical school, you’re far better off going to a university in-state. State medical schools give preference to state residents, which makes it your single best chance of getting in. Plus, medical school is very expensive and you need to keep the debt low. I promise, prestige doesn’t matter with pre-med. They’re looking for top grades and MCAT scores.
Took all social studies courses and 1 AP, and all the other required courses with some honors. So any classes that are not on the list, it’s in the transcript
If this was a response to my question- required for HS graduation (is that what you meant?), and “recommended” for top 20 colleges, can be different. Example for foreign language often 2 years is required, but top colleges like to see 4 years.
We were just having this discussion on another thread. See following quote from moderator @skieurope who (if I am recalling correctly) also attended HS in the US as a foreign student.
Ok, then you are classed as international which makes your chances harder at most colleges too. FYI it would also make eventual medical school admission (presumably your objective) much harder too unless you have transitioned to a green card by then.
In a previous post, you’ve listed your coursework which indicates a schedule of science-prevalent courses in the place of courses that should have been taken (like foreign language and fine arts).
I am really surprised that your high school guidance counselor approved of your schedule if he/she knew you were attempting to apply to US universities.
I think your gaps in the area of foreign language and fine arts will be detrimental to your acceptance to top schools.
As of now, if you were to apply to the UC’s you would be rejected for lack of the expected “well-rounded” coursework.
Also, med schools in the US, limit most of their acceptances to US citizens, so you may want to apply to some Canadian schools.
Drafting and Design meets the UC Fine Arts requirement. The OP is from the Middle East. If proficient in French or Hebrew, the UC requirement can be met through AP testing (for French) or a Subject Test. If the language is Arabic, though, that option does not exist. But agree that the lack of FL will be problematic for many colleges
Your recollection is correct. And my HS required FL study even though I was proficient in several languages, which rather ticked me off at the time, but in hindsight, they were right.
This comes across as disingenuous. You chose not to take a FL, preferring to double up on sciences. This is not the UK; colleges are not looking for specialists in HS.
BU requires 2-4 years foreign language. BC prefers 4 years of FL. UM requires 2 but prefers 4. For the UCs, can you place out as per skieurope’s post?
BC wants to see most rigorous curriculum; I don’t know what was available at your school but a difference of only 0.1 between W and UW GPA implies it probably wasn’t most rigorous? This would be an issue at a number of other T50s too.
The top 50 are all selective… As a rule of thumb, most of these colleges have less than 20% admissions rates (some are in the 20s), and publics are even more selective than their “headline” rates for out of state. Then, the admit rate for internationals is usually significantly less than the overall rate. For those that offer ED, the ED rate is often significantly above the overall rate. So breaking the admit rates down makes probably most of these reaches for you. It’s fine to aim high, but you also need to be realistic that despite your high UW GPA, there are other aspects of your application that are problematic. You should probably spend some time looking more at match schools (includes schools that have significantly higher overall admit rates, and yes are probably below the T50).
Do you have any options in your home country as backup?
The UC’s are very competitive and, as an international student, will charge full fees ($65K per year) since financial aid is for citizen residents. They expect their students to have a full, well-rounded curriculum. It isn’t, “load up on all the science courses available-if I want to go into science/medicine”.
If you did not take a foreign language, or a test in a language that is not native to you, you will not meet their requirements for admission. Other universities may have similar requirements.