Chance Me: Rising Senior Applying Reach-Heavy [4.0/1580 for Pre-Med + Econ]

Yes, but OP said they are high income and targeting merit aid. They should run the NPCs of all schools on their list.

I don’t know about PSU but if she applies early enough to Pitt she should hear back with plenty of time to change the status of any ED app.

I missed the “merit” part. Yes, NYU gives precious little and very competitive merit aid.

Not for Honors or Med GAP or Chancellor’s/Nordenberg.

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It’s really great that you will be happy at your safeties. What I witnessed in my son’s class was that kids who applied to so many super reaches got a lot of bad news in March. Even the very strong applicant kids who got in to one or more of them had a lot of rejections and that can be hard to keep hearing. Plus you can’t spend as much time on the specific school essays if you have so many to do. You are obviously a strong candidate, but think about these reasons to limit the number of reaches.

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Health Care Mgmt and Policy is a Wharton concentration if LSM doesn’t work out.

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Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll look into those schools.

You’re right about not having to have a “premed” major — I think I’m just feeling a little hesitant to completely jump ship and solely major in a non-STEM subject when my original goal was to become a physician just a few months ago. That’s a good point, though — I’ll have to discuss this with my family.

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Yeah, I know it’s more than likely that I’ll face many rejections this cycle. But I don’t want that to limit my options, and I’m hoping it will turn out to be a humbling experience rather than a traumatic one :sweat_smile:

I didn’t know that!! Thanks — I’ll look into that as an option.

Oh, definitely, if the student isn’t a PA resident, that’s a different story. I just couldn’t fathom that her two safeties would be Pitt and PSU if she wasn’t from PA. I don’t think they’re similar enough that an OOS student would be attracted to both, and no others, as their safeties. But it’s true that we don’t know for sure.

There is also a Nursing and Health Care Mgmt dual degree as an alternative to LSM.

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I did see that program — it seems a little bit sketchy to me though. I couldn’t find a lot of information on it outside of the official UPenn website, but what I did find was slightly concerning (Retention low in Wharton-Nursing dual-degree program | The Daily Pennsylvanian). Even disregarding that, I’m not sure if I’d be able to handle the workload (nursing is a lot of work, so I don’t know if I could balance another degree on top of that).

I don’t know what you mean by sketchy. It would certainly be a substantial workload but all of the Penn coordinated dual degrees are. The DP is a fishwrapper and the article is 8 years old. Do what’s right for you. Good luck.

Edit: The info can be found here if interested: Nursing and Health Care Management • Penn Nursing

As someone who had a quite convoluted career trajectory, one thing I can tell you is that healthcare management doesn’t require you to be a healthcare provider of any sort. Its primarily a revenue management/operations focused job where general management and finance skills are far more important than actual healthcare competencies. There are people of all kinds working as hospital administrators. To give you an idea, here’s my career trajectory:

Mech Engineering (undergrad) → Software Programmer → Mergers & Acquisition Associate → Technology Consulting → Business School → Rotational Program at Large Health Plan → Management Consulting → Regional Director for a Dialysis clinic chain → Tech Entrepreneur → Head of Marketing for Oncology Company

During this career, I saw all kinds of people in health care management jobs - majors in history, math, nursing, econ, accounting; it truly runs the gamut.

For now, I highly recommend that you get a great well rounded education (Econ is a good anchor point) unless you really are interested in medicine.

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I think the OP, through misguided advice, is under the impression that they can make a wage as a physician to underwrite a growing management career. There are many flaws with that premise. First, medical school and residency will take a lot of time and be expensive. They’ll still need business training. No one is going to give a significant management role to a physician without a business acumen, and if it’s a good position, it won’t be part time. All in all, this seems like a very convoluted, cost inefficient route to get to the goal.

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I thought this was the driving force for the OP pursuing an MD:

Indeed. Seems misguided though. That’ll be my last comment on that. :+1:

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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with letting premed be the plan of record, and taking the prerequisites. That keeps other health-profession options open too. One can always have the “I tried this and it’s not for me” conversation with parents, etc., later on.

It’s the doubling down on life-sciences when that isn’t even the thing attracting the student to medicine, that doesn’t make sense to me. Physicians don’t have to be biologists, chemists, or physicists. They need a certain STEM foundation but then their education goes in a different direction. A student is just as likely to get into med school with an econ degree as with a bio degree, so long as they meet the requirements and have the grades and scores and shadowing/volunteering, etc. And if they decide not to go to med school, they’ll be much better positioned for their Plan B (or for what’s truly been Plan A all along, as the case may be) if they’ve studied something that really matches their interests. I also think that students hear a lot of buzz about double and triple majors, and feel like that’s part and parcel of being a high achiever, but it really doesn’t need to be, and it can squeeze out other things that would’ve been more worthwhile.

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My spouse works at large well known medical center. The middle managers are often pure business people. The executive leadership is almost entirely people with healthcare experience, either with medical or nursing degrees. It is not uncommon for medical chiefs of major departments (i.e. Chief of Surgery) to have mbas or masters in public health obtained while they were practicing physicians.

Given this and op’s typical teen lack of certainty about her future occupation, it makes sense to keep her options open by taking the premedical prerequisites. While it is not typical for a young physician or nurse to also be an administrator, it is fairly common for successful doctors and nurses to transition into these roles.

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