I graduate from Southeastern University with my AAGN next semester. My gpa is 3.72 right now, but I expect it to be around 3.79-3.80 by the end of this semester. I plan on majoring in Biology (pre-med). In high school my GPA was around 3.83 and I was in the top 10% of my class. I scored 26 on the ACT.
For experiences, I worked about 30 hours a week during my junior and senior of high school. This past September I helped plan and implement a major women’s conference that has over 2,000 women in attendance every year.
One thing I forgot to mention, I am a Georgia resident.
@thefuturedoc19
Is this a sophomore or junior transfer?
What is an AAGN? Does a four-year university offer associates degrees?
@thefuturedoc19 : You probably have a shot, but what pre-med classes have you completed so far and did you find them particularly challenging at your school (like do you think you took instructors that would compare well to the level of Emory or Tech. Maybe you took honors courses that were good?)? At this point your HS credentials only matter for admissions. Without knowing your school and course load during HS and at SE, it is hard to tell if this is the best move. I am not sure it is worth transferring to extremely selective universities like Georgia Tech or Emory for pre-med as it may be quite the transition socially and academically. You’ll have to deal with a social transition unless you know a ton of folks, which is possible but less likely at a private like Emory. If you want to do that, Tech may at least cost less and biology courses there are very doable, so if you only will have biology courses left, Tech may give more bang for the buck. Emory is riskier (financially). Both are risky if you also have chemistry and/or physics courses to complete. A UGA or GSU may do you just fine and if you do well at those places (especially GSU), you get lots of attention (Tech is big and has lots of talent so you must be outgoing. Emory is medium, but has lots of talent, so you must be outgoing) And also in the case of GSU, it is located near Grady and other aspects of the healthcare apparatus. Just remember that you want to maintain or increase your grades. Highly competitive environments may hinder that even if you get solid teaching.
Are there specific reasons you really want to go Emory other than it having a reputation as a “great pre-med school”? That reputation comes with a lot of struggle and baggage for those who do the track, and unless you would feel comfortable taking the more rigorous pre-med instructors there (this matters for MCAT prep as well as recommendation letters. More rigorous and serious STEM instructors write better recommendation letters so it is worthwhile to take them and do decently or well in this class), it really isn’t worth the money (in your case, you’d want a strong MCAT, and you’d need to see significant learning and test taking gains since your ACT to do well on that. Unfortunately, only more challenging instructors would improve that in a way that helps for MCAT style questions. Most Emory students already test well so don’t need as much rigor, but even those who tested well in HS benefit from it). If that is what you want, and you are willing to embrace it, go for it! But if you think Emory is some magical land of pre-med opps and advising and that alone is advantageous, reconsider please. That decoupled from the academic preparation is useless. I just want to be real and warn about this. If you are inflexible on being pre-med versus anything else, highly selective universities may not be the best places, especially for transfers (this comes from my experience tutoring pre-health transfers back in the day. The most successful came in with the explicit purpose of taking on more academic and intellectual challenges than the previous school, or were already at a rigorous school and wanted a different social/intellectual environment. Less successful ones came for some abstract idea about how Emory having and creating lots of doctors). Just be aware of why you want a place like Emory, and your strategy of tackling pre-health or a STEM major at such a school. If you do it right, in a way that it will pay off, it will not be a cake-walk at all.
@ljberkow : I am pretty sure many do, especially non-flagships.
@emorynavy I will be a junior.
@ljberkow The university I attend has an extension site in Georgia that offers associates and bachelors degrees.
@bernie12 Thank you for the reply, it gave me a lot to think about. I haven’t been able to complete any premed classes yet, as I was not sure if I was actually going to go the premed route. I decided to go for my AAGN to just get general classes out of the way while I decided. I’ve actually been struggling to choose between UNG which would be an affordable and practical option for me or Emory which, like you said, be a risky option for me. Honestly, I haven’t even considered Georgia Tech. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I was considering Emory because I hoped it would increase my chance of getting into a medical school.
@thefuturedoc19
so you don’t really want to go to emory? Why not UGA, they have a partnership with Augusta med school.
@thefuturedoc19 : Yeah, think about it. The only thing that “increases your chance of getting into a medical school” is a solid GPA, solid ECs/volunteer and shadowing hours, and a strong enough MCAT. You want some place that allows you to get those which are plenty and span a large range of selectivity. Again, you should really only go to selective schools if you value learning at a higher level/being challenged in a certain way, or if you think you’ll be pushed to develop yourself more by learning with a very ambitious peer group. There is nothing “magical” about selective schools and placement into professional schools, especially those that require fairly high academic stats. The students at such schools already test well, have a history of earning good grades with a rigorous curriculum in HS or via dual enrollment, and often have additional “priming” ECs in HS. A higher percent are already “pre-med ready” when they set foot on campus (and a place like Emory gets saturated with students who know how to navigate the process, many with generations of doctors in the family. Often those without that or some background with STEM in the family are at a disadvantage if they don’t have the right motivations for being on the track at Emory) and the school isn’t doing but so much (again, in many cases, a selective school may present academic obstacles that significantly less selective schools will for high achieving students).
If open to other healthcare tracks such as the nursing MSN or BSN, Emory could be an excellent choice and you’d only need to take some of the pre-medical courses before applying and it doesn’t require a high GPA or anything, and is an excellent nursing school.