<p>Is it possible to get onto medical school if you go to a CSU. Like for people who can't go to a UC. Do medical schools look at you different? What if you get a great gpa for your overall classes and for your science gpa and a good score on your mcat, would you have a chance of getting into medical school? And what's the best CSU to go to to get the classes you need for pre med and prepare you best for the mcat?</p>
<p>In California it would probably not help to graduate from a CSU since the UCs which have five of the state’s seven medical schools hold students from CSUs in low regard. If you are willing to consider medical schools anywhere in the U.S. in most places it will not make a difference. If you get a high overall and science GPA (3.6 or better) at a CSU and an MCAT score of at least 30 you would probably have a good shot at my alma mater, Drexel University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and other private schools on the East Coast in in the Mid-west as well. In the East and Midwest nobody knows or cares what, if any, difference exists between a UC and a CSU. I am sure that nearly all medical schools in the East would consider UCSD and SDSU to be basically equivalent.</p>
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<p>Since UCSD has a top ~15 med school, I would guess that every adcom knows that it’s undergrad comes with rigor. :)</p>
<p>Leisha:</p>
<p>if you attend a CSU it won’t matter which is “better” bcos they are all pretty similar (after SLO). Attend the one that is cheapest to you. OTOH, if you are gonna go away to school, go to a UC.</p>
<p>UCSF typically takes one or two CSU grads per year, which ain’t many given the number of students at CSU. (Approx 25-35% of each UCSF class is from Cal & Stanford.)</p>
<p>UC Irvine lists the schools for its recent class. The list includes ~6 Cal States. But what we don’t know is how many are from the CSU’s and what their background is, i.e., URM, non-traditional, overcame poverty or some other adversity…</p>
<p>UCLA
UC Berkeley
UC Irvine
Stanford
UC San Diego
UC Davis
San Diego State
USC
Loyola Marymount
Pennsylvania
Cal Poly SLO
Cal State Long Beach
Georgetown
Princeton
Washington
Barnard College
Brigham Young
Brown
Cal State Fresno
Cal State LA
Claremont McKenna
Fresno Pacific
Harvard
John Carroll
John Hopkins
San Francisco State
Trinity College
UC Santa Barbara
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of San Francisco
Texas at Austin
Virginia
Virginia Polytechnic
Williams College</p>
<p>*Like for people who can’t go to a UC. *</p>
<p>Why can’t you go to a UC?</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>From D’s experince with interviews at several Med. Schools, California kids basically flooding the system. I do not know their UG and why is it so, but they get accepted in higher percentage. She went to 5 interviews all in Midwest, private and public. California was definitely overrespresented everywhere.</p>
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<p>Simple, some OOS privates have lower admission stats than most of the UCs instate. There are 5 instate publics for a population of 33 million. And one of those publics (UCSF) is a top 5 Uni, and two others are in the top 15, with admissions numbers to match their rankings (~3.8/34.5 mcat, which is similar to Stanford & Duke, and slightly lower than Hopkins). Thus, only two publics would be considered for mere instate mortals: UC DAvis and UC Irvine, both with a ~3.6/31 means. </p>
<p>The other two schools are private, 'SC and Loma Linda, the latter of which has a special focus. Given the competition and costs – instate is $56k/yr – California residents are foolish if they don’t apply widely OOS.</p>
<p>Grade 9 1st Sem
Eng 1 H/ B-
Algebra 1/ B-
physical science/ C
Art 1/ B+
French 1/ B
Freshmen PE/ A</p>
<p>Grade 9 2nd Sem
Eng 1 H/C+
Alg 1/C-
phy. Sc/C+
Art/A
French/C
PE/ A-</p>
<p>10th 1st Sem
Eng. 2 H/ B
Geometry/C
Wld History/A
Biology/B+
Spanish 1/B+
PE/B</p>
<p>10th 2nd Sem
Eng. 2 H/B
Geometry/D<— retook
Wld History/A-
Biology/B+
Spanish 1/C+
PE/B-</p>
<p>11th 1st Sem
Eng 3 Ap/C-
geometry/B-
Us His Ap/C+
Chemistry/B
Spanish 2/B-
Admin Off. Aide/A</p>
<p>11th 2nd Sem.
Eng 3 Ap/C-
geometry/B
Us His Ap/C-
Chemistry/B-
Spanish 2/B-
Admin Off. Aide/A</p>
<p>12th Grade schedule
Eng 4 expository
Macro eco Ap/Gov Ap
Psychology Ap
Environmental Science Ap
Algebra 2
Link Crew</p>
<p>I know not the best grades and thats what worries me</p>
<p>Took SAT already. Just waiting for the scores. Thinking I got around a 1700 or 1800 ish. Fingers crossed.</p>
<p>With your poor overall grades in HS science and math classes, what makes you think that you can achieve a college science/math GPA in excess of a 3.6?</p>
<p>Also an SAT of 1700/1800 is not a good predictor for MCAT success…</p>
<p>Don’t want to come off as being mean but you might want to start thinking about some profession other than Medicine.</p>
<p>Unless you have just been slacking in HS and truly have the ability to turn it on once you get to college (and will turn it on) I’d say that you will be wasting your time taking a pre med course load.</p>
<p>Just my $0.02</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t say that. I have friends who didn’t do well on the SATs (1850s). They went off to Texas A&M and UT, and did fine on the MCATs (32). They are going to medical schools in Texas (UTMB-Galveston, and UTMB-Houston). Its def. possible for the op to do a complete 180. A lot of people completely reinvent themselves both socially and academically in college.</p>
<p>I wasn’t a very studious person in high school, but I matured and managed to get a higher gpa in college, then I ever had in high school.</p>
<p>Unless you have just been slacking in HS and truly have the ability to turn it on once you get to college (and will turn it on) I’d say that you will be wasting your time taking a pre med course load.</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>The fact that this student is now thinking of becoming a doctor and the most recent grades are poor is very telling.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to slack a bit in high school…and then go to college…and THEN think about becoming a doctor and get great grades. The fact that the student already has med school on his/her mind and the grades a lowish is a bad sign.</p>
<p>Not everyone who wants to be a doctor has the ability to become one.</p>
<p>@Eadad. Just because I slacked in HS doesn’t mean I have to give up on my dreams of something I want to do. Yea I messed up in HS but college is a different story. It’s a start to life and it’s a chance to put all you got into hard work. Trust me I’m not dumb. Once I put my mind to something I love I’ll succeed. So I don’t need any suggestions about changing my career goals. I’m going to do what I love and that’s becoming a pediatrician to take care of living children. I know I can do it. It may be hard but I’m ready for any challenge!</p>
<p>Ok…well, you still have senior year of high school. Put your new attitude to work this next year. </p>
<p>If you turn your grades around this next year, that will be a good sign.</p>
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<p>I don’t see how those two situations differ. A kid who knows that he/she wants to become a doctor, in high school, might slack in high school because at the back of his/her mind, he/she knows that a weak performance in high school will not affect medical school admissions. However, once that student enters college, he/she may work really hard because he/she realizes that college is where it counts for med. school admissions. This is EXACTLY what happened to me and my friends. How is this any different from a person who slacks in high school and then goes to college and decides to become a doctor.</p>
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<p>^^^ Again, it doesn’t matter how the op does during his/her senior year in hs. As long as the op decides to start working his/her tail off at the start of freshman year. While it doesn’t hurt to have a positive attitude during senior year of hs, its important not to burn out your senior year of hs or duing the summer between hs and college. Just be ready to do a complete 180 during freshman year. Thats what I did and thats what some of my friends did.</p>
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<p>There are SO MANY factors to consider about how strong of a correlation there is between college success and high school performance. I personally hated high school because of the structure of classes. I would go to school 8 hours a day, even though most of my classes were AP classes.my teachers would give us a substantial amount of busy work. I HATED DOING BUSY WORK. My weak grades in hs where mainly a result of me not doing the busy work and getting zeros on them (I did destroy most tests, but my zeros for busy work brought my gpa down). College is a different story, professors teach you exactly what you need to learn, and give you assignments that for the most part, only contribute to your intellectual growth. I think this is the main reason that I am doing A LOT better in college than I ever did in high school.</p>
<p>I recently conducted an empirical study last semester about what factors affect college success. I found that the environment of a college student (and how much that college student likes that environment) is a stronger indicator of college success than high school rigor.</p>
<p>^^ And that’s what I’m planning to do. I’m going to work my but off through college. I just wish I had this epiphany sooner in my high-school years…</p>
<p>The OP may have factors other than test scores on her side, in which case the equation changes considerably.</p>
<p>To answer the op’s original question. It doesn’t matter where you go to undergrad. It matters what you do there. I advise you to work hard but also to start participating on this forum. A lot of the stuff that I learned about medical school admissions has come from this forum and its posters. My pre-med advisers are not as good as some of my CC advisers. I am a lot more knowledgeable about med. school admissions than my friends because I regularly visit this forum.</p>
<p>Its important to have insight into the medical school admissions process before you apply, because you don’t want to realize that you destroyed your med. school chances your junior year in college. By learning about the ins/outs of the process early on, you will be able to correct any deficiencies that you may have or may be developing.</p>
<p>^^ thank you for the advice<br>
May I ask what you want to go to medical school to be? And have you taken the MCAT already?</p>
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<p>Currently in the process of studying for the MCATs. I don’t know what kind of doctor I want to be, nor do I think its a good idea to be thinking about things such things, unless you have been accepted by a medical school.</p>
<p>Colleges…Did you start at Emory as a frosh?</p>
<p>What was your cum high school GPA?</p>
<p>What were your test scores?</p>
<p>*I would go to school 8 hours a day, *</p>
<p>??? What high school was this?</p>
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^^ Yes, main campus, not oxford.</p>
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^^^ It was slightly lower than a 3.7 unweighted. My weighted gpa was slightly higher. However this was not enough for me to be in the top 10 percent of my graduating class, which REALLY screwed me when it came time to apply to top 20 colleges. Emory, and a couple of other top 20 schools waitlisted me. Emory, then accepted me two weeks after they had waitlisted me, so I enrolled. It was the first school to take me off the waiting list. </p>
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I had a 1500/1600, and a 2200/2400. 750 Math, 750 Verbal, and 700 writing</p>
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^^^It was a public high school in Texas. Although it was a very highly rated public located in one of Houston’s very wealthy suburbs. </p>
<p>My point is that, I ended up doing a lot better in college than I did in high school (gpa wise), which is not always the case, since college is supposed to be more difficult than high school. If I were the one who started this thread, you guys may have told me “medicine is not for everyone”, since I wasn’t even able to be top 10 percent of my graduating class. If any of my high school friends had posted on this forum (they weren’t top 10 percent either, and had score 300-400 points lower than me on the SATs), you would have probably told them that “medicine is not for everyone”. My friends did end getting into mid-tier medical schools in Texas.</p>
<p>*** Bottom line is, I just don’t think anyone on this forum should be discouraging a student from thinking about medicine, before the student HAS EVEN STARTED COLLEGE. Who knows what the op’s potential is? I doubt even the op knows his/her true potential, let alone some stranger on online forum. There is no reason to discourage someone from medicine until that person has experienced college coursework and has not done well.</p>