does this college list look appropriate?

College Search & Selection
1

My child is rising senior and we picked this list so far, not sure if this is appropriate.

Credentials-

Goes to top school in nation (per US News list)/vigorous curriculum.
GPA UW 3.91
PSAT 1480
SAT 1450(Taken before junior year, retaking this august)
Subject test- BIO and Math(results pending)

AP courses-
9TH grade-AP calculus AB,AP US gov and politics
10th grade-AP English lang, AP calculus BC,AP CHEM,AP European history
11th grade-AP bio,AP mandarin, AP eng lit, AP physics 1,AP us history, Category theory math

senior year load will be- Capstone Biology, Capstone literature theory, capstone math, capstone mandarin.

EC/Academic an other achievements

Medical leadership society member
Leadership society member
Tri-M
AP scholar, AP scholar with distinction.
AZ study program with superior ranking
PIANO
Volunteering at rehab center for ~200 hours since 8th grade
Volunteering at county hospital since 10th grade -100 hours

Shadowing at physicians office - 80 hours

Medical clinical Research this summer.

College lists we prepared so far( intention to do bio major for premed or BSMD)

RICE BAYLOR BS/MD
Washington university BS/MD
Casewestern BS/MD

Brown
Duke
UPENN
Pomona

UCLA
USC
U of Washington seattle
Uof ARIZONA
Arizona state university/Barretts honor.

Will not qualify for any financial aid and tuition is not a decision factor.

Asian Indian.

2

Arizona and ASU (but not Barrett) are the only safeties. If you are content to go there it is okay. The others are reaches to high reaches.

3

If medical school is amost certain, and need-based financial aid is not going to happen, there is little reason (outside of prestige) to try for colleges like Pomona, Penn, Duke, & Brown. Yes, they are a nice way to drop a quarter of a million dollars right before you will be spending another pile of cash on med school. But they really don’t get your daughter anywhere that paying a fraction of that (at a decent college that is either cheaper due to being public or cheaper due to merit aid, or both) will.

It seems like everybody gets swept up in the pursuit of the top handful of elite colleges without really asking if that type of college is right for them.

4

I’m surprised to see Case Western on your list and not URochester. Where we live, those two usually go together with what you are looking for. Both are terrific schools (undergrad) with respected medical schools associated with them (right next to the undergrad campus).

One nice school used by similar students as a safety in our area is Pittsburgh. Like the other two, they’re a very well respected undergrad with their med school (and hospitals) essentially on campus - PLUS - they are rolling admission so one knows right away that they are accepted and if any merit aid is coming their way.

Pitt and Case Western are urban schools. U Rochester is in Rochester, but has a more traditional campus “bubble.” That preference/fit comes into play for those with choices among them (says the parent of a lad who chose U Rochester over the others for that reason - he liked having a traditional campus - he’s now in med school there).

5

@TomSrOfBoston
Their school has 97 % acceptance to Barrett’s and my child is top 15 th percentile in the class.
It’s safety for us.
Thank you for replying.

6

@moooop
I agree with your point.
But places like Duke/Rice/Brown/Penn has high medschool placement rates and I’m sure the resources are better in those places as well as their curriculum must be structured(if the kids can survive their grading /vigour of course) in a way to boost medschool application.

7

Brown has the plme program you apply to after being accepted to brown. Pitt has bsmd program that accepts about 10 students a year. Georgetown has a sophomore year application to gmc that is highly competitive. You can come out of the college bio or NHS as a global health policy type major. My d applied to all of the above except Pitt. Plus bowdoin which has a relationship in Boston as well. She was a 4.0 uw val with 35 act and 1500+ sat. Lax captain Stu govt. pres of shs and only girl on acad decathlon. 13 aps with all 4 and 5s. Pretty personable kid and a nice friend. And he is well known as a academic incubator in Florida with USNWR top 50ranking and Florida number one or two. In the end Wl at all schools brown and gtown Bowdoin Bc and usc was accepted biochem. Was going to usc until Bc called and asked her to be part of the premed biochem honors track. They eliminated the honors college because all the kids are close in stats etc. now. But offered a few honors tracks. You have to be invited and then Compete if your interested. The guaranteed sophomore research position was too much for her to say no to especially in a Boston hospital.

I only say this to give you a sense of the types of kids applying to the same schools you listed. I think the list is great but we were surprised at how narrow the opening is for these spots. We don’t have any hooks and didn’t apply ed anywhere. So I would suggest that. And perhaps you have some hooks or legacy working for you. She did not. But she is so excited and eager now. I would spread the options to other great schools fwiw

8

@Creekland
I don’t know if my child will be happy in Rochester for 8 years if she gets in,thats why we did not consider that program.
But thanks for suggesting Pittsburgh, will look into that one.

9

@privatebanker -
thank you for replying.

Brown PLME will be high reach and wont have any chance,so not in our list…
We know that Rice baylor,Wash U BSMD are reach too-but wanted to try and see.

Not particularly trying only for BSMD.good undergrad for premed is also our consideration.
Will be applying for ED to one of her reach colleges-visited Duke,rice and brown-at this point either Duke or Brown(regular undergrad not PLME) will be her ED choice( depending upon how she does on her SAT retake )

Hoping to bring SAT above 1500 -2nd time, if not will obviously revise the current college list-that’s the plan.
She did first SAT without much preparation, this time she is doing Princeton review and college board book.

10

WashU medical Scholars is not a true BSMD program-still need to take the MCAT. And trying to maintain a 3.8+ GPA is not that easy.

UCLA OOS is going to be expensive and not worth it if you are planning on pre-med.

Any AP scores? I assume Basis makes their kids take AP tests.

11

@annaMD If not sure about Rochester, definitely visit both Case and Pitt. Coming from the southwest, those might not “fit” either. Visits are what helped my guy make his decision. He didn’t think he would like Rochester (too far north, too much winter, etc) until he visited, saw the campus, and met fellow students. There’s a vibe there (as there are at other schools) that really swayed him over his other choices. (A “loves research” vibe.) He now considers his decision to go there his “best decision I almost didn’t make” as he waited until pretty much last minute to apply (as per my timetable, not theirs). He now tells everyone the weather there makes it ideal for studying. That’s not all he did, of course…

12

@Hamurtle

its going to be challenging to keep GPA above 3.8 at wash U after weed out classes(especially Ochem)). But I guess my daughter will be okay to take that challenge.

I prefer USC over UCLA where she might get merit scholarship. but UCLA has better medschool than USC (and I know UC medschools donot give any special preference to instate applicants like texas)

She has 5 in most APs and very few 4.
waiting on 11th grade AP results though.

13

@Creekland.
we are still planning on more college visits.
Good hear about you son’s experience and thank you for sharing your wisdom…
I might add those schools to our list to visit.

14

I might add BU for the BS/MD to your list.

Although UC medical schools don’t officially claim to have a quota on OOS admissions, the truth is that it will still be hard for a non-California student to gain admission compared to a California student with similar grades/test scores. Plus UC schools will invariably practice grade deflation.

15

@Hamurtle-
She visited BU, didn’t like the campus.

UC grade deflation is a factor that we are definitely taking into account.

Same with Cornell, U Chicago Vandy MIT , Princeton etc has considerable grade deflation…

Any idea about Pomona’s grading? Deflation or inflation?

16

“But places like Duke/Rice/Brown/Penn have high medschool placement rates & …resources …& curriculum…in a way to boost med school application.”

A lot of people think the same way that you do, but plenty of well-informed people here will tell you that grades and MCAT scores matter far more than the prestige of the undergrad school.

I just don’t want to see you spending literally hundreds of thousands of your hard-earned dollars on Pomona or Brown in the erroneous hope that they will somehow make it easier for her to get in med school than if she went to Kentucky or Iowa State with big merit scholarships bringing the price way way down.

17

@moooop
By no means I’m looking at the prestige of the colleges.

Of course GPA and MCAT are extremely important for getting into Med school but ECs are very important too.for example-If you have good GPA and MCAT and good Rec letter from a well known figure in research/ clinician you have a better chance of admittance than just good GPA and MCAT…

I’m not against my daughter going to state school at all, actually she might end up joining one of them depending upon how the admission process goes.

18

You don’t need to pick an undergraduate school based on which med school you like better, unless it is a direct-admit program. If she ends up getting into both USC and UCLA, choose based on preference and price, not which med school you like better. FWIW, premed students that I know at UCLA state that the curve in their premed classes is skewed by high numbers of students retaking these classes to get a higher grade.

And quite honestly the BS/MD programs are all so competitive that getting into one is not that likely. It doesn’t hurt to try but realize that these programs have their pick of students with perfect stats and amazing EC’s.

Having to maintain a 3.8 GPA at a highly competitive university sounds like an extremely stressful prospect. Also, when you hear of the very high med school acceptance rates at some universities, it means only that they have weeded out which med school applications they will support, before the application process even begins.

Barrett Honors is an excellent safety option. As @TomSrOfBoston said, it just seems as if there is a wide gap between the many high-reaches on your list, and your two Arizona public safeties.

If your daughter likes Pomona, she might consider applying to Scripps, where she would have possibility of merit aid, excellent pre-med sciences through the Keck Science department (joint department with CMC and Pitzer), and access to the course offerings of Scripps, Pomona, and the other three Claremont Colleges. Selective women’s colleges like Scripps, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley, that run formal postbaccalaureate premed programs in addition to preparing their own undergrads to apply to med school, can be excellent choices.

Also, it is fine to major in biology if that is what she likes best, but it is neither necessary nor advantageous for med school admissions to major in bio. As long as she does the prerequisite courses for med school, she can and should major in whatever she finds most engaging. Math and music majors, for example, do very well in med school admissions.

What are your daughter’s thoughts and preferences in all of this?

19

@aquapt

BSMD programs are very selective, we are aware of that, that’s why we are trying only very few.Dont have very high hope on that.

University of Washington has 84% acceptance from their school - so Barrett,U of A honor program and U of W are safety colleges.

UC Berkley has 51% acceptance from their school ,UCLA - 59% etc - she is top 15th percentile in her class—I’m going to consider UCLA and USC as match for her. May be we have to pick one more match school.

Rest are reach…

I need to look into scripps-when I searched I didn’t feel that they have strong bio department. Only Pomona felt to have strong bio dept among Claremont colleges.

She likes biology among all her science/humanities etc.

I have a question for you- if she decides to take anything other than BPCM/writing major- isn’t it additional effort/ work to major in a totally different field ?

20

Check out Keck Science - Scripps, CMC and Pitzer pool their resources to maximize the science resources for their students. Keck will be expanding significantly over the next few years. https://www.kecksci.claremont.edu/ There would also be no barrier to your daughter’s taking bio classes at Pomona as a Scripps student. If you search the course offerings through the Pomona course planner https://aspc.pomona.edu/courses/schedule/ you can see that Keck Science classes are available to Pomona students and vice versa, so the strength of both is enhanced by cross-registration.

As for the overlap between pre-med requirements and one’s undergraduate major… there will be slightly more overlap between the major requirements for bio or chem, and the prerequisite courses for med school; but there will be considerable depth beyond the pre-med courses in any major… and the total number of classes required to graduate leaves more than enough room for any major or even dual/double major that is of interest.

Avoiding “additional responsibility” should not be the concern, IMHO. College is a time to build a knowledge base that will inform one’s future pursuits, and the world needs physicians who can write and communicate effectively… who understand the human condition, the social sciences, and public policy… who have particular expertise in areas that are essential to medical and public health research, such as advanced statistical analysis, the physics of advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies… and so on. It’s not just about fitting one particular med-school-candidate mold; it’s about pursuing one’s own unique interests which will in turn be distinctive and conducive to a particular medical career that will best match one’s own strengths and passions. So, it’s all a matter of what that looks like for your daughter; but undergrad is the time to “self-actualize” in whatever ways are meaningful to her.