@theloniusmonk I really appreciate that you see me past my grades, and as much as I would love to attend tufts, cornell, and even bc I really doubt that I have a chance there (I really regret my freshman year).
Is there any general thing I can do, something with my essay or extracurriculars, or anything to improve my chances (I don’t expect adcoms to overlook my gpa, I understand they are looking for certain types of students). There are people in my grade with gpa’s 4.3-4.6 that are applying to a lot of the same schools and I’m 99% sure I am going to be rejected by the majority of my colleges, and I know it sounds cliche but I really like these colleges and I’ve visited them, read the works of few professors there (and really want to research with them; the work is great), and I like the envirnoment, and literally the only difference between me and those peers of mine are our gpa’s and my club leaderships/ humanitarian ec (I’m pretty sure ec matter less for them because of their good profile due to their high gpa). Sorry for the rant, but if there is anything I can do/work on please let me know.
I wouldn’t sell yourself short, continue your science, pre-med ECs this summer and start working on your college app, make sure you take BC, not Calc honors, send all four of your sat 2 scores, there’s not much you can do about 9th grade (and 10th and 11th as well!). Many colleges only look at 10 and 11th when calculating gpa, though they will look at 9th to see what courses you’ve taken and not have a red flag grade. You want to emphasize how the family situation has affected you (not just your freshman grades) and how you became better because of it. Again, if you’d be fine with any of your reaches, consider ED.
My friend goes to bc and he just came back for the summer and he is telling me how much he loves it there and how many internship and ec opportunities there are. I’ve visited there and I really, really liked it and now I can’t stop worrying about the fact that I stand no chance because there are like atleast 10 other people from my grade with higher gpa’s than mine (0.4-1.0) who are applying and I don’t know what to do.
Does anyone have any match, safety, or within reach recs? I can really use them!
NYU is a reach especially since I know multiple people accepted to ivies but rejected from there with near perfect stats. For all other schools, I agree with most previous entries on this thread.
Should I apply to Penn State as a match or reach because a few of the surgeons I talked to in my internship either went there or know someone who did and ended up in a top 10 medical school?
Would Penn State be affordable for you at full price?
Oh shoot, I genuinely forgot about that.
I have an upward trend and my senior year is rigorous, would colleges care about the senior year schedule? I know it can’t make up for my major screw up freshman year and the lack of rigor as a consequence, but would they care about the upward trend? My top choices are American and Northeastern and my school is a feeder school into these schools average GPA that gets in from my school is 3.4-3.7 (ranging from 3.07 to 4.6), so clearly I am on the lower end- would it help to apply rd as opposed to ea?
Any reason TCNJ is not on your list? TCNJ would give you the smaller-college experience of your private reach schools for a financial-safety price. Their Biopsychology major would be a great premed major that matches your interests. https://psychology.tcnj.edu/academic-programs/psychology-major-specializations/biopsychology-specialization/
If you want to go to med school, you need to both conserve financial resources and optimize your GPA. It seems to me that TCNJ strikes the right balance between a challenging environment with a bright, engaged student body, and a setting where you should be able to get top grades if you put in the work. I think you would find more support there as a premed (given they have a 7 year med program and extensive premed advising https://mcac.pages.tcnj.edu/ ) vs. Stevens where the majority of your peers will be studying engineering and computer science.
@aquapt - Stevens also has a 7-year accelerated medical program with the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (the former UMDNJ). In fact, Stevens’ 7 year program was the first such joint program of any university with NJMS and has been in existence for the past four decades. The accelerated medical students major in chemical biology, biochemistry, or biomedical engineering. The program has a sizeable cohort of students, if in the program you will have much interaction with other premedical students not only those studying engineering, computer science, and physical science. Stevens is a research university unlike TCNJ (which is primarily an undergraduate college) and therefore can provide far more research opportunities to undergraduates, which will be of significant advantage on medical school applications. The tissue engineering/nanotechnology program to produce self-healing tissues, organs, and biomedical devices is a particularly innovative program in which undergrads have the opportunity of participation. Additionally, if one later decides medical school isn’t for him/her, bioengineering is an excellent field. TCNJ does not have a bioengineering major, for example. The 7-year program is quite competitive, as you might expect. An outstanding feature of the program is that once accepted in the 7 year program as an undergrad at Stevens, the student is automatically admitted to the medical school after the third year contingent upon maintaining the required GPA during his/her undergraduate studies.
Thanks, @Engineer80 , that’s good information. I can definitely see how Stevens would be a better bet for a student who wanted to be a premed engineer or to do a heavy science major (beyond the science required of all premed majors). The question in OP’s case is whether she actually wants the hard-core STEM environment, or whether she’s been leaning that way because of her STEM-magnet school but really would be happier in a more liberal arts type environment. None of the other schools on her list are as exclusively STEMmy as Stevens, an in my experience a lot of students who say they are interested in Neuroscience are really most fascinated with the Psych/CogSci side of things (but say Neuroscience because they feel like it sounds “beefier” as a premed major, even though in reality premeds can major in anything they want as long as they ace the premed science prereqs).
In this case, the 7 year med programs are relevant only in terms of educational context, but it’s useful to know that context for sure. I didn’t mean to diss Stevens; it just feels like an outlier on her list and OP’s profile makes me feel as if having TCNJ in the mix would round out her list. Then she’d be able to decide in the end, what kind of environment she really wants and where she feels like she could get the GPA needed to be a viable med school candidate. If Stevens is a clear, conscious choice, that’s great; if it’s mostly because of the “pipeline” from her school, then she might want to step back and weigh the alternatives. No reason not to keep options open, for now.