@cptofthehouse second paragraph was meant for you. I wanted to add congratulations to you on your son’s ED acceptance. Together you planned it well. Hopefully with some luck, I will be accepted ED and I can enjoy the second semester. Sorry if I came across rude, I didn’t mean to. Wish CC allowed editing or deleting longer.
@Tigerkat pre-med isn’t a major, it is a parallel curriculum to any major you want. My physician was an art history major. Many pre-med students have a life or physical science major, not all.
Schools differ in how pre-med students are shepherded through the pre-med process. Where I went to undergraduate school, back in the Jurassic period, the college had a pre-med committee. It monitored the progress of all of the pre-med students and closely guided them towards their senior year application process. In a nutshell, the committee members knew the premed students very well. They wrote the recommendation letter for med schools and were fantastic at steering kids towards good fit medical schools. The chair of the committee was very connected in med school circles and was known to nudge a medical school admissions decision if he felt they made a mistake.
Not all colleges have this sort of thing for premed students. You should inquire about that when looking at schools - along with the quality of the department for your intended major. Many highly ranked schools have a department or two which are real dogs. Don’t join one of those departments.
My S20 sounds a lot like you in terms of stats and early approach to list building. He investigated schools very carefully in terms of the quality of the program of his intended major. He was attracted to prestige, but almost every prestigious school got knocked off the list as he compared carefully to our state flagship (tOSU). If fact, a couple of very highly ranked universities were pitifully weak next to tOSU under his pretty objective review of the program and the scholarly work of the faculty. He wanted to find a bunch of schools which had what he wanted academically, but he couldn’t. His list currently has only two schools on it. He’s completely sick of looking at colleges and is pretty disappointed in how few met all of his (admittedly demanding) criteria. One caveat is that a LOT of OOS flagships were great, but, he couldn’t justify paying full price to a State flagship unless it knocked it out of the the park compared to tOSU for his major. He couldn’t find such a place.
I encourage you to start with UMCP, because you absolutely need to worry about finances for med school. Explore which major(s) you would likely pursue. Learn about the faculty. Investigate their scholarly or scientific pursuits. This shapes the tone and quality of the instruction of the whole department, even if those faculty never even talk to undergrads. Then use that as a benchmark against other schools you are interested in. Also understand their premed program. How many students start as premed, and how many finish? And what is their medical school placement rate? Compare this across schools. Some small LACs may give fantastic basic premed class preparation, but are nowhere near opportunities for shadowing docs or participating in volunteer activities in medicine. Some are adjacent to world-class medical facilities (U of Rochester, e.g.).
You are a spectacular candidate who will bring a lot to any school lucky enough to get you. You are spending not only your money, but your time there. Which place is going to prepare you best for the next step? Fit matters, but so does the quality of the education. You have sought the best in HS, so don’t stop now. Find the best that can be found, you may find it is at UMCP, or at a highly selective school, or a small LAC. Have an open mind, ask many questions and look beyond the college admissions presentation. But satisfy yourself that your precious four years in college are affording you the best. You’ve earned that.
@cypresspat you gave me a lot to think about. Like your son, I am getting sick of making and remaking lists. Given known and unknown data, it’s so difficult to even hypothesize my fit and chances for each school. Feels like jumping into a muddy lake and not knowing the depth or temperature of the water. Good thing I can swim lol.
Ha ha. Two of my kids said they were done after they completed their early apps. My youngest said he had his second choice school in that EA group and if deferred or rejected from ED, that’s what he was picking.
You can knock out your ED choice along with EA Richmond match and the two safeties. Then get a second wind to get the rest of your applications out.
I don’t agree with this. It is a reverse positive feedback loop designed to lead directly back to your state’s flagship university where teaching ability is minimized and there is every incentive for faculty to “publish or perish” in order to rise in their departmental ranks. Using that criteria, the University of California at Berkeley would be every Californian’s first-choice and yet the entering classes of dozens of colleges across the country are full of Californians who think otherwise.
Needless to say, there are hundreds of colleges that manage to balance teaching undergraduates with a tone of scholarship and academic rigor. If you concentrate on fit, you will enhance your chances of doing well and achieving your goals.
@cptofthehouse sounds like wonderful advice. Not good to burn out before school even starts.
Uc Berkeley does just fine with applicants, IMO. I know a lot of students who would be ecstatic to get into that school. I personally know a lot of parents that would give a lot to get their kids in there too.
I’m in a state tried to model it’s state university and college system after CA’s. It did not succeed in getting the top kid, kids from the top socioeconomic environments and families interested in its system—the SUNYs. Nsme recognition not great even within the state for any of its schools and hardly any OOS. Berkeley hits all of those notes.
How about Bates, Colgate, and Case Western as possible targets for you?
@cptofthehouse - Yes, it is strange that New York is such a big state with lots of high-performing kids, yet has a state system that does not attract many out-of-state applicants (over 90% of students from its highest ranked college are from NYS).
From my local New York metropolitan area school district’s high school’s class of 2022, of the top ranked students, one went to Berkeley, one went to UCLA, and one went to UVA… but only one went to a SUNY, and it was his safety school. Other states’ public universities are better regarded by many New Yorkers than our own universities!
Apparently, the fact that the SUNYs did not become like the California system is no accident, but a function of early politics. Here is a quote from the New York Times:
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/education/25suny-t.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Another factor is probably that New York has never been willing to designate a flagship and fund and promote it accordingly. While many people in our area of Long Island state that SUNY Binghamton is the finest SUNY, one also could make a case for SUNY Stony Brook or others, particularly for certain specialties (Stony Brook shines in many STEM fields, Buffalo has a computer science rep, etc.).
Regardless, whenever we look at the Forbes rankings, our family is always astonished at how many states have colleges that are more highly ranked than Binghamton, NY’s top-ranked college. It is so far down the list! Plenty of smart New Yorkers attend it, and it is respected within the state, but it does not have much a reputation beyond the state, and it draws only about 7% non-New Yorkers, mostly internationals. It makes no sense.
It would be exciting if New York put marketing and funding into its top state colleges and developed a world-class reputation for them. New York is a leader in so many ways. This should be yet another.
I agree with you fully!
Hi Tigerkat,
It’s great that you are putting so much consideration into this whole process! I’m sure it can almost seem overwhelming at times 
So, I just wanted to tell you about my daughter who is going into her junior year at UMCP. She was in the same boat as you just a few years ago. Had gotten into several select school (Johns Hopkins, CalTech, Vanderbilt, Princeton, UPenn. All had given her some money but not 100%) She also got a full Banneker Key Scholarship to UMCP. She hopes to get into med school, so she went with the full ride at UMCP knowing that she will have lots of future costs with med school (if she gets in). She is majoring in bioengineering and is in the Integrated Life Sciences (ILS) Honor Program. While at UMCP she has been a research assistant in 2 different research labs, is TAing a bioengineering class this semester (for work study) and has had so much support from the ILS professers and community. This past summer she was accepted into the summer scholars program at the University of Maryland Medical School (which is only available for students at UMCP). She is also in various clubs. She really enjoys being at Maryland and feels that the ILS staff has really helped her with what she needs to get done for med school (research, volunteer hours, shadowing doctors, course load, LORs just to name a few things). If you have any questions about UMCP, I can give you my daughter’s contact info. Good luck with this whole process!! This is such an exciting time for you!