I see that you got wait listed at Dickinson, I hope your email will help!
West Chester sounds like a great option for you too. Hopefully honors comes through for you.
Dorming would be helpful, if you can swing it financially.
Don’t forget to apply to local scholarships to help with books and other expenses, if even just for the first year.
I have read most of this thread and @MYOS1634 gave you such good advises that I have little to add. But since your interest is premed and I come from the premed section of CC I shall give you some points about premed.
Unless you have extensive volunteering/shadowing in the medical field, most of the HS students don’t know what medicine or physician is or how to get to that status, therefore 75% of the entering college freshman drop out of premed for one reason or the other before they hand in the application for med school. The reasons of drop out could be academic but they also could be non-academic related. Medicine career is not for everyone and you should pick a school that has premed but also has a variety of other subjects that could be interest to you. In other words, you should not use premed as a selection criteria for your college decision. To me WCU is a larger school and it is better known in PA community. WCU graduates has more employment opportunity if premed does not work out.
Based on you being waitlisted in Dickenson and Marist, I have an incline that medicine may not fit you. Unless you can excel in the college getting mostly As, your chances with medicine is not high. From this point on for you to get a fully board certified physician with specialty may take as much as 16 years and in that long period, other than you might pay very little in the Undergraduate stage, the medical schools are very costly and you have to borrow all the way. It is a little scary unless you absolutely committed. Moreover, there are millions of tests, standardized or otherwise are ahead of you. One slip and you are out of the race. I also see that your AP classes are mostly non-science and unless you have a high aptitude in science and biology, you will have problem in those weedout classes.
All in all, you should choose a larger school with more options other than premed or biology. Biology is the worst major to find a job if you cannot get into a health care professional school afterwards.
@artloversplus Thank you for your advice! I was planning on switching my major at WCU from molecular biology to biochemistry, to give me a bit more freedom, should I decide med school is not for me. I will also be doing a month long internship in May, shadowing several physicians in pediatrics, maternity, geriatrics, and psychiatric wards at a well respected hospital in PA. I hope this will give me a bit of insight.
I see where you are coming from, I know my SAT scores and grades are not that great…partly due to deeper issues, but I’m certain I can pull through and really commit myself to getting top grades and doing the best I can. I feel with a decent sized school (on the smaller end), that is more student focused where you can get personal with teachers, will greatly benefit me. A fresh start couldn’t hurt. I honestly can’t see myself doing anything else. :-?
Although I feel Dickinson is really the best choice for me, WCU is not too far behind. I am planning on emailing the LOCI to Dickinson on Monday since its a work day…and hopefully that will help me get accepted! Should I send that directly to the Dean of Admissions, or to the Undergrad Admissions office?!
I realize that this will be a very steep and slippery mountain to climb, but I’m willing to try my best!
I’m about to send in my LOCI for Dickinson, on their website their is an email for the Dean of Admissions personally, and a email for undergraduate admissions. Should I email the Dean or Admissions?
I called admissions this morning and they told me to email it to their office and it would later be placed into my file. All good, now it’s just fingers crossed! :)>-
Collegedata dot com shows that Dickinson had a waitlist of 230+ and ultimately took 30 off the list (not sure which year this was for). Keep in mind that some years can be better than others in terms of the WL. Also note that there is no order to the waitlist. In general, the college will turn to the WL to accept students who best fill holes. For instance, if the entering class is to heavily skewed toward women, a greater percentage of men might be chosen. If a school is trying to boost its diversity figures, it might show a preference for URMs. Diversity also means economic diversity, so that could mean trying to add a few students from lower-income families.
Finally, no one gets in off the waitlist without communicating with the admissions office that Dickinson remains that student’s top choice and that she/he is interested in attending. So figure that there will be some students who wrongly assume that by just accepting the WL that they are in the mix to come off the list. Nope.
@Elly710 Don’t be discouraged ahead of time for the medical field. I work in PA (public high school) and have literally seen thousands of students over the past 19 years. Those who do well heading toward med school are those with a good work ethic (not choosing to major or minor in partying, but still making time to enjoy themselves with various ECs in college), not necessarily those with the highest scores on the SAT/ACT in high school (though low grades definitely aren’t a good sign).
In an average public school (like the one I work at), there is generally only a “typical” level students get education-wise. An SAT score > 1200 is often considered a great score among our top students - most of whom will attend various state schools - those college bound anyway. When these students attend reach schools, it can be tough for them to compete because “all” the students there have a deeper foundation than the one they were exposed to (already having great AP classes or similar), but at state schools (or similar level - state/public doesn’t really make a difference in level of school) more students are entering at a similar foundational level. Our top students with a work ethic still succeed and go on to med school if they continue to desire it (some definitely change their minds along the way).
It is definitely a good idea to shadow medical folks and volunteer at places like Hospice to get a feel for the real job. That’s true of any job IMO, but med school requires a bit of a commitment, so is worth the effort to be sure.
@Hapworth Yep you are right, in my waitlist letter Dickinson said they only admitted 35 students off the waitlist, out of presumably 150+. I know my chances with that are slim, I sent in my LOCI yesterday, is there anything else I can do at this point?! Call, visit campus?
I’m hoping what they need is diversity and economic diversity, because that’s pretty much where I stand!
@Creekland Thank you for the words of encouragement, they really mean a lot!
I’m well aware that my SAT scores and high school grades although not horrible, weren’t as good as they could have been. I am definitely a believer in a fresh start. I plan to change my work ethic and invest more time into my grades, while also enjoying myself via different EC’s. This 4 week internship I’m doing at Bryn Mawr Hospital beginning early May, will definitly give me a new understanding to patient care and medical practice, while serving to reinforce my passion for helping others. I look forward to making the most of it!
If you want to work in medicine, you will be able to do pretty much what a doctor does, by following the nurse practitioner or physician assistant track. I had classmates in medical school who honestly weren’t that bright, but had been very hard working high achieving students at mediocre colleges. They go into med school, got through, and became doctors. But they were VERY hard working.
Becoming a nurse practitioner or physician assistant takes about a tenth of the actual training hours, when you factor in that med school and residency are usually 90 hour/week training schedules.
Good points above! I toured UT Austin and Rice with my son last week and at both places our tour guide started out premed and has switched so that is definitely common… I am married to a physician, and both my sister and sister-in-law are physicians. I would agree that work ethic is key! I did not figure that out until more than halfway through my undergraduate. The best advice I’ve given my children I would give to you. The easiest way to do well in college is to not skip class! There’s nothing better than sitting in the classroom, hearing what is being taught, and writing it down yourself. Second, treat your weekday like a job. It is very easy to waste time in the middle of the day doing nothing. I discovered that if I went to the library between classes instead of to my dorm or apartment, it was much much easier to complete all my work and have a social life. Finally, you do not have to declare a difficult science major at most schools to be premed. Depending on the rigor of your college, however, it may give you a better chance to get into med school. My sister chose psychology because she needed a break after fulfilling the grueling premed curriculum. At her college, psychology was one of the least rigorous. She did quite well, and got into the medical school of her choice. Good luck to you!
So it’s coming down to the nitty gritty, many of my friends know exactly where they are going…but I’m still on the fence. I’m leaning towards West Chester, but I have just received another scholarship from Cabrini of $8,000 for practically no reason. (I think they desperately want me )
Cabrini already costs $<0 (I’m in the negative right now) including AP credit along the way. With $8000, I will be able to live at Cabrini for about $3,000-$3,500/yr. This changes the game, $3,000 is do able for our family. If I decide to stay at home, it’ll cost $-5,000/yr
I’m taking a second look at Cabrini, b/c perhaps given its lower stats of accepted/enrolled students, getting a competitive GPA for med school will be easier. With easier classes and less competition this might be possible. I’d also be in the Honors College/Dorm here as well.
That being said, I’m well aware that research/med opportunities are pretty limited, and that the MCAT prep there will be subpar.
Go spend an overnight.
Ask whether you can stay in the Honors dorm, attend honors and science classes, visit the labs, meet with professors, talk with students.
Ask if Honors students can cross register at other area colleges for variety. Whether study abroad would be funded. Whether they offer Honors Biology, Honors Chemistry, Honors Physics, Honors Calculus, Honors Statistics, beside Honors English/religion/philosophy. If you could start in a “Research Biology” or “Research chemistry” class right away in the Fall.
Email the professors in the science departments. Look up their latest research. Ask where they’ve been first or second authors, if undergraduates can be third or fourth authors if they participate in labs. (Ask how many classes a semester they teach and how many “research” classes they supervise).
As far as I can tell there aren’t any Honors Science classes and only ONE chemistry class above organic chemistry per semester. You can take “research chemistry”, which is basically an independent study for credit. Biology has a couple more classes. NO biochemistry whatsoever which would be a problem for premeds.
The classes are small - even intro to biology would have about 30 students. But… it’s more like a community college, offering the basics for your first 2 years.
Keep in mind that “Honors” at Cabrini means 1100 SAT or 22 ACT with a college prep (non honors) 3.5 GPA. I don’t remember how that compares to your stats exactly but I seem to recall yours were much higher than that.
An option may be to attend Cabrini for 2 years, living on campus, taking all the possible classes you can, getting involved in research (if some is being done - and it seems like there’d be little due to the fact the professors have such an heavy teaching load)… then transfer to West Chester for the last 2 years. It’d be hard because you’d need to establish yourself at West Chester, especially with professors, and you’d probably have to apply to med school at the end of your senior year, doing a glide year (research?) However you’d avoid the large, weedout classes at West Chester.
BTW what happened to Marist? The thread is long and I forget but I thought they were in the running?
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to reach out to the Dean of Natural Sciences and Allied Health at Cabrini and ask any questions you may have (such as number of students who applied to med. school and their success or lack thereof with admissions). I think it would be great if you could afford to live on campus instead of commuting, but that’s a personal preference of mine. I had previously answered your question about West Chester, since my daughter is a freshman there, but I also have a true story (granted, only one data point) regarding a student who decided to go with the less expensive option.
My adult son’s best friend from high school, an above average but not outstanding student in high school, went to Shippensburg (as you may know, a school not particularly known for excellence in the sciences) because he didn’t want his parents to have to pay a lot more for his first choice (private) college. He was a top chemistry student at Ship, where his professors loved him, and went on to Princeton for his PhD. He is now a college professor at a well-known university in California.
In your case, of course, the choice is the reverse, with the private school being the less expensive,
Best of luck with your decision. I feel sure you will be successful no matter which school you choose.
The one thing I’d put at the top of my list is asking how recent grads have done with med school applications. Where have they gone (specifically)? If you like what you see and otherwise enjoy the campus, go there and have fun. If not, I’d probably stick with West Chester… IF you are certain you want to become a doctor.
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