<p>there are schools with premed majors
premed programs could only refer to BS/MD
The best of those are ricebaylor brown ucsd case nw
i think.
although with med schools you can only get so far...
ppl dont realize the only important part of med school is getting job placement with residencies. you're going to have your board examination ur second year but you're virtually done with all exams etc...</p>
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ppl dont realize the only important part of med school is getting job placement with residencies. you're going to have your board examination ur second year but you're virtually done with all exams etc...
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<p>Residency is for training even though you get paid, but you're responsible for finding a job afterward. And remember that you can always get released from your contact if you dont meet the programs expectations. </p>
<p>As for the exams, exam dont stop after step 1 (the one 2nd year). You still have step 2 and 3, and the yearly exams you have in the specialty you go into. Plus if you want to get board certified, there is written then oral boards.</p>
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bluedevilmike:(I do have one minor quibble, and that's that UCB and UCLA are not actually particularly grade-tough. It's a common misperception.)
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<p>This is somewhat true for non-science/engineering, but it's definitely not true otherwise when you compare UCB with Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc.</p>
<p>I don't have data to separate out by major, so I can't argue definitively in favor of my position. In fact, the data that I do have are heavy in history, political science, and economics. Nonetheless, if I were to speculate, I would guess that UCB and UCLA are in fact not particularly grade tough, even in the sciences, when mean GPAs are correlated against standardized test scores.</p>
<p>This is just a hypothesis. I fully concede that I don't have the evidence to prove it.</p>
<p>UCB stats from campusbuddy:
Physics: 3.0
Math: 2.79
Chemistry: 3.07
Computer Science: 3.01
MCB: 2.96
EE: 3.11
Mech E: 3.14</p>
<p>Are those numbers all that different from other top schools? The avg. GPA at an elite private is in the 3.3-3.4 range but that includes all majors. I don't think it's unreasonable to guess that the average GPA for science majors is in the 3.1-3.2 range. And, esp. if you factor in the disparity in student body b/w UCB/UCLA and Top 20 colleges, I think they're more or less equal in difficulty.</p>
<p>Just looking around for some good pre-med schools around the NY/NJ area. What do you think about NYIT?</p>
<p>I understand school prestige does not significantly help you in your admission to medical schools, but I do believe there are certain aspects of undergrad colleges to help you improve your admission rate.</p>
<p>What are these aspects that I should look for when applying to a college? The quality of pre-med advisors? Grade inflation? Class size? Equipment for research? If the school is private or public?</p>
<p>I'm asking this because at first I thought UCLA and UC Berkeley were, due to their prestige compared to the other UC's, good schools to go pre-med into. However, after reading this thread it seems that its not, and UCSD is a better choice.</p>
<p>So basically I'm trying to weigh my chances with the medical school admissions between Stanford, Cal tech, UCSD, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and any other schools in California that I forgot to mention. Insights would be greatly appreciated =).</p>
<p>What about Bucknell, Colgate, Lehigh, and Lafayette? How do undergrads that attend these schools stack up as Pre-Med candidates and potential med school students? While not like the Ivies, or JHU, Stanford, Duke, or Washington U.--how do these four schools compare with other schools both state and private? Where would you rank the preparation at these schools in terms of pre medical school preparation and hopefully, placement in any med school program?</p>
<p>I'll take a pass at this question. </p>
<p>I agree that prestige of undergraduate institution, in and of itself, does not matter in med school admission. However, prestige is associated, in many but not all cases, with some highly desirable characteristics from the point of view of an undergrad. </p>
<p>You want a place that has lots of faculty availability. So a high student to faculty ratio is bad. </p>
<p>You want a place that has good advising. Since faculty are not the only sources of useful advice, this can be difficult to discover about a college. Preparing for medical school, choosing courses, getting in the sections and activities that are right for you is complicated and few students can figure all this out alone.</p>
<p>You want enough resources that you are not limited by what is available in study help, labs, library, etc. The overall scale of the institution is not particularly important, but what is actually readily available to, and used by, the standard undergrad, matters a lot. Again it takes some digging to figure this out.</p>
<p>For the reasons above, places that spend a lot of money on their students tend to spend these resources on faculty (large numbers of high quality faculty), educationally-related resources (labs, libraries, student support services), and financial aid. These tend to be the rich privates, because only they have enough money to compete financially in all three areas. </p>
<p>Since the rich privates are also the elite privates, it can look like med schools favor students who graduate from those places. In fact, students who graduate from those places have had more advantages during their college years.</p>
<p>The colleges you mention are well regarded LAC's or small universities. I do not think they have resources that compete with the handful of most prestigious, and wealthy, LAC's, and not with the Ivies, Duke, etc. But plenty of students graduate from these colleges and head to medical school each year.</p>
<p>something to think about:
there's really no ideal school for a pre-med coming from an upper middle class family seeking merit scholarships (e.g. me)
rule out all schools not in the top 20.
Duke: great for pre-med, but AB Duke and Robertson are so ridiculously hard to get
Caltech: tough to get merit scholarships, GPA killer
Wash U: merit scholarships available (albeit competitive), but pre-med at Wash U is so ridiculously tough
Chicago: merit aid available, but they have a relatively bad med school acceptance rate since everyone's GPA there is so low
Harvard: great stepping stone (grade inflation, name rep), although no merit money, great financial aid - although this still precludes many upper middle class, plus so tough to get in
Emory/Rice/Vanderbilt: great chance for full tuition merit scholarships, reasonable for achieving high GPA. the catch: not as high ranked</p>
<p>so there's no magical pre-med school for those seeking merit scholarships. either foot the bill for ivies, or have no life at Wash U etc, or go to Vandy/Rice/Emory on a big scholarship but compromise your ego</p>
<p>I would be very careful about generalizations about GPA's across universities. They tend to be more rumor than fact.</p>
<p>"Harvard: great stepping stone (grade inflation, name rep), although no merit money, great financial aid - although this still precludes many upper middle class, plus so tough to get in" That urban legend of grade inflation doesn't necessarily apply to premed students.</p>
<p>i go to boston university, and BU has a 7 year program for the school of medicine that you get accepted to as a freshman. they also have a program called MMEDIC/ENGMEDIC where you apply as a sophomore, gain acceptance, and begin taking classes at the med school. you still do everything in 8 years but it eases the transition to med school. BU has a very intense but widely reputable pre-med program. there's also the grade deflation that is extensively discussed, but if you get through the pre-med reqs (which, at any school, are weed out classes to get rid of the students not cut out for medical school), then you're set, depending on your gpa and mcat. also, bu school of medicine is highly reputable and is a wonderful school. i will be entering busm next year, and am a senior at the undergrad university, and i am so grateful that i chose bu, because im already going into med school with a huge wealth of knowledge about certain aspects of the field. just had to put in my plug for BU!</p>
<p>College of the Holy Cross. </p>
<p>Many people flock towards the big names- Duke, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Stanford, Wash U, etc. but there are so many excellent liberal arts colleges that have fantastic premed programs (yet are overlooked because of their size). At Holy Cross students apply as seniors in high school for the premed program and the college has an acceptance rate of nearly 90% into medical schools. MCAT scores are somewhere around 5 pts above the nat'l average i believe. This school, tucked away in Worcester, MA, isn't in the same spotlight as the ivies but it's surely up to par when it comes to academics.
I remember a college guide (I think priceton review) gave Holy Cross an academic ranking of 99 (the highest possible ranking . . . even beat Harvard!)</p>
<p>Some top pre-med colleges include Harvard University, Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, and UVA.</p>
<p>US News said that Johns Hopkins was the "hottest premed school" in its rankings for 2008</p>
<p>Schools that send the highest proportion of pre-med applicants (for whatever reason) to medical schools are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown, I believe.</p>
<p>^ actually, UCLA sends the greatest number of med school applicants rather consistantly...</p>
<p>but again, there is no such thing as a "pre-med school". US News is full of it</p>
<p>Icarus, lets talk about greatest proportion, not greatest number</p>
<p>really? Brown? hmm</p>