I know pre-med isn’t a major, but I’m looking for schools with good support for students taking the pre-med course, like:
- good advising
- volunteer, internship opportunities (hospital nearby?)
- research opportunities
- anything else I should consider?
Personal things/preferences
- high selectivity
- urban setting
- 90%+ need met (so private colleges only)
- located in IL, West Coast, New England, Mid-Atlantic
- possible major: neuroscience, math, or econ?
34 ACT 4.65W
Retaking ACT soon, and waiting for my SAT scores (1500/1520 on the PSAT).
The thing got me is 90% need met. What is the uw Gpa? Unless you have a better sat/act it’s hard to tell.
90% need met is kind of meaningless since “need” is defined by the college and not by the applicant/applicant’s family.
Need based aid can vary by several thousand, even tens of thousand of dollars among various “meets full need” colleges.
Also 90% need based aid just means that 90% of students get their need met–but that doesn’t mean every one of those 90% gets a ton of aid. A student with low need might only need a $2000.00 loan to have their “need” met. So 90% of students having their need met doesn’t mean you will get your need met if you are high need.
But on your other items, there are tons of schools that meet your criteria.
You need to narrow things down a bit more to get some good suggestions.
Finances–
How much can your parents contribute toward your college education each year?
What is your household income? Number of students in college?
Are your parent divorced? If divorced, have either of your parents remarried?
How much can you contribute to your college education?
What is your state of residence?
Do you need merit aid? Need-based aid? Both?
Admission to highly selective colleges takes more than just a good ACT/SAT score and GPA.
Difficulty of coursework?
AP or IB classes taken? Subject scores?
Do you have any significant ECs?
Now more questions about your preferences–
How “urban” is urban for you? Is a college in mid-sized (pop 250,000) city “urban”? Or do you want a major city like with a population >1M?
What about college in close-in suburb of major city? (Like Tufts in Medford which is short subway ride to Boston or Swarthmore which 25 minutes by train to downtown Philadelphia.)
Do you want a research U or a LAC?
Large school? Small school? No preference? Co-ed? Single sex?
If you can answer some or most of these questions, posters here can start making useful suggestions for you.
I have no idea what my unweighted GPA is, sorry.
WayOutWestMom, thank you for giving me a lot to work with.
For the 90%+ aid I meant that the college meets at least 90% of demonstrated financial need. For example, Harvard meets 100% of demonstrated financial need and only about 70% get aid.
- Contribution per year: I think she said around 15k one time when we were talking, but I'm not sure.
- Household: 70k, single parent household, I'm the only kid. Other parent has remarried but I don't know their income.
- Personal contribution: I don't know, but I'll be working on college.
- State of residence: Illinois
- Will need both merit- and need-based aid.
- Have taken the most difficult class each year
- All honors freshman year
- Sophomore: AP US Gov, honors everything else
- Right now/junior: AP Calc BC, APUSH, APLAC, AP Physics 1, AP Comparative, honors French
- Senior: AP Psych, AP Bio, AP Macro, AP Micro, AP Lit, AP French 4, honors calculus 3
- No SAT subject tests yet
- Officer for International Club for past 2 years, currently VP, likely president next year
- Student Council for past 3 years and next year, VP sophomore year and applying to officer senior year
- National French Honor Society (& French tutoring every week)
- National Honor Society
- Babysitting 3-4 days a week from when I get home to around 8pm ever since freshman year
- Urban = city environment, doesn't matter the population. Whether it's Evanston (~70k) or Chicago, I'm fine. I care about having access to lots of different venues, an art scene, fun events, opportunities, etc. I've lived in the suburbs all my life.
- I wouldn't mind having a college close to the city. I've visited Swarthmore and I liked the quaint feel it had while being in proximity to Philly. I would prefer being directly in a city.
- Private liberal arts college.
- Co-ed. Not sure about the size of the school, but leaning towards medium/small sized. Definitely want a small faculty to student ratio.
Hope this helps! 
Johns Hopkins
Pitt
BC
Holy Cross
UPenn
Drexel
Tufts
@mangoeslover
To clarify, you’re looking for school where 90% of students get their full need met? This really doesn’t mean anything w/r/t to you getting your full need met.
The fact you have a non-custodial parent makes finding a school where you’ll get your full need met more difficult. Most colleges that you’re looking at will require the Profile from your non-custodial parent and his/her new spouse.
Will your non-custodial parent be willing to fill out the Profile?
Will he/she be willing to pay his/her share of the EFC as determined by the college?
Unless there are some sort of extraordinary circumstances, colleges expect that both parents will contribute to funding your college education.
I strongly suggest that you look at some colleges that will offer you big merit (especially big guaranteed merit) for your stats–which means you will need to go down a level of selectivity. And it may mean you need to loosen your criteria a bit.
As a pre-med, it’s important that you minimize your undergrad debt as much as possible since med school is expensive and you’ll be taking out huge loans to pay for it.
Where you go to college has very little impact on your ability to be successful or your ability to be accepted into med school. It’s all about what you accomplish during college.
I have my own in-house example-- I have 2 daughters who went to/are in med school. One went to a big state U ranked below #200; one went to a top 30 research U. (Both on merit scholarships.) Same outcomes for each. Both had opportunities to do research, get clinical experience, had excellent mentoring. Both had multiple acceptances to med school. Both did/are doing well in med school and both matched/will match into top residencies in their chosen specialties.
You may want to re- post your question in the FA forum–the people are much more knowledgeable about merit awards than I am. I’m tagging @mom2collegekids to get her input.
Undergrad programs at universities with med schools is a plus since they will likely take a lot of students from their own undergrad program
Not sure about your assertion. It will be interesting to see if you have any stat data or link from any study to get an idea. Coincidence happens where one of your known person would have studied and matriculated to MD school in the same university. I have a contrast data point, where 1 student went to UPenn and excelled in Engg and Pre-Med and did solid research and did not get MD seat in UPenn.
To the best of my knowledge, MD admission process is a holistic process and has no bearing on which college a student went for UG and specifically there is no extra point awarded just because student went to the same university for UG.
True, if the university has medical college, it may facilitate the preparation for pre-med, in getting shadowing, medicine related activities/ research etc.,
Certainly, gurus of this thread can shed more light.
Medical schools favoring their own undergrads is highly school dependent and there are no good objective data on this topic.
State med schools may appear to favor their own undergrads, but this may be due not to preferential admissions but a combination of a large number of applications coming from a major state U and in-state bias in public school admissions.
A BA/MD program or early assurance program will skew the data at that school to make it appear there is preferential admission for a school’s own undergrads unless students from those program are omitted from consideration.
D2 attended a private U with an associated med school that had a smallish class size (~100). The BA/MD and early assurance programs filled 15-25% of each entering class. Undergrad premeds were told that it was actually more difficult for them to get accepted to associated med school because the school wanted to diversify its entering class.
In my class at Tufts, there were a lot of undergrads from Tufts and it was a “known” way that to get in, you should take some graduate courses at Tufts then reapply if you didn’t succeed on your first try.
I am not looking for a school where 90% of students get their full need yet. Sorry, I’m not really sure how to word it. Rather, I want schools that will meet at least 90% of demonstrated financial need for whoever gets aid. So I don’t want schools where 90% of students get 100% need met–I know that’s very unrealistic. I just want to look at schools that will agree to meet at least 90% of demonstrated financial need for whichever students receive aid. I don’t know if I can’t word it any better?
Thank you for all of your input so far! I understand that I in no way need to go to a highly selective undergrad to get into med school. However, it’s just been something I’ve been aiming at for a long time so going to a less selective college hasn’t really crossed my mind. I will keep that into consideration though, since less selective schools give more merit scholarships.
@mangoeslover
AFAIK, there are no schools where all students get 90% of their need met.
That’s not how FA is reported. Schools either meet 100% of demonstrated need or they don’t. And those that don’t don’t report what percentage of need they meet.
And as I mentioned above, be aware that any private college will require financial info from your non-custodial parent and their spouse. That information will be used to compute your family contribution for that college. You and your custodial parent will be responsible for paying the EFC even if you non-custodial parent declines to contribute.
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The most talked about school on CC is UAlabama with automatic scholarship up to a full ride if your score meet certain standard. But it will not be in your desired area.
Other than that, USCal gives generous scholarships, in some case full ride, but in most cases, full tuition. Forget about UCs, they will not give a penny to the OOS. And if you are looking at the West Coast, Lewis & Clark.
Just read even U Penn give large scholarships that will bring the COA to $5000/yr! If you are worth that much to them.
You should recalculate your GPA without weight, such as A=4 B=3 and did you take SAT. With ACT 34, its hard to make top school to “like” You.
Northwestern University
-high selectivity- check (9% acceptance rate)
- urban setting- check (Evanston IL, by Chicago)
- 90%+ need met (so private colleges only)- Check (meets 100% need with no loans)
- located in IL, West Coast, New England, Mid-Atlantic-check (Illinois)
- possible major: neuroscience, math, or econ?- check (has all 3 majors)
- good advising-check (Will be at all top private schools)
- volunteer, internship opportunities (hospital nearby?)- check(top 10 teaching hospital in the country in Northwestern Memorial)
- research opportunities- check (Will be at all top private schools)
- anything else I should consider? Big 10 sports, cool, accessible alum
Your PSAT score should make you a NMF in Illinois. That’s the best news you can hear, because there are a lot of schools that will give you free tuition or more for that. Alabama and Oklahoma recruit NMFs into their honors colleges, and from there it is up to you, but a bright and hard working student should be able to move on to med school from those state universities. Baylor is a private that does the same thing for NMFs, and has a very good track record at getting students into med school. My advise is to look through the lists on CC of the colleges giving full merit scholarships to out of state NMFs, and find one or two that you can begin to love. At that point, make sure you and your school counselor does what is needed to move you from a semi-finalist to a finalist and you are all set. Now you can look at some other schools that will give you some need based aid (depending on non-custodial parent’s income) and maybe some merit as well. Take a good run at a few of those. If you get in with scholarships – great! you have multiple good choices. If not, great! You already are virtually guaranteed admission and full merit scholarship at the safeties you chose in step one, and you’ve been wise enough to not focus all your dreams on one place that may or may not come through.
And if it comes to a full ride at a state school, or squeaking by financially with grants, loans, and work-study at a “named” private school, do you self a favor and take the free ride. YOu will be much better situated to get into medschool with a high gpa from a state school, good research/volunteer opportunities, and time to study for the MCAT than you would be with an undergraduate degree from “named” school and four years of stress and exhaustion that kept you from performing your best (or enjoying it).
Hi, everyone! Thank you for all of your advice/recommendations. so far. I will keep all of it in mind. If anyone has any other suggestions, advice for the college search process, etc., I would really appreciate it.
Also, I just calculated my unweighted GPA using PrepScholar’s ‘guide’. Not including gym/health classes, I have a 3.98UW.
I understand what you mean. Colleges that meet 90-100% need depending on how much they want the student and how much the student needs. There quite a few strong private colleges like that. The first that made it transparent is Muhlenberg.
I’d recommend running the npc on Carleton, StOlaf, Macalester. Saint Olaf has the best reputation for premed and Macalester is closest to what you’re looking for. Grinnell is excellent for the sciences but the opposite of urban.
East Coast and midatlantic, I’d recommend Dickinson, Haverford, Skidmore, Northeastern (not LAC), Connecticut college, Davidson.
U Chicago may be important if your father remarried, as both his and his new spouse’s income will count in coordinating your EFC at many colleges - whereas uChicago won’t. However it’s also notoriously hard for Premeds.
NMF 's = look into Pitt first (and do the complete, not ‘fast’/priority application without essays) but also USC Columbia Honors, UAlabama, Oklahoma U, UKentucky.
Johns Hopkins (top); Rice, then the usual suspects, ivies (especially Harvard, Columbia and Penn, UChicago, Duke
La Salle U in Phila
Urban, very good with getting students into Med School
Not super selective, many opportunities, walking distance to hospital
Actually, JHU is not tops for premed. It’s tops for MED school, which is completely different.
A good premed program includes a lot of support for premeds (advising, tutoring, personalized contact), collaborative students, a good value (in particular, little debt), and with decent outcomes if you don’t get into med school (like half the students who managed to make it through the premed gauntlet).