<p>Does anyone know how good of a premed track Harvard can provide? Also, any numbers/stats for Harvard students going on to med school? Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I'm definitely interested in the same question.. Also, would any of you know any students at Harvard who have turned down the 7 year Med program at Northwestern for Harvard? Also, does anyone know the acceptance rate for kids going to harvard med school from harvard undergraduate...
thank you for all of your help.. and congratulations to all of you!</p>
<p>bump......</p>
<p>so far as i know, the med school acceptances from harvard are very high. im in the same boat of choosing harvard or rice/baylor(provided i get in)</p>
<p>There is no premed track. Med schools accept Harvard students from all concentrations if they have the basic science to go with it.</p>
<p>i'm currently debating Harvard or Northwestern's HPME. One on hand, it's Harvard, with unlimited opportunities and a great undergrad experience. However, it doesn't have the guaranteed assurance that HPME provides... But if I do choose HPME, I'll be stuck with it for all 7 years, knowing that I probably won't risk applying to other better med schools.</p>
<p>bump bump...</p>
<p>The choice between HYPS and a 7 year med school program is a tough one (if you're 100% sure you want to be a doctor... if not, I think the answer is relatively clear).</p>
<p>I think xjayz knows the Harvard -> med school stats better than I, but I can share a few.
*Around 90% of Harvard students who apply to med schools get in, compared to around 50% nationally. This figure is a little misleading though, weaker candidates are (correctly, IMHO) encouraged to get a job/do research/etc and then apply later.
*Harvard undergrads form a plurality, but nowhere near a majority at Harvard Med School.
*Around 12 seniors from Harvard get in to Harvard Med School each year (more... perhaps the same number or more, get in each year with postgrad experience).</p>
<p>Less objective info:
<em>If you're an accepted student, you should try to visit the Office of Career services when you visit (they're open M-F). They have a *ton</em> of info on applicants/acceptance rates/etc.
*Med school advising is done by each upperclass house, and, at least in my house, is very organized + gets you very well prepared. Your house will write you a "Dean's letter" if you ever decide to apply to med school (even 10 yrs down the road!).</p>
<p>Finally, and this is a very subjective observation, I've found the premed classes at Harvard good overall, and very manageable. Obviously, organic chemistry will make you work (when you're not procrastinating on CC 12 hrs before your midterm!), but the curve is usually set to around a B/B+ and there's a fair amount of "tracking" so you can take the physics/math/organic chem class that fits your interests/abilities. Of the people I know who have stopped being premed, it's been because they found other interests/aren't sure about being a doctor, not because the classes have weeded them out!</p>
<p>just<em>forget</em>me, thank you so much for such a detailed reply.</p>
<p>obviously, the numbers matter a lot: your GPA, MCAT score, etc. So when you say the premed classes are manageable, do you mean that if you work hard and are willing to get that A, you can usually get it? can you easily balance this courseload with some fairly involved extracurriculars (maybe 4 activities of 4 or 5 hours each/week)? Also, could you please explain more about the curve and what "tracking" means?</p>
<p>i've been looking at some stats about HYPS med applicants' acceptances into top med schools. while the numbers still seem somewhat daunting for top undergrads from HYPS, do you have any personal experience regarding people you know and how they feel about preparing for med school, the activities they've been engaged in, the application process, and getting accepted somewhere they expected or did not expect, etc?</p>
<p>Thanks again for your very helpful reply!</p>
<p>Can't answer all your questions–as I don't have any close friends who've gone through the application process (and have a chem midterm tomorrow!).</p>
<p>When I said manageable, what I meant was two things
A. The classes don't consume your life; you probably spend <strong>at most</strong> 3-4 hrs reading/reviewing and 4-5 hrs working on a problem set each week.<br>
B. You don't need to be a genius to get an A. I feel like I can't answer your question with a yes, as I have friends who put in the work and don't get always get A's. However, if you score the class mean on everything, you will get a B/B+. So scoring <em>above the mean</em> usually puts you in the A range.</p>
<p>As for tracking... You're required to take a year of physics. At Harvard, you can take:
*Physics for premeds (integrated with bio/chem)
*Regular physics with calculus
*Honors physics with calculus
*Insane physics with insane calculus :-P
As a result, the all-star physics students are not going to be in your class, if you're just some premed who wants to get his/her med school requirements out of the way (then again, you're very welcome to take the super insane physics if you like that!).</p>
<p>Similar choices for math. Less so for organic chem (there are two tracks, a life sci one and a straight chem one) + bio/inorganic chem/etc.</p>
<p>I agree. I put in a lot of work for my pre-med classes and some I got A-range grades and some I did not. I totally agree with just<em>forget</em>me and his description of the science classes here. Aren't you supposed to be studying for organic chem tomorrow? :P</p>
<p>thanks a bunch for your reply, just<em>forget</em>me. good luck with your midterm tomorrow!</p>
<p>xjayz, do you mind my asking how well you balance academics with "good premed extracurriculars" and just free time hanging out with friends?</p>
<p>xjayz also has a midterm tomorrow :-P</p>
<p>good lord i hate isoprenoid chains!</p>
<p>Harvard kids do extremely well getting into med school. I know people who dropped out of pre-med, but I'm certain they would have dropped out anywhere; they discovered that they just aren't math/science people.</p>
<p>Now, a lot of them do go to med schools that are good, but not great (i.e. not Northwestern). This isn't that worrisome, because med school ranking doesn't matter nearly as much as law or business school ranking. Of my close friends from Harvard who went to med school, all but one of whom were active singers during undergrad, they went to med school at: Harvard, Yale, Yale, NYU, Tulane, SUNY Buffalo, and a low-ranked school in California -- this last student had a low GPA and huge problems on her transcript after W'ing all her classes two semesters in a row and taking 5 years to graduate. Given that even SHE got into med school, I don't think you need to worry.</p>
<p>Hi All,</p>
<p>Below are average stats for med school entrance at Harvard. Yale, Brown, UPenn, Columbia, UCLA, UCSF are not vastly different from these stats below.
Maintaining a GPA of 3.76 is no easy task at College level especially in many schools (even if they are not highly ranked, take BU and its grade deflation for example, same with JHU)</p>
<p>I don't know about Law school entrance but I would not say that getting into med schools is exactly easier.</p>
<p>average GPA: 3.76
average MCAT scores were:
Verbal-11.01
Physical Science-12.09
Biological Science-12.03</p>
<p>BingCold, you might want to look at Feinberg's class of 2010 profile
<a href="http://www.medschool.northwestern.edu/admissions/md/students/class-profile.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.medschool.northwestern.edu/admissions/md/students/class-profile.html</a>
Feinberg had a 1.81% acceptance rate last year.
Avg. GPA: 3.71 and 3.65(sciences)
Avg. MCAT scores: 11.6 (bio), 11.3 (phys. sci), and 10.7 (verbal)</p>
<p>thank you all for your replies and input!</p>
<p>also, Hanna, thanks for giving some personal accounts. How hard would you say your med school friends worked to get into good med schools like yale or lower ranked med schools?</p>
<p>"How hard would you say your med school friends worked"</p>
<p>I don't know how to answer the question, because there are so many factors that go into this. One straight-A student I know who was in organic chemistry as a freshman worked less than a lot of B/C students, because he was just so crazy smart and so gifted at chemistry that he didn't have to put in much effort to get perfect grades.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way. All of them had social lives and devoted a lot of time to their music activities. The guy who went to SUNY Buffalo was, by Harvard standards, a frat boy slacker type who spent a lot of time hanging out with his friends, and I don't think he was up all night trying to get perfect grades. The one who went to Tulane took one year off from his singing group to focus academics that year, but he still sang for 3 years. (That kid, btw, did extremely well in med school and got his first-choice residency, in a competitive specialty, back at Harvard; the person who struggled with grade/withdrawal problems in college and went to a low-ranked medical school is now a specialist at a nationally respected U of California research campus.)</p>
<p>Hanna, thanks for your reply. Sorry for the ambiguity of the question-- I guess I was trying to ask, in order to get to a fairly decent med school, do Harvard students have to kill themselves with hard work and have no social life. But I think you answered that.</p>