Hi all, I am a rising senior and I am having trouble narrowing down my list of schools to apply to. I have a 3.99 uw gpa, 33 ACT, 2080 SAT (which I probably won’t report), and pretty good ec’s which I can elaborate on if needed. I live in rural Wisconsin and go to a very small public school which has restricted my course load a bit but the highlights of my schedule junior year were AP Chemistry, AP Bio, and APUSH. Next year I will be taking human anatomy (very tough class, though not AP), AP Calc AB, AP Physics, AP Politics, and AP Language, which will pretty much exhaust my school’s AP curriculum other than spanish and psych.
So, my current list of perspective schools is much too long - like 25 and growing. But I don’t know how to narrow it down without visiting them all. Also, I feel that most are either high reaches or safeties and low matches. The two that I know for sure I will apply to are the University of Minnesota and UW Madison, both of which I would consider safeties because of my stats and location, and I know I could afford to go to either with the in state tuition and reciprocity with MN. In a few weeks I will be going to California to look at the schools listed below and possibly a few more just for fun, like Stanford and Pepperdine.
Other schools I want (or my parents want me) to apply to:
Carleton (parents)
St. Olaf (parents)
Macalester (parents)
UC Berkeley
USC
Occidental
Pomona
UCSD
UCSB
Claremont McKenna
Harvey Mudd
Wesleyan
Williams
Amherst
Rice
Swarthmore
Bowdoin
Vassar
Trinity, CT
JHU
Carnegie Mellon
WU St. Louis
St. Edward’s in Austin (for forensic science)
Trinity U in San Antonio
University of Chicago
possibly something in Florida?
and then I would definitely like to apply to like one or two Ivies, probably Penn, Dartmouth, and Cornell
I want to be a forensic pathologist so I will be on a premed track and probably a bio or chem major, unless somewhere other than St. Edward’s will have anything specific to forensics. I know everyone says a “match” is about having the atmosphere you want, but I think I’d be happy almost anywhere. I love Dinkytown (I live an hour away from the UofMn on the Wi side) but I also loved the smaller Trinity U campus where my sister went her freshman year then transferred to Concordia Moorhead, which is nice but definitely wouldn’t attend because of the climate - which is kind of why I’m pensive about staying in my bi-state area. My dad thinks I shouldn’t go to a big school because I’ve always been the “big fish in the small pond,” but I think I’d do fine anywhere as long as it’s not a tiny farm town like I’m in now! So, if you have any input into schools I should add or take off it would be greatly appreciated.
Mudd is tough for pre-med due no grade inflation. A great school, and very collaborative, but also hugely challenging academically. They have terrific grad school placement stats, but med school can be challenging due to the strict GPA requirements for med school acceptance.
Thanks for the reply! I definitely need to think about grade inflation, but it’s tough to know exactly what it’s like at every school, good to know about Mudd though!
Some of these schools may have superior track records of furthering the goals of their premed students: “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges With Great Pre-med Programs.”
What are your cost limits for the rest of the schools on your lists excluding your two safeties? The California UC’s will cost around $55K/year as an OOS student with little to no financial aid. Your stats are competitive so you may have a chance at a Regents scholarship which could be anywhere from $2000/year to $6000/year. Just something to consider when narrowing down your choices.
Your list is definitely ‘diverse’ - you have LACs and giant state Us and schools in between, tech schools and LACs, places where the winter is freezing (Bowdoin) and warm (Pomona) and schools in between, schools that are very preppy (Williams), artsy (Vassar), intellectual (Swarthmore, Chicago), located all over the country, etc…(I assume you have no financial constraints and will not be going into debt for any of these schools.) And you want to add some Ivies to that?
If you really are happy anywhere as long as it’s not a small town (rethink Williams and Bowdoin), then pick those options where you are most likely to excel academically if you are serious about pre-med (meaning, you are sure of being in the top 25% of the class) because med schools are interested primarily in your GPA and MCAT (and state of residence), so prestige, brand name, etc…count for little. You will need letters of rec too, which means you will need close relationships with at least a few faculty - harder to do at those big state Us.
If you aren’t sure about medicine, then you should think more about what kind of environment you want to spend the next four years in and narrow your list based on the criteria you develop.
Thanks for that link, @merc81 and @Gumbymom is the Regents scholarship specific to California schools? @N’sMom the town I live in now has 2,500 residents so I don’t think it gets much smaller than that. I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything other than becoming a forensic pathologist but who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love with something else in med school, but I am definitely sure of at least getting to med school. So, in the grand scheme of things would you suggest paying closer attention to the list linked above or searching more forums about great undergrad u’s to get into med school than trying to find somewhere with a nice campus and good food? Also, I’m curious as to how med schools factor in your state of residence if you would care to enlighten me. Thanks everyone so far!
From a college’s Health Professions Advising website: “Because many professional schools give preference to students who are in-state residents, and because there is often a financial benefit to attending an in-state school, many . . . students will attend medical schools in their home states.”
Your state of residence can be critical to medical school admissions. Some state medical schools accept only in-state residents or very, very few out-of-state with specific hooks. Some states (like CA) have many more med school applicants than in-state seats available so CA is a net exporter of med students. But there isn’t much you can do about your state of residence (except thank you parents if you happen to be residing in a ‘good’ state from an admissions perspective.)
As for what constitutes a ‘good’ school for medical school admissions, the answer is the school where you are most likely to excel academically and personally. Find your best fit. Happily, most reputable schools will provide you with sufficient preparation to do well on the MCAT. Most provide adequate pre-med advising since this is a very popular career path for incoming students (though many change their minds after they start for many reasons). There is a lot of advice on being pre-med on this forum and others. Know that some schools are more aggressive about weeding out ‘weaker’ students early. Others are more supportive and weed less. You can talk to the officers of the pre-med societies at the schools you are admitted to about this. They can give you insight into how supportive the school actually is. (Beware of statistics like ‘90% of our pre-meds are admitted to med school.’ All that means is that the school aggressively weeds out the weaker students in the first year or so. Those ‘left standing’ are generally at the top of their classes.)
Since you are from a very small town, one thing to consider is that you will probably need to think about how to do your medical volunteering and research. You may need do it during the school year since there will be fewer opportunities in your home town over the summer - or you may need to plan to live elsewhere over the summer so you will have more opportunities to complete these requirements. Just something else to think about. It could impact your choice of school - a school in a small town might be less of a fit in your case because there are fewer opportunities of this sort.
So would my state’s reciprocity with Minnesota hold with say The U of M’s med school? Or is that only applicable to undergrad schools? I will probably be doing volunteer work/trying to get a job somewhere in the twin cities next summer and the following summers, which isn’t too bad of a drive considering I volunteer at the science museum in St. Paul once a week now which is an hour drive one-way and my sister used to volunteer at a large hospital when she was in high school. She now works as a nursing assistant at a different large metro hospital in the TC so maybe I could get my foot in the door there. @pointoforder I’ll check out that guide, thanks for the notes!
Like pointoforder, I love LACs too, especially for pre-meds. S attended Grinnell (which has a lot of overlap in applicants with Carleton). They did a great job on pre-med prep, have state-of-the-art science facilities, offer merit aid, and the class sizes are small so you can be assured that you will know faculty well enough to get good LORs for your committee letter. It looks like a match based on your stats - which is probably what you want since a reach means you may not be at the top of the class academically (additional stress for a serious pre-med.)
I have heard good things about Grinnell. Did he like the area of the campus? I’ve driven through Iowa several times and it appears to be a very boring state, but hopefully a collegetown would offer more than farmland haha. If I go for a visit would you recommend going while class is in session or could I get a decent vibe of the school by going late in July or the last week in August?
The campus is pretty and the sports and arts facilities are palatial but the town of Grinnell is very small, surrounded by farmland and is not an exciting place. Nor is Des Moines. Iowa City has a bit more action because of the State U, but even then…(On the other hand, it’s so safe he left his computer sitting in the common area of his dorm for most of 4 years and no one touched it. Not that I recommend this.) The school has a lot of money which means they bring a lot of activities to campus, faculty often live in town or nearby and participate in lots of campus activities, a lot of students study abroad in junior year, and the student body itself is quite diverse (12% international) - but if you don’t want a small town, this isn’t a good fit. But then you might want to rethink Carleton and Williams too.
I’d say visit while school is in session because the campus and the town will be pretty deserted over the summer.