I currently have 15 colleges on my list but I’m trying to narrow down my list to 6 before common apps open in August.
You don’t have to choose for all four; you can just choose for the ones you know.
Thanks!
Premed!!! ok!!!
Why so many !!! ?
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Unweighted GPA: 4.00
Weighted GPA: ~4.26
SAT: 2290 (one-sitting; might retake in October for 2300+)
SAT Subject Tests: Math II (780), Chem (750)
APs: 5 APs (don’t know my scores yet)
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Brown, Stanford, UChicago, Northwestern, Berkeley, WUSTL, Rutgers, Duke, NYU, Tufts, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Wake Forest University, Dartmouth, College of William & Mary
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Why do you have Tufts on your list?
Why do you have UNC?
Why would any OOS premed have UCLA?
You live abroad because of your dad’s job. Does your family maintain legal residency in any state? which one? New Jersey?
If you’re premed, what is your preoccupation with tippy top schools??
WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING AT US?
Choosing between those pairs of college for “pre-med” makes no sense to me. They are all highly respected schools, from which you will be in a good position to apply to medical school, they all (except Princeton) are attached to highly regarded medical schools (although Cornell’s is at the other side of the state, in NYC)- and none of them have a “pre-med” major.
Which means you will major in something else (science or non-science), take the same set of core courses required by all US medical schools and work to get a great GPA- no matter which of these colleges you go to.
If you were doing it on a statistical probability of getting into med school from one of these colleges, the one with the most grade inflation / least grade deflation probably gets the edge- but with this group there will be more difference between subjects than between schools.
I think your list is iffy for pre-med. You need some schools where you have a decent shot at getting in, and getting good grades. In other words, more than just Rutgers.
I’d choose Penn over Cornell based on proximity to the med school/associated hospital (volunteer and research opportunities). Given that you’ve said nothing about your intellectual interests, I suspect you aren’t a good match for U of Chicago. Columbia vs. Princeton makes no sense to me – Princeton is much smaller, no hospital, very undergrad focussed, every undergrad does a senior thesis (or comparable project), and your life will be largely on campus. Columbia (like Chicago) has a core curriculum (so an additional set of requirements beyond pre-med and your major) and, of course, NYC. These are the types of factors I’d take into account if I had to choose between those two options.
@mom2collegekids I’ve been thinking about where I want to go and the list has changed a bit. My dad doesn’t have any residency in the colleges I want to go.
@collegemom3717 Sorry I wasn’t shouting, I was just trying to get attention.
@Trisherella I’m trying to narrow down my list and so I haven’t included the safeties I plan to apply on this thread.
@exacademic So Columbia over Chicago?
first, find out how much your parents will pay each year. Keep in mind that you’ll also have int’l travel costs and likely have to buy health insurance (so you need to budget $4k-5k for those items). The schools’ COAs won’t have those costs figured in.
Take off all OOS publics (like Berkeley). There are a few that would give you very large merit.
Are you including UNC because it has a med school? Does it accept many OOS students who aren’t MD/PhD?
I think you’re making a common premed mistake. If you want to go to med school, then you need to strategize the best route for that. All US med schools are excellent.
Choice is yours, but that would be my guess – Chicago is nerdier/more intense. At which point you have a Stanford vs. Princeton choice to make. Which could be a which Coast/culture decision or a decision based on whether you have a better shot at getting into one or the other (because of particular ECs or because of where you’re coming from) or about whether being in a high tech area appeals to you.
There is no particular reason for a pre-med to choose a school with an academic medical center attached unless, perhaps, they are a future MD/Phd and want a head start on medical research or have been engaged in medically related research in high school and want to continue it.
Many pre-meds come from schools with no medical research experience (although they have all done some science-related research) and no hospital-based medical volunteering (although they have all probably done some medical volunteering). Most schools are within range of a hospital in the US so if doing something hospital-based really matters to you, its usually doable in any case - the hospital doesn’t need to be part of the university. It’s also possible to do all of your research and volunteering for medical school over the summers since many students (athletes, musicians, etc…) can’t fit it into their schedules during the school year. So don’t rule out schools that would otherwise be a good fit, just because there’s no academic medical center attached.
As for OP’s list, any of the schools there are fine for pre-meds. You need to let us know what your criteria are for choosing schools so we can assess the fit. And as others have said, you can major in whatever you like as long as you complete the requirements, med schools are much less prestige sensitive than other fields, and you definitely want to pick somewhere that you are reasonably confident that you can earn a GPA of 3.7 or better.
I would say Tufts would be a better choice for premed than UNC OOS. My friend, who will be a senio next year, is part of their med school early assurance program; she was accepted her sophomore year. As a result, she doesn’t have to take the MCATs or go through the process of applying to med school. To be eligible to apply I believe you must have a 3.5 cumulative GPA in your science and math courses. That, for me, would be a reason to keep Tufts on my list.
Why are they in these pairings? Why can’t it be, for example, Columbia vs. UChicago? The pairings as they are pin two very different schools against each other, which makes me wonder about your overall list. Have you visited all of these schools? They all have very different vibes. I find it hard to imagine that somebody who loves Columbia would have as great of a time at Princeton, and vice versa.
Obviously none of those schools are bad. I think instead of pairing them up and eliminating four that way, you should look at your overall list and ask yourself what you want in a college (aside from prestige). Is being in a city important to you? That’ll cross some off. Do you want a small population of students? That’ll cross some off as well. I feel like that would be an easier and more helpful approach than the way it’s set up now.
This strategy has “only top schools for a premed” written all over it.
There is no particular reason for a pre-med to choose a school with an academic medical center attached unless, perhaps, they are a future MD/Phd and want a head start on medical research or have been engaged in medically related research in high school and want to continue it.
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Exactly. The OP’s strategy seems to be: “must go to a top undergrad, preferably one with a top rated med school, because that’s the way to become a great doctor.”
OP, your list has perhaps one safety (Rutgers, assuming you are from NJ) and no matches on it.
I agree with the recommendation to remove all of the OOS publics (W&M, UCLA, Berkeley, potentially Rutgers).
From there, I think you need to narrow down this list of now 16 reach universities to just 3-5 reaches, and then add some matches and safeties.
To narrow down, think about what you really want out of a university - rather than just applying to a spread of all the top schools. For example, NYU has a very nontraditional urban campus and the students tend to be an urbane lot with a different approach towards college. Pen and Columbia more or less have their own enclosed campuses in large urban areas. Dartmouth and Cornell, on the other hand, are both located in a small college town in the middle of nowhere. What do you want? It’s okay if you don’t know just yet, but that’s one factor that can help you narrow it down some.
They all have different social scenes, too - the feel at Duke (very Greek, big sports, Southern) is going to be very different from the quirky, cerebral vibe that Chicago has. Wake Forest is much smaller in size than the rest of the schools on the list, but even within the others there’s some variation - Penn is quite a bit bigger than Columbia, which I think is bigger than Columbia and Brown. Brown has an almost completely open curriculum, whereas Columbia has the Core.
So think about issues like that and get your list down to like 3-5 reaches. Then add some schools that you will probably get into (matches) and some schools you will almost definitely get into (safeties).
@juillet Thank you for helping me out. I’ve been thinking about it and I realized that I really have no preference in location–urban or rural. And like you said, I’ll probably take out all the public schools. However, because I really liked the vibe at Berkeley, I’ll probably keep that on my list.
I’m trying to narrow down my reaches and matches to 3 colleges each at the moment. Where would you recommend based on your knowledge of the premed programs?
It looks like the OP may not be in-state for any public Us.