Make sure you pick a school that has support services for you. I went to a great premed school but not because it was nurturing to its prospective med school applicants. It was a gauntlet, and many, if not most kids like the OP were eliminated very quickly. Without strong preparation and with peers who have had the strongest preparation and support, it’s hardly a level playing field for those who come without parental backing and a strong academic preparation. To just go straight up into a premed major is not a challenge, but a possible massacre. Get info on what the schools have to help you get your base up to where everyone else’s is, so you are prepared for the challenge. You have to be armed and ready when it comes to academic rigor, particularly in the premed courses.
@cptofthehouse , your post kind of scared me, but I like the truth! I am going to do some research on Dartmouth and Amherst to see which school provides the kind of support that you stated (I’d assume Amherst).
I expect they are going to have different level classes, and a placement exam to determine whether it is appropriate to take higher levels, rather than have students at Jalaquan’s level do something special to get their base up. I did the pre-med track at Stanford after coming from a basic public high school where most students failed the NYS regents exams in some STEM fields, although I took university classes at a higher level than HS like Jalaquan did. The pre-med classes usually had a choice of series at multiple different levels, which students could select For example, the physics track had an advanced series that assumed mastering AP physics. Most students taking this class were contemplating a physics major. They also had a standard standard physics series that used calculus. Most students taking the series were engineering students. Pre-med and humanities students usually took a more basic series that did not require knowledge of math beyond trigonometry or much physics background in HS. I’d expect Stanford would recommend that students who do not do well on the placement exam take this series. Looking up Physics at Dartmouth, I see that they use a similar approach with a placement exam and 3 physics levels – a basic series that has reduced math requirements, one with normal math requirements, and one advanced honors version. That said, I wouldn’t assume Jalaquan would do poorly on placement exams or poorly in college classes since he previously mentioned getting A’s in dual enrollment classes at a local university.