I am at a complete standstill between these three schools. I just don’t know where to go. Someone please help.
Am planning to go through a pre-med track + Biochem.
BU: Heard it has grade deflation + the program is extremely hard. Some have tokd me not many completed their pre-med experience at BU. However, it has its own medical school, but I don’t know if BU med favors its undergrads. The train and the fear of losing myself within a huge campus is a bit of a turn-off for me.
BC: Quaint school, ranked top 30. I was told the advisors and STEM in general at BC are awful. However, I keep seeing BC turn up constantly in many lists where medical schools report most commonly represented undergraduate institutions.
Holy Cross: Beautiful campus, great professors. But, the workload I hear is way way too much. They have a new science complex though.
Pre med will be hard wherever you go. A bio major at BC will not be a cake walk. There is no easy track to med school. Of the 3, Holy Cross has the best rep for premed, but all 3 will give you an excellent education. Perhaps try and talk to a bio student at each school? BC and BU are much bigger than HC, so they may have more going to med school in the absolute sense, but perhaps not percentage wise.
Holy Cross would be at the bottom of any list I made for premed. There’s this, for starters
So its possible that you won’t even get the classes you need at HC in order to even be eligible to apply to med school. Oops.
But it gets worse.
You should know that Holy Cross will only write a favorable recommendation letter to medical schools for its top students. They make no bones about doing this.
Applying without a favorable letter is futile, so in effect Holy Cross controls who applies to med school. Consequently this gives them a high med school acceptance rate. To the kids who paid $200K to attend Holy Cross and were then blocked from applying to med school, I guess them’s just the breaks…
HC doesn’t work magic to get the 80% med school rate they boast about, turning lead into gold. All you really need to know is in this chart: https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf Let me write the committee letters and I could get any college in the country a 80% rate.
@mikemac That’s the same everywhere. That type of process is good for the student so they can reassess career plans if needed.
The committee letter is a red herring. If you don’t have the grades or MCAT scores you don’t get into medical school anyway. If your college issues committee letters and you don’t provide one, the medical school will not consider you. The committee letter is just a validation of the student’s work.
Over 10% of living HC alumni are either drs, dentists or vets. That is a very high number.
Oh, really? Open the link the the Association of American Medical Colleges I gave and think about it again. Someone with a 20% chance of admission to med school based on GPA and MCAT, you think HC writes a favorable letter? Someone with a 10% chance? It’s a rhetorical question, my friend. It’s obvious they can’t write favorable letters for low-odds candidates if their overall average is 80%.
It’s not a black-or-white question they way you try frame it. Someone with a 20% chance or 10% chance that is allowed to apply by either attending a school w/o a committee letter such as most publics or one where the letter is non-evaluative, they end up with a 20% or 10% chance of getting in. HC writes a letter with anything other than “recommended” in it, the chances become 0%. You write this “is good for the student.” Maybe you can’t see the difference between odds of 1-in-5 and 0, but I think most people can.
Bubbles: Mike is a long-time poster, and extremely knowledgeable.
Yes, BC has a Committee process, but: 1) you don’t have to be in the premed program to get classes*; 2) they will write a letter for anyone, even a student with C’s. HC would never allow that, essentially eliminating that student’s chances from maybe 5% to absolute zero. In essence, HC is doing the work of the medical school’s admissions committee. But why? (My cynical guess is that it only serves to keep HC’s med acceptance rate high.)
*If Chem lab is full, chem lab is full. And, at HC, that priority goes to those approved to be in the premed program.
@mikemac@bluebayou Looks like that premed program will eventually screw me over. But here’s the thing though: why would BC write letters for students that have no chance? If they’re getting Cs, then won’t they be rejected from medical school anyway? Isn’t HC doing those students a favor?
It would have been a favor if they’d told them that Med school was not in the cards and they should plan on PT, PA, etc. Or that is was time to set their sights into something else. Foe kids toys arrive at the end of junior year and being blocked too late to change course is not ‘helping’.
In fact the committee letter system *as used at hc * was so noxious they gave up on it last year, but most of their policies stay in place. HC is a terrific college. Just not for premeds.
If you’re smart, motivated and work hard, Holy Cross is a great place for premed. Don’t sell yourself short. But why don’t you talk directly to both schools. You’ll likely make a more informed decision that way
Is that really the responsibility of 2-3 advisors at a liberal arts college? Isn’t that what med school adcoms get paid for?
While perhaps true, its no more true than at any other college. But here’s the thing: ALL colleges have smart, motivated premeds who work hard. But obviously not all of them make it thru the gauntlet. And in such cases, I’d rather be at a larger college which offers a plethora of other majors of which to consider. (But then, that’s a big difference between a LAC and mid-sized Uni.)
@Bigredmed (member here thru med school & residency, now a doctor) answered this a long time back
But you miss the real thrust of what people are telling you.
HC can not be refusing to write positive recs only for “students that have no chance”. Look at the link I gave earlier where the Association of American Medical Colleges gives the acceptance rate for the entire US applicant pool based on GPA & MCAT. For HC to get an overall 80% acceptance rate they must refuse positive recs to those with a 25% chance, 30% chance, etc. I don’t know the cutoff to end up with a 80% average, but I find it both heartbreaking and inexcusable to refuse to recommend a kid with (for example) a 1-in-3 chance of getting into med school and turning her/his chances to zero.
I think @bluebayou brings up a good point. Would you prefer to be at a LAC or a small university? Answer that question and you’ll find the school that’s right for you. Can’t go wrong with either- but comes down to your preference for school size and style. But whichever you choose, don’t walk in the door fearing you’re going to get weeded out of the med school applicant pool. Good luck!
Irrespective of the suggestions that they have done so, Holy Cross may not have exercised any extreme or particularly unfair methods to achieve a medical school acceptance rate of 80%.
This is from another LAC’s website:
The “Advisory Committee prepares a letter of recommendation for any student who wishes to apply” and “There is no GPA requirement to receive a letter of support.” Nonetheless, even with this unrestricted policy, “More than 92% of students with a GPA of 3.5 were admitted the first time they applied.”
^^Anyone who has taken AP Stats, knows that something must be going on with the numerator and/or the denominator. No college – NONE – have an admission rate that high, not Harvard, not Yale, not Stanford, not MIT, not Hopkins.
Thereis no humanely possible way that HC has an 80% admit rate without fussing the numbers. It is impossible. Conversely, if it really was 80%, the applications to HC would be in the tens of thousands; there are premeds around the world who would pay sticker for those kinds of odds. (Think about it critically.)
That being said, HC is a wonderful LAC, with a Jesuit education.
Why don’t you call the premed advisor at your 3 choices and ask about their policies? They answer the phone and should be delighted to talk to a prospective student. After all you’ll be working with them once you enroll, might as well get a start now.