I’m looking at University of Minnesota Twin Cities and I’m wondering how good their pre-med program is. Do they have some kind of partnership with Mayo because its so close? Also, I have a 30 act and a 3.8 gpa, do I have a good chance of getting in? Thanks!
UMN admits by college. The colleges most pertinent to a pre-med track would be CBS, CLA, and perhaps even CSE. What specifically do you want to major in? UMN does not offer a major called “pre-med”; rather, they encourage you to meet with your advisor and choose courses that meet the prereqs for Med School admission. Here is a list of all the undergraduate majors - scroll down a bit to see what the guidelines are for admission to a professional grad school program:
http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/admissioninfo/fresh_acadprog.html
Also, here is a link to UMN’s med school page specifying what their prereqs are. Guessing most med schools would have similar requirements:
https://www.med.umn.edu/admissions/how-apply/prerequisites
There are a few partnerships between UMN and Mayo but not sure how that impacts med school opportunities specifically so you’d need to research that or perhaps someone can chime in. Mayo does have its own medical school. And the University of MN system does have a health sciences campus in Rochester (where Mayo is located), although the med school and the flagship are both in the Twin Cities.
Is your GPA weighted or unweighted? What are you taking senior year? Assuming you are satisfying the college prep requirements, a 3.8 unweighted GPA and a 30 ACT should get you into CLA no problem and you’d have a fair-to-decent shot at CBS or even CSE. Here are the admission stats from last year:
http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/academics/profile.html
Good luck to you!
If you are interested in going to Med School after UG, you need to major in something you LOVE. The reason is that your GPA will be a major factor regarding if you even get an interview at a Med School.
Going CSE, Chemical Engineering (has all of required courses), will be extremely difficult to get a 3.5 or higher GPA.
Best bet is doing CLA and taking required Chem/Biology/Stats/Behavioral Science/etc. as electives. Sometimes Med Schools like students who do not go the STEM route. DW had Orthopedic Surgeon who was a Psych major and did not decide on Med School until Junior year at UM.
Any engineering is a bad pick due to grade deflation.
I agree cyclonesdad above - pick any major you love and where you’re absolutely excellent. CLA is likely your best bet. Honors college can mean smaller classes and thus knowing professors better for recommendations. In addition, honors students tend to do better in their honors classes because those match their learning style best, which is good to the GPA.
As a premed you’ll have to be top 10-20% in every class you take, so you have to balance each term well and hit the ground running.
In Minnesota, the colleges with Mayo partnerships are Carleton, St Olaf, and Macalester.
Gustavus is also good for premeds.
U of M also has a campus in Rochester downtown next to the Mayo Clinic. They specialize in medical prep degrees. http://r.umn.edu/
^ that’s what I thought but, disappointingly, they’re pretty explicit that being near the Mayo clinic doesn’t mean their students have any direct access to it.
Their science degrees are well structured, innovative, great interdisciplinary integration.
The campus is not much of a campus. It needs a lot of work not to feel like a sorta mall. (it’s also very very small, like, 500 students.)
Yea UMR is new and the current campus is a temporary campus. The U has purchased a bunch of land a few blocks south with plans to establish a full size campus. That is probably 4-8 years out still.