I have heard from a lot of friends who go there that BU is an amazing college to attend especially as a pre med. If you are a pre med, or just go to BU, how is it? What is the lifestyle while on campus? How are lectures and research opportunities?
The key criteria for premeds is 1) how collaborative is the environment? Are there clasees that are deliberately weedout with fixed number of As and Bs? 2) is its net cost below the amount parents gave?
So, run the NPC.
Ridiculous amount of weed out, every premed class (with maybe the exception of intro bio) acts as if it is their specific goal in life to see you fail. I am not premed myself, but most of my basic requirements overlap with premeds. They are always ridiculously stressed, though I imagine that’s typical. Gpa’s are definitely lower for most people than they would like for med school admissions due to weed out nature of courses. I would suggest majoring in something other than bio unless you’re super interested in it, choose something you enjoy instead to balance out the academic load.
That being said, there is a competitive 7 yr med program from incoming freshman, or the mmedic program for people to apply to in sophomore or junior year to help you get a jump start on med school. You have to be really competitive for this though.
There are a lot of universities with very good premed programs.
However, if you want to keep open the possibility of going to medical school, then you need to budget for 8 years of university. Most of the people that I know who were accepted to BU did not find it to be particularly affordable.
I am not sure what state you are from, but it is very likely that you should be looking at your in-state flagship.
At colleges that do not week out premeds the weed out process comes with the medical school rejection letters.
^not necessarily. Many collaborative LACs do an excellent job both not “weeding out” and advising students to ensure a high percentage of acceptance to med schools. It doesn’t mean classes are easy - just that all resources are provided to students so that they do succeed. When a large premed class includes 45 students it’s possible, not when it includes 500.
Keep in mind students who may have the grades for med school may discover sophomore year they really don’t like studying biology or chemistry but love something else. Some, despite their professors’ and their own best efforts, simpy can’t get the grades they need (which is different from weedout classes).
@MYOS1634 At highly selective colleges the weeding out is done through the freshman admissions office.
Except that some colleges add weedout classes to that weedout.
what does weed out mean
It’s a class deliberately set up so that 2/3 students don’t have a med-school worthy grade, regardless of how strong the students are or how hard they work
@TN034154 Difficult classes that will test whether you have what it takes to be a medical school applicant. Orgo Chemistry is one such class. Some colleges have low admissions standards so many premed hopefuls will realize that their GPA will not get them into medical school so they change majors or career direction.
^ that’s not what a deliberately weedout class is. Premed pre-reqs are hard. They’re hard everywhere.
But some universities make it harder, by making it not just about mastering extremely difficult material, often by curving.
Some students simply, despite their best efforts, can’t handle some of the classes.
However at some colleges students who can handle the material are cut anyway
A deliberately weedout class is a class where the number of students allowed to have a med-school worthy grade is deliberately limited, regardless of student achievement, so that students in another university, with the same hard class but no weedout policy, would have succeeded.
Orgo is often mentioned as a typical weedout class in that it discourages some students because it’s really hard and those who don’t have
rock solid study skills and scientific thinking do poorly. But some Universities make that class even harder by curving, with an average grade at B- typically, meaning half the class can’t get higher than a B- and of course stusents ought to have not a B- or a B but a B+ or an A- and those are limited in number. It doesn’t matter if one year 40% in the class did B+and higher level work if there are only 20%B+/A planned. In that situation, 20% have been deliberately weeded out.
My mom has a masters in chemistry and biology and she can teach me these subjects before/during college. Would it be wise to do that summer before college because summer before junior year she taught be biochemistry (the basic stuff)
Strictly speaking, the best preparation is for you to have taken all three of bio, chem, and physics in HS, as well as, if possible, AP Bio and AP Chem, not take the credit, and do your best in the class. The most important subject would be chemistry, if you can’t take both.
In addition, pace yourself. Fall freshman year, take chemistry 1, calculus 1, English, two gen eds. Spring, take Chem 2, Bio1, Biostats, sociology or psychology, and one gen ed - perhaps in a subject you can major in (don’t major in biology, there’s such an oversupply of them…) Make up Bio 2 during summer session or Maymester at your university or at a nearby U (check with your U that it’ll transfer). Or take Bio 1 in the Fall, Chem1 and Bio2 in the Spring, and Chem2 in the summer. The easiest way for a premed to stop all possibilities of med school is to take all three (bio, chem, calc) during the first semester Freshman year.
On the topic of weed outs, typically the weed out class has exam averages typically seen as failing grades (think 40s 50s and MAYBE 60s) so that they have all the power in creating a rigid curve. They make it really difficult to succeed, and dont care to accurately assess your learning in a class, they just want to make it near impossible for you to be accepted into med school. Very frustrating for premeds, even more so for people who are not premed but have the same overlapping requirements! It is not that these classes should be any more difficult than other classes content wise, they just make it difficult for you to do well and learn the material well (think one exam, ten questions, little to no partial credit for wrong answer. 2 wrong, you’re already at an 80! Except they design the questions so that it looks like something youve never even seen before in class, so you’ll likely get more than 2 wrong).
Ask your friends who are in BU as pre-med show you their transcript (if they’re willing so), otherwise take that as a conspiracy to “trick” you go there. In Boston area, BU is probably the worst private school for pre-med because of their ridiculous weed-out, in addition to poor financial aid. It has a beautiful location right by the river, though.
Weed-out happens in almost all colleges and it is particularly worst for pre-meds since a med school worthy GPA is 3.7 these days which means A- average. When pre-meds getting a C or less in pre-med classes, it is almost a death sentence. Bad weed-out class is usually having C+/B- as class average. It is very easy for the professor to jack up the exam difficulty by throwing one or two graduate-level questions in mid-terms or final…there will be one or two smart kids who would answer right but majority will flunk. The school is doing this weed-out for a very simple reason => cut down the final pre-med applicants applying to med school. Typicall 3/4 (75%) so-called pre-meds won’t make it to the applying stage.
So some kids go to less-competitive school and apply with 3.7+ GPA, and some go to BU and apply with 3.5- GPA and who you think has better chance getting med school interview (assuming everything else equal…MCAT, ECs…)?
would preping for these courses help? My mom has a masters in bio and chem and she can teach me the basic stuff before college and tutor me while i am in college
Sure it could help, but unless that tutoring helps land you in the top 10% of the class average, you won’t be getting an A. Note that I am NOT trying to discourage you, I am just trying to be realistic. That is the way the curve works normally.
@AwesomeAxolotl Hi! I’m not trying to say this rudely or anything, I’m genuinely just curious, what are your sources for this info?
^Actually, pretty much all courses that are deliberately weedout will have a roughly 10% quota of A’s (could be 5% A, 10% A- but you get the idea). Then about 20% at the B/B+ level. So, 70% will be below recuperable for a med school worthy grade. Keep in mind that ALL students in the class were A students in high school.