DD has been admitted to Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Bryn Mawr. She wants a strong Biology program and good record of undergrad research and admission to medical school.
What are the metrics she should look at? What are the questions she should be asking?
If anyone has opinions on these schools programs that would be helpful too!
She has some excellent choices. All of those schools send students to top medical schools every year, so that will not be an issue, as long as she does well on the MCAT. (I know that something like 75% of Wellesley students who apply to med school are accepted, while the national average is around 50%.) She should get in touch with the biology faculty at each school and ask about research opportunities, lab space, time, etc.
You will hear of something called “grade deflation” at Wellesley, but don’t let that scare you.
Ah, but what does 75% of Wellsely students who apply to Med School really mean?
re: Med school acceptance rates (and I am making up numbers)
2000 kids think they are going to go to med school as a freshman.
1000 kids think they are going to go to med school as a sophomore because they made it through chem and bio
500 kids think they are going to go to med school as a junior because they made it through organic chem
200 kids think they are going to go to med school as a senior because they got decent scores on the MCAT and have a good GPA
100 kids actually apply and get through the whole process
50 kids get a recommendation letter from the pre-health committee so the others are effectively shut out
37 of those kids are accepted to various levels of DO or MD schools
So when they say 75% are admitted, they don’t mean from the 2000 freshman, they may mean from the 50 cream of the crop that made it to the end with high GPAs and high MCAT scores who got the blessing of the pre-health committtee…and some of those are going to Harvard Med and some of those are going to East Podunk DO school.
So make sure you understand what they mean when they talk about those percentages,
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-propsner/girls-in-stem_b_3810383.html
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/85410-pre-med-7-sisters.html
@CValle
My D’s best friend had to decide among those schools for sciences (Chem and Physics) but not premed. She visited those colleges a lot and had some overnights. She found out that really could not see her self in W or S but loved MoHo and B-M. In the end she decided to go to B-M because she found she really appreciated the cross registration with H and that she loved the location and the vibe of the school more. Those schools are small and not urban so your D will spend a lot of time on campus with the other students. She should go to the schools that she likes best.
@bopper, it means exactly what I said, 75% of W students WHO APPLY to med school get accepted. Apply, as in, actually send in their applications to medical schools. It does not mean those who enter as freshman thinking they might want to go to med school or any of the other categories you stated.
If the medical school admission rate is high, it probably means that the premed committee dissuades the less likely premeds from applying, usually refusing committee letters, which makes the chances nil if the premed does apply.
If the premed prefers to know early that s/he should cut losses and go a different direction, that may be desirable. But if the premed would want to try anyway even if unlikely, that may not be desirable.
Undergraduate ‘programs’ for specific majors are generally not ranked outside of a few fields, primarily because the “undergraduate program” at most universities is a wide-ranging holistic liberal arts education. All three of these are excellent women’s colleges with opportunities in the biological sciences and research. They all also benefit from being nearby other large research universities - at BMC she can do research at Bryn Mawr, at Haverford or Swarthmore, or at Penn; at MHC and Smith, she can do it at MHC, Amherst, Smith, or UMass-Amherst; at Wellesley she’s got many good universities in Boston with biomedical strengths.
So I think she should also look at the environment as well. Which of these does she prefer for other reasons besides just biology? Do they have other academic offerings she might be interested in? (The Five Colleges has a Culture, Health, and Society certificate, as well as a Biomathematics certificate program. The Bi-Co has health studies. Wellesley has a Health and Society minor.). What about the social environment? Because of their consortia, there may be more opportunities for co-ed socialization at Mount Holyoke, Smith, or Bryn Mawr than Wellesley - which may be good or bad depending on her preferences. The Pioneer Valley is an intellectual, college-student-dominated region; the greater Boston area also has a strong academic vibe. Bryn Mawr and Wellesley will offer a more suburban experience with easy access to larger cities while Mount Holyoke and Smith are farther away from urban centers.