<p>i was curious as to how good UNC's program is for getting acceptance into the top med schools like Harvard, duke, JHU, etc. </p>
<p>no matter what college i go to im going to work my ass off to get into med school but i just wanted to know if graduating from UNC would help getting into the top med schools.</p>
<p>UNC has good pre-professional programs. But if you really wanted to be prepared, Davidson/W&M would be excellent. No competition for lab spaces with grad students/relationships with professors that write rec's/more opps to publish.</p>
<p>If you work hard you cant lose.</p>
<p>after the first or second year wouldn't it be easier to get more time in the lab or interact more with the profs?</p>
<p>yes, classes do thin out somewhat as junior and seniors but still will be competing with larger numbers of classmates as well as grad students. Its just the nature of large research schools. By definition, the emphasis is not on undergrads. </p>
<p>If you do well, you can get accepted at top med schools from UNC but you will be better prepared from smaller schools like W&M/Davidson/Carleton/Swarthmore</p>
<p>i see i see. well if you don't mind could you tell me a few of those liberal arts colleges that would be good for both journalism and premed program? thanks in advance swish!</p>
<p>swish</p>
<p>Are you a UNC student? What are you basing your comments on? You sound extremely biased against large universities. Considering the fact that the UNC med school is currently ranked number 2 for practicing medicine I would think that you would have to consider it a "top" program as well. </p>
<p>Your comment " Its just the nature of large research schools. By definition, the emphasis is not on undergrads." sounds like the typical pabulum that is too often repeated by those who don't really understand the opportunities that a larger research school can offer. Remember that UNC's undergrad enrollment is only around 15,000 students which is quite small when compared to Ohio State, Michigan, U of Texas and others. </p>
<p>I know of several cases over the last two years where freshmen have been working doing paid research in science labs. The opportunities are there, you have to seek them out and certainly being part of a "research" school lends opportunities that other smaller schools don't always have available.</p>
<p>Yonge</p>
<p>My son is an out-of-state junior at UNC who turned down a number of smaller schools (including Yale) to attend UNC on a scholarship. He is focusing on pre-med but majoring in lingusitics and religious studies which are both very strong areas at UNC. He already has the equivalent of a chem minor but apparently UNC won't allow declaring a minor (they call it a concentration I believe) with two majors. UNC has many very strong liberal arts programs/departments and in today's world unless you plan to go into medical research, you are often encouraged to find other things to major in than bio or chem for example.</p>
<p>I have never heard anything from him about competition with grad students for lab space or any type of bias against undergrads nor have I ever heard of him having a problem with access to profs. His two honors organic chem classes were small, taught by a full professor that he raved about and who not only made a point to be accessible to all but encouraged students to develop a relationship for reference purposes etc.</p>
<p>If you want journalism you are going to be hard pressed to find a small liberal arts school that combines a strong (read recognized) journalism program and a good premed background as well as UNC will. </p>
<p>Another important thing to consider is AP credit. He entered UNC with 43 hours AP credit which allowed him to skip intro level bio and chem among others and he was taking upper division classes freshman year. He is currently in grad level classes in one of his majors. At many liberal arts schools IF they give any AP credit at all, it is usually placement and NOT actual credit. Having both the placement AND credit has allowed him to take classes that he WANTED to take to enrich his undergrad experience and bypass many of the more mundane required (and hence larger) classes. It also has allowed him to register for classes earlier because registration is done on a class-by-class basis with seniors getting first priority etc. He was already technically a sophomore his first year and has been a senior for registration purposes all this year.</p>
<p>UNC is a great school, don't be put off by naysayers. Good luck!</p>
<p>thanks eadad. and im planning on doing a double major in biology and journalism (in which UNC is among the top 3 or 4) so i know i will be set in the journo. but im glad to hear theres plenty of u-grad research available and that UNC premed is also damn good.</p>
<p>eadad,
With the new change in curriculum, your son can now declare 2 majors and a minor (or one major and two minors). :-).</p>
<p>in response to the OP, hard. my friends at UNC who are as smart as I am/smarter have lower GPAs than I do at Brown, as grade inflation is pretty rampant here</p>
<p>On the other hand, I know premeds at Wake and Davidson who have a much harder time keeping a decent gpa than equivalent students at UNC.</p>