If you had your choice… and knew you wanted to go to med school…
Can you help eliminate some of these schools?
Northeastern, Boston U, Fordham, Binghamton, U of Albany, Syracuse, U of Scranton, Wheaton, Emmanuel, Quinnipiac, Drew University…
Thanks!
Any schools that require you to go into significant debt - cross them off now. Any schools where, if you changed your major (and many people do, some more than once), you wouldn’t be happy even if the neuroscience program was top notch - cross those off. Any schools where your grades and test scores put you below the 50th percentile (and possibly below the top 25%) can be eliminated too. Medical schools aren’t prestige sensitive - they care mostly about GPA and MCAT scores. You want a school where you are comfortable no matter what you study, financially unencumbered, and reasonably confident that with the usual hard work, you can pull that 3.7 GPA that you need for med school. All the other considerations are a distant second.
Once you’ve narrowed the field, based on the above, I suggest that you check the size of the neuroscience faculty at each school, the breadth and depth of the coursework, and whether the research interests of the faculty in neuroscience match your own.
This bears repeating
Thus, you need to choose based on where you feel you’ll flourish (and have little/no debt). Whether some set of profs is “ranked” a few steps beyond another set is irrelevant. If you step on one campus and find the students churlish and the administration to be a pain in the rear, leave. If you visit another and envision yourself enjoying the school, classmates and community, choose that one.
If finances are not a problem I would say Northeastern or BU would give you your best options. I also applied to Northeastern and BU for neuroscience and both have good programs. It also depends on what you want in a college. If your goal is to go the most prestigious it’s one of those two, but hopefully you consider more than just that. Best of luck!
Only one answer come immediately to mind: PITT. Check it out here:
http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/about/
“The Undergraduate Program attracts a relatively large and academically successful group of majors, the great majority of whom go on to medical or graduate school. The faculty and graduate students form a substantial component of the campus-wide Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh (CNUP), an organization that serves the entire community of neuroscientists at this institution.”
I second Pitt, but without a substantial merit scholarship it might cost $40,000 OOS.
Go to the school that you can afford, where you would be best suited even if you did not end up applying to medical school. Most people who go into college intending to go into medicine change their minds along the way, or get washed out by O Chem. You want to get a good education and a marketable diploma even if you end up with a different degree.
Keep Binghamton. Which Wheaton?
Wheaton in Mass
Thank you everyone!
Not sure what your finances are like, but if you’d think about considering Pitt they can be great with sig merit aid (ACT 33+) even for OOS, and yes, they’re also terrific for neuro & pre-med.
Then another not on your list, but should be if need-based aid is a consideration is U Rochester (since you like Syracuse). They give merit too, but they’re still a high priced school even with most of their merit awards. They tend to meet need (CSS) otherwise.
(As a bit of a bias, my middle son is at URoc and Pitt was his second choice. He’s pre-med with Brain & Cog Sci + more majors and doing super, super well - loving it all.)
it’s probably too late to apply to Pitt no?
It is not too late to apply to Pitt.