Hi! I am a junior in high school this year, so I am beginning to think seriously about college. I really want to go to medical school and become an OB/GYN. However, I know medical school admissions are really tough. One question that I am trying to figure out right now is how much the rank of a particular undergraduate school matters. I have a 35 on my ACT (will take it again this weekend 
), and I have a good chance of qualifying for National Merit Semifinalist. By the time I graduate, I’ll have taken 12 AP courses and currently, I have a 4.0 UW GPA, I am 3rd in my class of 200-something people, I play the piano pretty well, and I am involved in a few clubs that I really enjoy, so I could possibly get into some pretty high ranked schools. However, I have been told that your class rank in undergraduate school matters a lot for medical school admissions. Would it be worth it to go to a not-so-academically elite school so I’ll probably rank higher? Or do the elite schools look good enough to offset that? Do they actually offer more opportunities? Money is also an issue for us since we have the nice little problem of making too much for need-based aid but not enough to pay full tuition out of state. I’ve looked at some “elite” schools that give merit scholarships and I plan to apply to them and just see if any of them accept me and give me enough money, but even if I get a scholarship, should I go? Or should I go to a less competitive school where my rank will probably be higher and it probably will be easier to keep a near-perfect GPA? Do medical schools care about how prestigious your undergrad is? My backup, if I don’t get good enough scholarships anywhere else, is the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and my current dream school is Vanderbilt. Some other schools I’m looking at are UVM, UVA, Rhodes, UNC, University of Rochester, WashU, University of Richmond, Claremont McKenna, and Williams College.
Thanks!!
I’m tagging @WayOutWestMom who can tell you about the weight medical schools put on the ranking of your undergrad school.
I will say…you are a strong student and it sounds like you will do well wherever you attend college and that is what matters at the end of the day.
Re medical school…it’s nice that you want to be an Ob-Gyn, but please understand, your mind could change about that and especially after you do clinical rotations in many areas during medical school….should you get to medical school.
Your class rank doesn’t matter as much as your GPA and sGPA…and your MCAT score. In my opinion….
It matters relatively little. Students are accepted to medical school from everything ranging from the Ivy League colleges to state flagships like the University of North Dakota.
The bigger difference is that if you don’t go to medical school, either because you changed your mind or because you didn’t get in, the elite college offer more opportunities outside of medical school.
And every medical school prospective needs that Plan B!
Thanks! Yeah I know with the OB/GYN specialty thing, it’s just what I’m passionate about at the moment. But who knows if I’ll really like it when I have to actually do it. I may not even go to medical school. I’ve heard lots of stories of people who go into college pre-med and come out with a degree in something totally different.
That is a very good point I hadn’t thought of. If I don’t go into medicine, I’ll almost definitely go into some STEM field with a teeny tiny chance of music. If I do something in STEM, like a biologist or space really interests me so I guess there’s also that, is it a super big difference with opportunities from different schools or when applying to graduate schools for masters or Ph.D programs?
This.
You really need to keep an open mind. You may find a different passion along the way.
If your question did not center around medical school admission, which requires somewhat of a separate analysis, a college such as Williams may offer characteristics and attributes that might make it worth its full price. For a media opinion on this, Forbes included Williams in this article from several years ago, “10 Expensive Colleges Worth Every Penny”:
The other “worth it” consideration is whether any extra cost would be debt (including medical school debt that you may need if you choose a more expensive undergraduate school). Large debt can limit your career and life choices.
I would have to go into debt to pay the full price, and medical school will be more debt. I don’t think I’ll go anywhere if it’s so expensive that I’ll have to take out more than a really small loan, even if it’s considered to be worth it. I don’t think my parents would let me, either.
Yeah. That is a big factor, which is why all of the colleges on my list offer merit scholarships. I’m just going to go into money specifics–My parents can cover around 20k per year. Maybe 25. I’m very thankful for that. They will not be paying for medical school, which makes sense. I don’t think most people’s parents do. I am prepared to go into debt for medical school, but because of that I really don’t want to go into debt for my undergraduate degree. I would take out a small loan if I really have to, like if I’m already there and my family’s circumstances change and the college won’t give me aid to make up the difference or I’m short only a few thousand dollars a year of an amazing school and have exhausted every other option. But yeah money definitely goes into the “worth it” equation. The other thing is that I have about 35k in a college fund account, so if I go somewhere completely free (most likely University of Arkansas and possibly somewhere else if I win a full ride), my parents said they would cover living costs without touching the college fund and the money will be there to put a tiny dent in medical school. So many things to consider lol.
While not of zero importance, the undergrad you attend is much, much, much less important than what you do and accomplish during undergrad. Your grades, GPA/sGPA, MCAT, LORs, activities, leadership roles, personal statements, secondary essays are all weighted more heavily than where you went to school.
is it a super big difference with opportunities from different schools or when applying to graduate schools for masters or Ph.D programs?
Some, but not as much as may people think. Science is smaller field than most people realize. Aside from excellent UL elective grades, research experience and a strong GRE score, the personal contacts you make and your research mentors contacts/LORs will be more important than where you went to school.
(When D1 was looking at colleges to major in a science field that her dad held a PhD and was an active researcher in, she used to complain that her dad always seemed to know someone in the X dept faculty at every college she mentioned. She once asked him–with exasperation – if he knew someone on the faculty in the X department at every college in the US. He thought seriously for a long minute and said, “No, but I probably know someone who knows someone.”)
But one thing to consider if you’re looking a PhD (as opposed to med school), there is less breadth of coursework and more limited research opportunities at LACs than at larger, research oriented institutions. LACs sometime only offer upper level electives every other year and only have a few active research areas.
Thank you! I mainly started looking at LAC’s because of the smaller size and the liberal arts way of taking more things outside your major. But I don’t want to go to a super tiny college either. I was planning to do a B.A. in biology and possibly doubly major but definitely at least minor in music composition or general music. I could change my major to another stem field, but I’ll probably keep music in there somewhere. Would a BA look worse than a BS? I can’t really doubly major in something in the humanities without doing a whole dual degree if I do a BS (unless I’m misunderstanding something). But, I know a BA is less intensive than a BS.
It depends on how degrees are structured at your college. Some colleges only offer BA degrees which have zero differences from what would be a BS elsewhere.
Other colleges offer BA and BS as two distinct tracks. At colleges that do this, a BA requires fewer UL electives and co-requisite classes than a BS does. For a PhD program considering a student for admission, this can be interpreted as being a less rigorous degree. It wouldn’t automatically disqualify you, but it may also mean you’d need to “make up” some undergrad classes that are expected/are pre-reqs for grad level classes.
I can’t really doubly major in something in the humanities without doing a whole dual degree if I do a BS (unless I’m misunderstanding something).
Sure you can, but it will take plenty of careful planning in advance to make sure you can fit all the required classes in your schedule. D2 did a BS-BA double degree with only taking 1 or 2 summer classes, but she had her class schedules for all 4 years of her degrees planned out by midway through her freshman year. It helped that her undergrad didn’t have a core curriculum
or hard GE distribution requirements.
I am not an expert on med school admissions but I am a doctor and I would say that your number one goal is to spend as little as possible on undergraduate. Medical school is expensive and obgyns do not make a ton of money anymore. The road is long and paved with decreased reimbursement rates!
However, it seems you included Williams, which does not offer merit scholarships, in your list of schools under consideration.
Oops. I guess I missed that on their website. Thank you!
Cool! Where did she go to college? How would I know which one of those categories a school fits into? Compare the course requirements for each major?
Another doctor here seconding the post above about saving as much money as you can without compromising the quality of your undergraduate institution. This means that schools that aren’t “prestigious” in terms of USNWR ranking are often the best options: a person’s in-state flagship (possibly as an honors college student, also as a scholarship or even full-ride student when those are options) and/or colleges with true merit money (beware the new phenomenon of “large” merit awards that bring down the inflated sticker price of a private college at which almost no one pays that full sticker price).
Consider applying to out of state flagships that host unique opportunities for out of state kids: these range from super-elite full-rides (like the one at UVA) and numbers-oriented full-rides (like in Alabama). Both great options for pre-meds, for obvious reasons.
Also, if you’re serious about a hard-core interest in science, specifically scientific research, there is the funded MD/PhD route (usually MSTP). It looks like “free” med school but if you calculate lost earnings for the PhD years you don’t really come out ahead in the long run. But if it’s the right path for you, then it’s a great road; for this, I’d say undergrad “prestige” may play a bit more of a role, but larger universities offer ample opportunity to find an undergrad research mentor, and that’s a big part of the package for applicants.
Finally, the military has some good deals for financing med school, if you’re interested in making that commitment.
Thanks! Would the other state schools I put go under the category of what you were saying? I had the University of Vermont and UNC as well. If not, what are some more examples? I don’t want to go somewhere with more than 30-35 thousand students, so UIUC, UT Austin, and UMich are all definite No’s. I live in Louisiana but I really don’t want to go to LSU. Arkansas will give me 90% off the difference between in-state and out-of-state automatically based on my grades and being from Louisiana, and I may be able to win scholarships on top of that. I toured it and liked it, but it still felt overwhelmingly big. I considered the MD/Ph.D. route simply because I like research, but I also want to have kids and I don’t know if delaying making money any more than becoming a doctor already does would be a good idea since I want to have a family after I get financially stable but before I get too old lol. I do not want to join the military, thanks for the idea though!