<p>I am currently a pre-med student finishing his freshman year at Vanderbilt University. At this point, I am extremely tempted to transfer because I think I would have a better shot at medical school.</p>
<p>This semester GPA - 3.2-3.5 (haven't gotten final grades back)
Orgo - A
Calc - B+
Neuroscience - B</p>
<p>I am currently a neuroscience major and corporate strategy minor and have realized my limits at this school. I have pretty much capped myself at getting 3.6-3.7 overall gpa with around a 3.3 or 3.4 science GPA. It seems as though a B+ or A- is very, very hard to get in science courses while A's are usually downright impossible in most cases.</p>
<p>However, being at VU has opened up more opportunities for extracurriculars than can be imagined. I am currently working on a medical related IPhone and Droid application and doing research for it, I have an internship my sophomore year summer for cancer research, and the classes are preparing me for the MCAT more than I would have expected. I have shown my orgo tests to friends at state schools and they admit that they would get less than half of them correct while I can easily ace their exam.</p>
<p>My question is: Would it be in my best interest to transfer to a state school in order to raise my gpa up to the 3.7-3.9 area?</p>
<p>I talk to high school premed friends who say they spend no more than 2 hours a night on work and still get amazing GPA's while I am putting in up to 8 hours a night and still struggle. I'm not so sure that the pros of premed at vandy compensate for the extreme grade deflation and lack of curves. Vanderbilt will prepare me for medical school better than most schools, but it may make it extremely difficult to get into one in the first place.</p>
<p>I just want to make it clear that I do NOT want to attend a top 10 medical school (ohio in-state would be just fine in my opinion)</p>
<p>I have heard of grade deflation at Vanderbilt, although I feel most people complain about the difficulty and course-work at the private institution they attend (i.e. As were hard to come by at my school too). What I would check out before you make your decision is the difficulty and grading scheme in the upper division neuroscience courses. This will be department dependent and I would ask the junior/senior neuro majors if I were you. For example, the pre-med weeding stopped after the lower level (organic chem, intro bio, gen chem) science courses and getting As/A-s became much more attainable (less competition, you had learned how to study, more interesting coursework). However, this was only true in the mol bio department for me, and I purposefully did not take a single neuroscience course because they were well known for their C average (thanks to a professor who strongly believed in the UK bell curve and abhorred US grade inflation <em>eye roll</em>).</p>
<p>Something else I would consider, is will you be happy at your state school? Will there be the same opportunities, and how strong is their pre-med advising? </p>
<p>Something else to consider: a 3.6-3.7 will get you into a medical school, and a 3.7 will not stop you from attending a top school.</p>
<p>If you need financial aid to go to college, don’t transfer. Transfer students don’t get much/any aid. </p>
<p>My nephew is a soph pre-med at Vandy. He has straight As, so it certainly is possible. However, he relies on Rate my professor to pick his profs.</p>
<p>Thanks for a quick reply. I am way ahead of you in regards to talking to older students.</p>
<p>The reason I got a B in intro neuro was mainly because I have not taken biology, ever. It would have helped more than you could have imagined.</p>
<p>Neuroscience at Vanderbilt is both one of the best AND hardest majors. The professors in the department are considered the best by both other professors and students. I have heard nothing but positive feedback on the teaching.</p>
<p>Grading on the other hand is actually consistent throughout. A solid B is easy to get if you put the work into it, but anything above takes above and beyond. There are a few classes that I have been told to avoid however. I decided on Neuro major because of how much I enjoy it and how I think it will help me in medical school/my future, not taking into consideration how it could hurt my gpa and science gpa.</p>
<p>Dude I know what you mean. It sucks when I talk about school work with my friends at Texas A&M because they have to put in like 3.5 hours a night, while I am putting in close to 7 hours a day outside of class. Sometimes I feel like a ■■■■■■ compared to my friends back home because they have amazing gpas at A&M but they only study half the amount that I do.</p>
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<p>I have experienced the same thing in my pre-req classes at my school but I have heard from upperclassmen that after the pre-reqs the curves are a lot more generous in upper level science classes. </p>
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<p>If you are doing better in another subject, say poli sci, why not major in that? You don’t have to major in a science to go to medical school. This way, you can take only easy upper level science classes to boost your gpa. </p>
<p>Also are you a freshman? If so, you can try and learn from your mistakes this year and try to improve. Do some introspection. Thats what I did the summer after my freshman year, and it really helped improve my study habits.</p>
<p>***One way where you can stand out, is on the MCATs. The MCATs are a level playing field for everyone. So if you have a 3.6 from Vanderbilt, and a 36+ MCAT score while another student has a 3.9 from a state school in ohio, but a 29 MCAT score, medical schools will realize that your gpa was lower because you had to take harder classes. Your 36 will demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in medical school.</p>
<p>Just couple comments based on my D’s experiences at state UG. There is no “easy” school, although some geniuses think otherwise. I am talking from prospective of regular priavet HS valedictorian, not a person who do not need to study and know everything on their tests. Yes, D. has accomplish everything and beyond, but she had to work very hard for it at her non-flagship state school. No 2 hours / day, many many more, sometime going over material in her head while walking from class to class. You do what you got to do. She has never had a single “B” in her life and she wanted to participate in a lot of EC’s and graduating with unrelated minor in music.
My second comment is in regard to opportunities, both medically related and otherwise. It seems that they are everywhere. D’s UG does not have Med. School. However, D. has been intern at Med. Research lab fro several years and is very happy with her experiences there. She had many other awesome opportunites at her school, some she had to turn down because of time commitments to others. She also had top notch pre-med advising that insured that her Med. School application process went very smoothly.
Yes, D. did not apply to very top Med. schools although she was strongly advised to do so based on her GPA and MCAT. However, she applied to wide range of Med. Schools and got accepted to couple top 20 and had very good choices at the end, attending one of them in couple months.
I do not know how Med. Schools will look at transfer. However, getting academic background and participate in EC’s should be a problem at any UG.</p>
<p>I tried to put this in my last post, but I can’t edit a post 20 mins after I put it. </p>
<p>***One way where you can stand out, is on the MCATs. The MCATs are a level playing field for everyone. So if you have a 3.6 from Vanderbilt, and a 36+ MCAT score while another student has a 3.9 from a state school in ohio, but a 29 MCAT score, medical schools will realize that your gpa was lower because you had to take harder classes. Your 36 will demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in medical school. </p>
<p>The whole purpose of any standarized test is to put students on level playing field. The same thing goes for the SATs, if a student has a 3.9 from some random public school but a 1700 SAT score, college adcoms will think that their random public school just gave out As to everyone. If a student from a elite New England boarding school has a 3.6 gpa but a 2300 SAT score, adcoms will realize that it must have been damn hard to do well at that boarding school. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the same thing applies to med. schools. If a student went to a no-name school with a 3.9 but a 28 MCAT score, medical school adcoms will see that school as a place where everyone got As. If a student from, idk DUKE, had a 3.6 but a 39 MCAT score medical schools will realize that getting As at that school must have been no walk in the park.</p>
<p>Not too smart. I’m guessing that Bio was a prereq? Or a Cog Pscyh class?</p>
<p>Ask the Vandy premed office for acceptance results, preferably in a 2x2 chart (where the axes are gpa and mcat). WashU is a top school, for example, and even their 3.2 students do well in admissions without a superlative mcat score.</p>
<p>You might find that a 3.6/32 at Vandy has a very good acceptance rate.</p>
<p>“while another student has a 3.9 from a state school in ohio, but a 29 MCAT score,”</p>
<p>-Highly unlikely combo. More likely is 3.9/35 (from a state school in ohio). I cannot imagine 3.9 having 29, unless kid decided to spend only couple weeks studying, and again it is highly unlikely that after putting effort for 4 years getting 3.9 (not easy at all at ANY UG), kid decided to slack studying for MCAT. 3.9 from any UG will easily get 25+ on first practice MCAT without any preparation for it and actually before taking some pre-reqs like Physics.</p>
<p>It has a hypothetical situation that I was trying to use to convey a point. There are tons of kids from state schools with high gpas and mcat scores below 30. The same cannot be said for kids who go to elite schools. Check MDApps. </p>
<p>Just because you have a high gpa doesn’t mean that you are going to have a high mcat score. Correlation does not imply causation because there are ways to game the system in order to get a high gpa. (taking easy profs, taking lower level classes to fulfill requirements, academic dishonesty, etc). </p>
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<p>^^^ Very good point bluebayou. Vandy does better than my school in medical school admissions, and if you have a 3.6-3.69 from my school and a 30-33 mcat score you have an 85-86 percent chance of getting in somewhere. I am sure that Vandy’s stats for this gpa/mcat range are around the same or higher.</p>
<p>For the OP, stick with Vandy it will work out in the end.</p>
<p>^My situation is not hypothetical at all, I used real life examples. The only thing I want to stress again is that “tons of kids from state schools with high gpas and mcat scores below 30.” did not spend sufficient amount of time studying for MCAT and these same kids would have low MCAT score after going to Vandy or Ivy for that matter. You got to study hard to get decent MCAT unless you are a genius test taker, I would not rely on this assumption though.</p>
<p>I think that transferring from a lower-tier college to a better one is understandable. However, transferring from a better school to a lower-tier one may be different. On the other hand, is there a problem transferring from a science major to a non-science one (less difficult one like communication)? How would a medical school admissions interviewer view this?</p>
<p>^^^ It wouldn’t be viewed negatively. It would just be seen as a student changing his/her interest or a student wanting to expand his/her horizons as an undergrad.</p>
<p>I think that no one should assume that he/she can get a score >35. Even if you can get it in the practice tests, you will have to deduct 2-3 points for the real one. I think that it is wise to assume the worst case scenario at this stage.</p>
<p>2 assumptions are incoorect in this thread IMO (others might have different opinion base on their personal experiences):
First, going to elite/Ivy school will assure high MCAT score
Second, going to state school will most likely result in low MCAT even for GPA=3.8+</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with both. You need to work very hard at ANY UG to get GAP=3.8+. You need to work also very hard to get decent MCAT score no matter where you went UG.</p>
<p>Actually, that assumption is partially true for the Ivies and highly selective colleges. The top schools screen/admit high scores from great test takers, unlike some (many?) publics which are not so test-focused. While these kids may not be considered “geniuses” they are really smart AND really good test takers. (Not all really smart kids are great test takers.) Thus, it is obvious why Harvard undergrads have the highest mean LSAT scores, followed closely by undergrads at Y&P. They have the highest mean SAT/ACT scores! </p>
<p>btw: Even Caltech – a sciency school – has a top quartile of 780 for SAT-CR.</p>
<p>^Then go to Ivy and rely on your test taking ability.
We do not have people like this in my family. We have to work hard to get where we want to be. As for Harvard, D. was advised at both HS and UG to apply there (based on her stats). She had no desire to do so. Based on your comments that kids there do not study for MCAT, I am glad that she did not, she has always worked hard, so she would be a “black” ship there, too different from everybody else.</p>