Is Princeton an ideal school for someone that wants to enter the medical field?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
1

<p>What are some programs or significant things for a person like me that wants to do medical studies or medical research at Princeton? I heard there was a hospital nearby, are students allowed to have hands-on experience in it?</p>

<p>What makes Princeton a good college for someone wanting to enter into medicine if there is no medical school?
Thanks for those that answer. I have an interview in a few days and I'm so nervous. I want to research as much as I can so I can come up with stellar questions.</p>

2

<p>For more reasons than I can discuss in a single post, I would not recommend Princeton to anyone who wants to attend medical school. Suffice it to say that competition in pre-med courses is pretty intense, especially when you take into account how many Bio, Physics, and Chem Olympiad folks forfeit their AP/advanced credits and retake the intro classes. The average science GPA for med-school acceptances is around a 3.3, but even that is quite difficult to pull.</p>

3

<p>But there are many premeds at Princeton, right? They all seem to have a lot of opportunities to take advantage of, and I believe that there is an adviser to help you plan your premed courses, right?</p>

<p>Can you list a few disadvantages of attending Princeton if you want to go into the medical field?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

4

<p>Only real disadvantage is grade deflation, although Princeton claims that it doesn’t really seem to have penalized the students. They do well in admissions to medical schools. This year alone, there were 8 students admitted to Penn, and many to other top programs. Any good undergraduate school will be competitive but I don’t think Princeton is “cut-throat”, by any means.</p>

5

<p>If you can succeed at Princeton, regardless of field, you will be fine moving forward. If you premed (bio major, whatever) it will be very impressive.</p>

6

<p>Princeton is absolutely ideal. According to WSJ feeder school metrics, Harvard and Yale (Yale only marginally) do better in getting kids into Harvard Medical School and other prestigious medical school programs. The senior thesis is a huge advantage in med school admissions. Also, unlike Harvard and Yale, more of Princeton classes are smaller and there is a larger focus on the undergraduate. Finally, Princeton just finished a half a billion dollar research hospital (google Princeton-Plainsboro), which undergraduates will use for research. If you want to go to med school, Princeton is your place.</p>

7

<p>“According to WSJ feeder school metrics, Harvard and Yale (Yale only marginally) do better in getting kids into Harvard Medical School and other prestigious medical school programs.”</p>

<p>That survey ranked feeder schools by sending the number of students to top 5 law, medicine and MBA programs. It is unclear for the breakdown of medicine. Furthermore, the survey ignored UPenn and Wash U medical schools which are among the top five. It did not include any graduate school from Stanford. It is not much useful. That said, Princeton pre-med is excellent but the GPA is an uphill battle.</p>

8

<p>I’d just like to point out that Princeton-Plainsboro is the fake teaching hospital from the tv show House…I’m guessing that you were making a joke kpackett?</p>

9

<p>There is a new hospital being built, but it is the replacement for the current Princeton medical center, which is more like a community hospital. It’s not a serious research hospital, by any means, and I don’t think it has any affiliation with Princeton University.</p>

10

<p>I’m going to say no for two reasons:

  1. No medical school → lack of (pure) medical research (but lots of medically applicable research done by many departments) and inconvenient to find clinical experience
  2. Grade deflation. It exists and it hurts, regardless of what the administration publishes to try to get you to come to Princeton anyway</p>

<p>Ideal place for being pre-med is probably Stanford or Yale.</p>

11

<p>[Post-graduation</a> data -*Office of the Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/odoc/faculty/grading/postdegree/]Post-graduation”>Grading at Princeton | Office of the Dean of the College)</p>

<p>Year of Matriculation/Pecentage of Applicants Admitted</p>

<p>2009/93.0%
2010/92.5%
2011/90.1%</p>

12

<p>Any undergrad university that has a greater than 90% placement to med school is excellent. Another data that you want to dig up is what is the average MCAT score for the undergrads applying to med school. Med school admission committees are very much aware of the GPA deflation at Princeton.</p>

13

<p>Princeton isn’t that good for top tier med school admissions. Harvard and Yale blow it out of the water. It’s real peers are places like Stanford, Duke, JHU and Brown in this realm but maybe not even them.</p>

<p>Here’s some evidence to back up my claims:</p>

<p>[Yale</a> University Bulletin | School of Medicine 2011?2012 | Enrollment for 2010?2011](<a href=“Welcome | Office of the University Printer”>Welcome | Office of the University Printer)</p>

<p>Yale School of Medicine 2010-11 Enrollment</p>

<p>Harvard and Yale simply have too many students enrolled in Yale’s Medical School and I’m too lazy to count all of them but suffice to say they’re far and away the pace setting undergraduate schools.</p>

<p>After that you have:</p>

<ol>
<li>Columbia: 21</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins, MIT: 18</li>
<li>Stanford: 17</li>
<li>Brown: 15</li>
<li>Cornell: 13</li>
<li>Berkeley, Duke, UCLA, Penn: 11
13. Princeton: 10</li>
<li>Dartmouth: 9</li>
</ol>

<p>Wash U Med Historical Enrollment</p>

<p>[Who</a> Chooses WU](<a href=“http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx]Who”>http://medadmissions.wustl.edu/HowtoApply/selectionprocess/Pages/WhoChoosesWU.aspx)</p>

<ol>
<li>Wash U. in St. Louis: 207</li>
<li>Harvard: 88</li>
<li>Duke: 79</li>
<li>Stanford: 74</li>
<li>Berkeley: 51</li>
<li>Michigan, Northwestern: 48</li>
<li>Cornell, Yale: 46</li>
<li>Illinois: 42
11. Princeton: 41</li>
<li>MIT: 39</li>
<li>Brown: 38</li>
<li>Penn: 36</li>
</ol>

<p>If you are a Princeton caliber student, then there are probably other schools out there that you can get admitted to that will be better for medical school admissions purposes (less grade deflation, medical school to gain clinical experience and “home field” advantage at an elite medical school).</p>

14

<p>^^^^goldenboy, why don’t you be a good boy and recalculate your analysis based on the size of the undergraduate population at each school</p>

15

<p>

It doesn’t matter JamieBrown since we’re talking about top 5 medical schools here; only a certain number of students at any given institution like Princeton will have the credentials to be a competitive candidate for these schools. There’s more than enough of a critical mass of Princeton students applying to medical schools annually that they should be as well represented at the most tippy top ones like Wash U and Yale as their typical undergrad peers but they are not.</p>

<p>Princeton also lacks its own top-tier medical school that would hypothetically give its undergrads a huge admissions boost there if it existed. Wash U, Yale, Harvard, Duke, Stanford and JHU undergrads are represented almost 4-5x better at their alma mater’s medical schools in addition to doing pretty well at their competitors.</p>

<p>Princeton fails on a lot of fronts in this regard. It is not an “ideal school” for someone interested in going to medical school.</p>

16

<p>^^^^goldenboy, so lets see if I can understand this</p>

<p>You are ranking a school like UCLA, with 27,000 undergraduates and a 50% overall acceptance rate to Med Schools over Princeton, with 5,000 undergraduates and a 92% overall acceptance rate to Med Schools because there are 11 UCLA undergraduates at Yale Med versus Princeton’s 10?</p>

<p>What is wrong with this picture?</p>

<p>Should you not compare the acceptance rates of each school to the particular Med School instead to arrive at a more meaningful ranking?</p>

17

<p>There are so many more opportunities to do medical research as an undergraduate at schools that have medical schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. The pre-med student should realy explore access to part-time jobs or internships at teaching hospitals and research hospitals. Boston has a ton. Princeton, well, are there any?</p>

18

<p>Students that are interested in conducting medical research in college can conduct the research on the main Princeton campus. The Longwood campus of the Harvard Medical School is some distance from the Harvard undergraduate campus. </p>

<p>In the Princeton Molecular Biology Department you can conduct research in areas such as cancer, genetics, genomics, microbiology, and neuroscience. Since the inception of the department in 1985, over 160 undergraduates have co-authored significant research papers. Students can conduct medical research in other area such as The Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, The Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Biophysics, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Engineering Biology, etc. </p>

<p>If you want to conduct medical research without leaving the campus Princeton offers many opportunities. If you want to take a subway or bus many other universities offer a hospital setting to conduct research. Your choice.</p>

19

<p>Here is the Yale pre-med statistics (<a href=“http://ucs.yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/med_school_stats.pdf[/url]”>http://ucs.yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/med_school_stats.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). It is a little surprising to see that large number of Yalies applied as alumni. It would be nice to see the breakdown of medical school admissions from Princeton as well. So far, Yale has not blown Princeton out of water yet, based on this statistics.</p>

20

<p>Thanks for the corrections on Princeton biology research. Glad to hear there are opportunities. </p>

<p>By the way, there is a free Harvard shuttle from the College to Longwood, HMS & hospitals. And Mass General Hospital is only about three stops on the red line, maybe 10minutes.</p>