Hi, I'm a current junior trying to get a head-start on finding the right undergraduate college for me. My current best ACT score is a 30 and my weighted/unweighted GPA is a 4.22/3.82 . My ultimate goal is to be able to attend medical school and become a doctor. I am a resident of Alabama, and am considering schools in-state as well as out of state. Anyway, back to my original question. Is the University of South Alabama a school that has a good pre-med advising program, and would it be considered a good school? My mom is a pediatrician, and she says that your undergraduate school does matter because of the rigor of coursework. Would going to a South Alabama put me at a disadvantage for getting accepted into medical school? Is the pre med advising staff helpful? Would I be considered less qualified than somebody from a private school like Vanderbilt or Emory? It's just hard to turn down the fact that going to USA would be very inexpensive and I would be able to almost completely avoid college debt. But, is this a you get what you pay for situation? Is it worth paying triple the price to go out of state?
As with most things–it depends. I am sure for many residents of Alabama, SAU will be more than sufficient to obtain admission to your state’s respective medical school. That said, I am assuming you will be applying to more than a few medical schools, so your question on whether it places you at a disadvantage compared to schools like Vanderbilt and Emory? My short answer, would be not really.
Now, if the situation is more specific, that is to say, you were making application to those institution’s medical schools, e.g. Vandy and Emory Medicine, then, yes, there would be a slight nod to their own alums. Further, if you have identical scores and GPAs, some admission committees make give a slight nudge to those more prestigious private schools relative to South Alabama based on the rigor of study as well as student body. And that certainly would apply to the more elite research based medical schools.
Now all that said, many many folks are perfectly fine navigating the path to medical school via their own public universities, and I suspect that you would be no different. By way of background, my wife is a physician who has done residencies at JHU and UCSF and D1 is a fairly recent graduate of UCSF and is in residency.
USA! USA! USA!
Sorry, gotta love the name. I would guess having a med school right there should help prepare their undergrads, as far as advising, shadowing, etc. But I really don’t know much about these things. I suspect our resident expert, mom2collegekids, will be along shortly to comment. Her son is a current med school student from Alabama.
What about UA Tuscaloosa, which is pretty strong in premed advising and placement? Or UA Birmingham, which actually has the flagship med school right there? Wouldn’t those also be within budget?
Yes, these schools certainly would chardo. The main reason I was considering USA is the early acceptance program they offer for medical school. It’s competition is slightly lower than UAB’s and I feel I’d have a better chance at being accepted.Also, the university of alabama’s main campus is huge and would cost more. As for UAB, I wasn’t as impressed with their campus as I was with USA’s and the early acceptance program to medical school is much more difficult to be accepted into.
If USA has an early admission program then you should definitely try for it. They will more than adequately prepare you for med school.