<p>I got accepted to Penn ED and, considering its pre-meds' acceptance rate to med school (like ~80%?) it's clear that it's difficult but there's a high chance of acceptance if I survive.</p>
<p>IF I survive. </p>
<p>Although I'll enjoy college life and explore what the city of brotherly love, my birthplace, has to offer, I'm going to work my ass off in college. I've accepted the fact that med school will probably be the most hellish thing I will face in my life. I know that money is not the ticket to happiness and that I shouldn't pursue the profession to help others, not for $$$ (but let's be honest, if med school will cost me $200,000 I'd expect a pretty nice paycheck) I understand that I'm going to be in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I understand that, if I survive med school, the residency I get won't necessarily be the one I want. </p>
<p>But what if I don't get into med school at all? What if I don't achieve the GPA/MCAT scores that I want and be in limbo, even if I work my hardest? I'll be honest now and say that I didn't try as I should have in high school (still managed a very respectable GPA that got me in Penn) and therefore I'm not fully aware of my limits (I have an idea of them though), so I'm even more nervous with the pre-med route because I don't know where's my breaking point yet.</p>
<p>I know that you can major in anything for medical school, but at the same time I'm a) worried that the pre-med competition will be so competitive and cut-throat and b) I'll pick the wrong major. I want to do something with music but I don't want my parents to pay for me to play an instrument. I like the ideas behind biology and psychology but I hate my teachers' unenthusiastic teaching styles, which are very, very, very, very, very monotonous.</p>
<p>I'm sorry for the long post, it's such a rant, I know. I just need help searching for answers.</p>
<p>It may very well be that you try your hardest and it’s still not good enough. This is typically rarer at top schools than it is at lower tier colleges but I’ve met such kids who simply aren’t cut out for premed competition. The thing is, you won’t know until you try. Generally, if you can get decent grades in the premed courses in your first 2 years at a top college, you’ll do well enough on the MCAT to get into med school. If you don’t do well, there’s still enough time to switch careers.</p>
<p>Wrong major as in it’s not what I had conceived it to be when I first enter the major.</p>
<p>Honestly, I love Penn to death and I had my long list of reasons for choosing it for ED, but I’m kind of anxious on what the transition is going to be like when the stakes are much higher.</p>
<p>If your chosen major ends up not being what you think it will be, then change. Unless you’re picking some odd major, chances are you can quickly change and stay on schedule. tip…if UPenn has Core, then select req’ts that will work with most majors.</p>
<p>It’s usually fairly easy to move from a technical major (engineering, physical sciences, comp sci) to biological science, social science or a humanity because none of those fields require the lock-step curricula that physics, chemistry or any engineering fields does. Much, much harder to go from a humanity to chemistry since you’ll need to play catch up.</p>
<p>(BTW, my MS1 changed her major no less than 3 times! She went from physics ->civil engineering ->econ ->physics. And still graduated only a semester late–and most of that was because she transferred from a quarter-based university to a semester-based one so her freshman coursework got discounted and she had to re-take some GEs. She didn’t take summer classes because she needed to work and earn $$.)</p>
<p>The vast majority of premeds matriculating to college never apply to med school, and of those that apply, only 50% are accepted. . So yes, the odds are that you won’t get into med school. (Penn’s number is 71%, which includes alumni.)</p>
<p>You could put this kind of “high stakes” pressure on literally everything you do in life, but you don’t, because you’d be crippled by anxiety, and it’s exactly why that kind of behavior is not what healthy people do.</p>
<p>School’s like Penn don’t accept kids who are “going to survive” they want kids who are going to excel, and you’ve obviously demonstrated enough to show that you can. As cynical as it sounds, Penn probably doesn’t want you to fail even more than you don’t want you to fail since it reflects poorly on them. College will probably be harder than high school but you will adjust.</p>
<p>For now you should be out celebrating being done with college admissions process! You should be enjoying the end of high school, not worrying about the pre-med admissions cycle which is no less than 3.5 years from now.</p>
<p>If you got into Penn, the question for you shouldn’t be weather or not you get into medical school, it should be if you will get into your top choice medical school. Honestly if you keep a 3.5 overall, and science gpa at Penn and get at least a 30 on the MCAT, you should be able to get into a PA medical school. Obv. this will not cut it for Penn’s medical school, but you will be a doctor!</p>
<p>It’s all going to be a function of how you work.
If you work hard and get some solid grades, study hard and get a solid MCAT, involves yourself in some interesting activities (clubs, research, all that good stuff), then you will have a great chance of getting into med school. Coming from a school like Penn can only help, cuz it has a solid reputation and obviously a good rep with med schools</p>
<p>The fact is that there’s always a chance you won’t get in somewhere. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. Even some stellar applicants might get lost in the cracks somewhere. Most of the time, the hard working and well qualified people get rewarded for their efforts. Some get unlucky and slip through the cracks. That’s just how the world works… and I promise that’s true for most other careers too.</p>
<p>Rather naive statement. The mean gpa at Penn is a ~3.4. Thus, well over half of the students there do not have a 3.6. Moreover, since science courses tend to be curved more strictly than hume/lit courses, we can easily assume that significantly less than half of the science majors have a 3.6. Thus, by definition (AP Stats?), half of all of these high achieving high school students will end up <3.4.</p>
<p>“I’ll be honest now and say that I didn’t try as I should have in high school (still managed a very respectable GPA that got me in Penn) and therefore I’m not fully aware of my limits (I have an idea of them though), so I’m even more nervous with the pre-med route because I don’t know where’s my breaking point yet.”</p>
<p>If OP only works 75% of the capacity and gets into Penn with average stats, would he/she have a lot of more to bank on when he/she goes to Penn? I would worry more for students who have maxed out their capability to get into a top university for pre-med.</p>
<p>If the op truly works hard, studies smart, then yes he/she will get into A medical school. The op clearly has the academic aptitude, otherwise Penn would not have accepted him/her. So yes, if the op works hard, then yes, he/she will get into A medical school.</p>
<p>The only question is the medical school that the op is accepted by his/her first choice.</p>
<p>Blue even with a 3.4 average gpa, penn students are accepted into medical school at a 71 percent rate. This is probably because they destroy standardized tests.</p>
<p>For my major, I don’t know what I want to do yet. Even though it’s the field I would love to turn to if med school doesn’t work out, music is now out of the question (major or minor) especially since my parents will slaughter me if I take even one music class, because they think that music majors are worthless and I’ll be homeless, etc.</p>
<p>So now, it’s:</p>
<ul>
<li>Anthropology</li>
<li>Psychology</li>
<li>Economics</li>
<li>Biology</li>
<li>Biological Basis of Behavior.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have my individual, academic reasons for these majors, but I’m especially concerned about the job prospects that I’d have if med school doesn’t work out at all.</p>
<p>You could always point out that music majors <em>do</em> get accepted into med school too. (D1 has at least music theory & performance major in her MS1 class.)</p>
<p>Pointed that out. They laughed. I don’t intend this to turn into a music/complain topic but my parents believe that only people in a musical family should even consider majoring in music, and that since I’m the only person out of all of my living relatives who can even read musical notation, they think I don’t have talent in it even though I have my own share of accomplishments.</p>
<p>That dream is probably over now and I’d rather not go into that topic any more than I did already; thankfully, becoming a doctor is a second dream that is alive.</p>
They are strict IMHO! DS took at least one music class every semester in his first 3 years in college (We actually encouraged him, a science major, to do that.) I do not think he was disadvantaged while he was applying to medical schools because of this. Actually, I think it helps because medical school adcoms might think he had life besides academics. Heck, in the admission letter (actually it is a video) to one school, the adcom complimented him about his achievement in this particular non-academic area. (He was good enough to perform at a school-wide event and earned a lot of money for his favorite charity organization over multiple years because of this hobby. He also made friends who share the same interest relatively easily because of this hobby when he set his foot on campus initially.)</p>