<p>
I don’t mean to hijack your thread, but I’m worried about this too if I major in Human Biology.</p>
<p>Right now I’ve chosen Economics with a minor on either Psychology or Biology, and I think I’ll do music on the side for the Penn wind ensemble/jazz band/marching band, whatever will give me flexible options. </p>
<p>I’m still worried to death on pre-med there, though.</p>
<p>And you will keep worrying until the first med school acceptance arrives…</p>
<p>Sorry to be downer here, but that’s just the way it works. There are no guarantees when it comes to medical school admissions no matter where you go to school. You will just have to find a way to deal with the anxiety. </p>
<p>(And, of course, once you do get admitted and start med school, you’ll have a whole host of new things to worry about. Life is like that…)</p>
<p>Hope for the best; plan for the worst.</p>
<p>@jason,
Should medical school not work out, with just about any BS/BA, you can enter an MBA program and find employment on the business side of your area of specialty. A degree is never “worthless”. :)</p>
<p>Many legitimate MBA programs prefers students with experiences. If you really like medicine, you can pursue a degree in an accredited Physician Assistant Program.</p>
<p>Also, FWIW, my MD/PhD program director told me that they specifically like to admit athletes and musicians as these are the two extracurriculars (other than research itself obviously) that require the same characteristics as people whom they think are good for the program. They both require never ending preparation for a constantly evolving field, and thus require a level of commitment, perseverance, and drive that the programs like to see.</p>
<p>Other than a job in the sciences (e.g. research, programming) or finance, I don’t really think what you major in really matters. Colleges, especially one like Penn are going to teach you how to approach problem solving, not simply give you a foundation of knowledge needed for a job. That being said, if you do go science and don’t get into med school, there will always be demand for lab techs and science teachers.</p>
<p>@iwbBrown,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do you think it’s important enough that I should submit a LOR from my studio professor? (he loves me 
I hadn’t even considered asking him for one.</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>-here you have identified your weakest side yourself. You will have to change your work habits in college. Even people who worked very hard in HS for their grades, still have to work much harder in college. So, changing your work habits will definitely help. Otherwise, i do not know why you would not get GPA=3.6+ and MCAT=33+. Just ask yourself: others do it, why not me?</p>
<p>I know a couple of students who went to top tier schools like Princeton who didn’t get into med school last year, and in both cases, it was due to self selection. They didn’t apply to tier 3 med schools, and preferred to apply again after solidifying their credentials. If you were capable of getting into Penn, don’t have hangups on which med school, and don’t slack up big time, you have an excellent chance of getting in somewhere.</p>
<p>^
exactly, I would bet the VAST majority of kids from top undergrads with at least moderate stats that don’t get in to ANY schools are ones who refused to apply to things in the bottom half of quarter of the rankings.</p>
<p>Plumazul, i don’t really know. I imagine a recommendation from a music teacher won’t do much more than having the activity and maybe some results to show for it. I don’t know how many other schools really care about this, and if they don’t, and the extra letter isn’t phenomenal, it’s probably going to look bad. The letters are important but also extremely scrutinized/hard to judge. 3 absolutely phenomenal letters will look probably look better than 3 absolutely phenomenal ones and 1 good one. Unless you never performed in any capacity and thus it could seem like your music commitment wasn’t really a big deal, I would probably skip it. I didn’t have a letter from my coach but that doesn’t mean other people didn’t.</p>
<p>You have to match your stats to list of Med. Schools. It is hard to imagine that college graduate would be so silly not to do so. Applicant should aim at about 50% success rate, so that at the end he has choices and after more research and visiting the decision is made somewhat intelligently. So, if you apply to 8 Med. Schools, you should expect to get 4 acceptances if your list is constructed correctly. However, some are applying because of “why not?”. Well, if one has unlimited resources and time, then I say “why not”. My own D. applied only to schools that both
-matched her own criteria (not her advisor, not anybody else, not ranking based)
-mathced somewhat to her stats.
She had 50% success and had good choices at the end.</p>
<p>My D had a different approach primarily because she’s from Texas and, simply put, Texans have an easier time. (In-state is huge. Lots of good med schools without sky high stats. 11/15 early acceptances allow Texans to drop schools they like less than their in-state acceptances. Since one of her early Texas acceptances was Southwestern it streamlined the process. ;))</p>
<p>So on her AMCAS she was able to pick and choose schools somewhat capriciously. She decided on half “why nots?” and half “matched” to her stats. (As you might expect, she did MUCH better garnering attention from the ones she matched. No surprise there. ) </p>
<p>Also, she wasn’t focused as much on acceptances but instead on interviews. She had a lot of faith in her interview skills. IIRC, we had speculated/hoped that 50% of the AMCAS apps would yield invites and she did better than that where she completed the process (some were withdrawn prior to invite as her early acceptances ruled them out and two apps were never completed). Of the 9 AMCAS invites, she turned down 1 interview, withdrew from 2 waitlists, had 2 flat out rejections, and had 4 acceptances (Baylor, UVa, Dartmouth, and Yale). </p>
<p>She hated the rejections/“nothing but crickets” and she hated rejecting the schools she declined but, all in all , she was happy with her formulas and her results.</p>
<p>It is not about working hard. It is about working smart. It is entirely possible to work hard and not get into medical school. I know because it nearly happened to me. I screwed up the timeline for submitting my applications to medical school and very nearly didn’t get into any program. I was extremely lucky.</p>
<p>curm,
Please, note that my D. also “choose schools somewhat capriciously” for 2 reasons:
-our state has plenty of Med. Schools
-D. had an acceptance to one Med. School before she even applied. Med. School was part of her combined bs/md. She was the only one in a program who applied out, nobody else bothered to go thru process, they just started at Med. School after graduation from UG.
however, D. has constracted her list very carefully. She did not want to spend $$ and time on the schools that she would not be attending. And even after that, she withdrew from couple after interviews there, she said that she did not feel that she belonged there, despite considering them from the start. Additional information that she obtained during interview visits led to her decision to withdraw.
But again, others might have fun with many applications and interviews and I do not see why they should not pursue the process the way it fits them personally. We were worrying sick about D’s travels, others might feel differently. D. was NOT interviewed only at 2 med. Schools out of her list, that also confimed that her list was compiled correctly.</p>
<p>
I made that very point in a pm last night.</p>
<p>miami, duly noted. ;)</p>