DD is interested in Biological Engineering with Pre med track. What would be the best college to attend. She has been accepted to all three. Cost to attend is the same for all three. JHU and Cornell is 4 hr drive while Duke is 10-11 hr drive.
All top programs, and if finances are comparable âbestâ will be the one where she feels the fit is best for her. This is when you have to back up and trust her- and help her trust herself.
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Thanks !
Engineering + any type of premed is not a good mix. Med schools care a lot about GPA and MCAT. Engineering majors are notoriously grade deflated. However if she graduates with a top GPA (> 3.7) in engineering that would look outstanding to admissions committee.
Which of the 3 schools do you think she can get the highest GPA?
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Cornell, JHU, and Duke in my eyes provide 3 very different college environments.
If this were my child, I would tell her to focus on fit: physical, social, and academic environment.
Iâm a Cornell alumna who took many premed science classes as a non-premed student. The grade deflation was real, and from what I hear, itâs real today. Sometimes I believed my engineering friends had it even worse.
However, I felt Cornell socially was a welcoming and egalitarian environment. As a first-generation college student, that meant a lot to me. I could find my people.
From my understanding, JHU is working hard to dispel its image as just a pressure cooker for hardworking students and focusing on creating a collaborative environment. It offers a much smaller campus than Cornell, though, but itâs integrated into Baltimore.
I know the least about Duke, so I cannot comment without personal experience.
Good luck with your childâs choice! I would recommend attending admitted student days on campus if possible.
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That may be hard to do when so many students attend JHU as pre-meds, since pre-med is inherently a highly competitive pressure cooker for hardworking students.
On the other hand, a student who attends JHU not as a pre-med and not in a major with lots of pre-meds (or course work shared with pre-meds) can probably minimize their encounters with that pressure cooker.
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From what I have read, probably Duke might be the place where she can have highest GPA. But Med schools do know the difference in GPA between different schools. For example for student with 3.7 GPA from Duke and 3.2 GPA from JHU â the med school might treat them equally.
I received a degree from Duke, so Iâm quite familiar with the system there. There is a big difference in grading between Pratt and Trinity. Engineering classes have harder grading. If she will be in Trinity, its much easier.
What you wrote about 3.7 from Duke being comparable to 3.2 JHU is not necessarily true. Some medcom readers might know, but most wonât. The readers are typically med school faculty members. All things being equal, the GPA is the main driver. Regardless of the undergrad quality or the major. A 3.2 will make it almost impossible to get into med school anywhere.
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Not true. Med school admissions do not âadjustâ GPAs on the basis of what school one attended from undergrad. Nor do they âadjustâ GPAs for hard majors.
Besides at many med schools the first round of applicant screening done by automated software that uses a GPA cut-off established by the particular program.
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Cornell graduate here.
I would encourage her to clarify her career goals just a bit and then choose between these three truly awesome alternatives. What is her end game?
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If she is doing pre-med because she wants to be a well informed Biomedical Engineer and do Biomedical (or as you state âbiologicalâ) engineering for her actual career, then pursuing an engineering undergrad degree (followed by MS in engineering) sounds like a great path.
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If her end game is to become an MD of some sort, then by all means reconsider engineering for undergraduate work. Focus on pre-med track. Doing Engineering + Pre-Med together really will put her GPA at risk, and I do agree with others that so much of med school is a pure numbers game (MCAT + GPA score). I also do not think most admissions will pick up on grading nuances between, say, Cornell Engineering and Duke Liberal Arts. They will see that either is a âtop school.â Where differentiation is noted is if you have, say, Duke vs. some mid-tier state school competing for the last remaining slot in the program. But despite what we think on these boards (that get WAY too into rankings etc,) the academic community at large is not losing sleep over the difference between Cornell vs. Duke vs. JHU.
Ok, I just threw a whole lot of opinions out there. My short answer is, a) figure out which school is the better fit as this will be four years of her life and b) consider narrowing to engineering OR pre-med, especially if the end game is med school.
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Thank You.
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My daughter initially considered biomedical engineering as a premed, but switched to computational biology. A lot depends on just how set she is on premed - some make it work, but it is definitely a tough road. Having something other than biology is helpful though as every premed really needs a Plan B.
Has she visited all 3? JHU was my daughterâs freshman year dream school, but ultimately didnât apply as she decided she wanted a better work/life balance and her main extra curricular is much better fit at Duke than JHU.
Obviously all are academically strong, so I would really have her look into the intangibles - for my daughter that was really around her extra curricular, but it could be weather, distance from home - etc - really thinking where she wants to live for the next 4 years.
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