Looking for a good Pre-Med?

[KandyKanes]

Hi Everyone!
I’m a junior who started to look at colleges/ universities.
I was wondering if you guys knew any good pre-med schools for undergrad because I want to become a psychiatrist.
I’m excluding the super selective schools like Ivies.
Thanks in advance

[Gumbymom]

What is your intended major? You do know that Pre-med is not a major. How much can you and your family afford? What are your Stats? Home State? Location/Public/Private/Large/Small/Rural/Urban?

[merc81]

From “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges with Great Pre-med Programs” (available online):

Bates
Bucknell
Carleton
Colgate
William & Mary
Emory
Franklin & Marshall
Grinnell
Hamilton
Knox
Muhlenberg
St. Louis University
St. Olaf

These colleges will offer you a range of selectivity options. See the full list for other suggestions.

[AStern]

@KandyKanes you would be smart to go to an LAC for pre-med. You will get more attention and support. Bates, Bucknell, Colgate and Hamilton would be my choice. For what its worth, Bates is located right next to a teaching hospital.

[N_s_Mom]

Search this forum for the many many pre-med threads. I’m in AStern’s camp in recommending LACs for pre-meds, but only if you can do it without going into debt. But most reputable schools provide good prep for pre-meds and medical schools are not prestige oriented, so go to whatever school you think will bring out the best in you academically and personally.

[mom2collegekids]

The best undergrad for premed for you is:

1. An affordable school that won’t require much/any debt as an undergrad.

2. A school where your stats are STRONG, so you’ll have a better chance of “shining” and (with hard work) get the A’s in the “weeder” classes.

3. A school that has good premed advising, and preferably has active premed clubs and writes Committee Letters.

4. Located in a state where you can use that “tie” to provide more med schools to apply to.

5. Is located in an area where traveling for med school interviews won’t prove to be a hardship financially or time-wise due to missing classes.

What is your home state?

What are your stats?

How much will your family pay each year for undergrad?

[OHMomof2]

Re 2) @mom2collegekids in another thread today I saw a chart about grade inflation and interestingly the most selective private colleges had the highest gpas. How does this square with the advice to go to a somewhat easier to get into school when gpa is such an important part of med school admissions, do you think?

[Sue22]

Warblers rule posted this snippet from the Amherst site. I think it’s spot on.

Amherst College has no magic touch that automatically elevates a student’s chances of entering medical school simply by virtue of the student’s coming to Amherst; no college or university has that kind of magic touch. What does elevate a student’s chances is to go to an institution (1) that energizes and challenges that particular student academically, while providing good teaching and academic support so the student can meet the challenge satisfactorily; and (2) that provides opportunities for accomplishment and leadership in extracurricular areas. Of course the student must take advantage of these educational and extracurricular opportunities - in the end it’s the student’s accomplishments that count, not the name of the institution.

I’d advise students who want to attend med school to look very carefully at a school’s offerings beyond classes and to think about mentoring and work/internship opportunities. Some examples- Is the school near a research hospital? Does it have a student EMT program? Do students, even those who are not superstars, work closely with faculty members, for instance on a thesis or research project? Does the school have any guaranteed-admit programs in conjunction with med schools? What kinds/how many internships are available? Are they paid or unpaid? Highly competitive, somewhat competitive or guaranteed? Does the school do a good job of mentoring students toward graduate fellowships? Do undergraduates get to do meaningful work with faculty or are most research opportunities reserved for graduate students?

Disclaimer on this next part: I’m a parent of 2 Bates students, so I’m not unbiased and I’m sure there are other LACs with great research grants or internship programs. That said I was very impressed with the presentation I sat in this weekend on the school’s Purposeful work initiative.

Bates has a new program called the Purposeful Work initiative, in which they connect students with employers for meaningful, paid summer internships. If the original internship is unpaid or low paying the school will offer a stipend to bring the summer’s pay up to at least $4,000. The program has a number of “core employers” who have made a commitment to offering one or more paid internships every summer (the school lists 8 current core employers in the medical field) or students can either look through a listing of additional internships or find one on their own then apply to the school for funding.

http://www.bates.edu/career/purposeful-work-internships/secure-an-internship/
http://www.bates.edu/academics/student-research/
http://www.bates.edu/academics/student-research/summer/

The goal is to make a paid opportunity available to every student and not only does it mean that students have a large number of internships made available to them, but because they’re funded even students on financial aid can afford to take what would normally be an unpaid internship. These are in addition to the school’s many previously established school-year and summer research grants and fellowships.

[i_wanna_be_Brown]

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1486654-premed-resources-thread-start-here-first.html#latest

[OHMomof2]

Does it have a student EMT program?

@Sue22 it’s interesting you mention this because Amherst does have one, and also says:

A word about ACEMS, the Amherst College Emergency Medical Service. It is natural for premedical students to be interested in participating in ACEMS and perhaps becoming certified as an EMT, and that’s great. Be aware, however, that many medical schools seem to want applicants to have had contact specifically with doctors and hospitals. By its very nature, ACEMS leaves off where doctors and hospitals begin. ACEMS can supplement, but not substitute for, contact with doctors and hospitals, at least in the eyes of some admissions committees.

https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/act/gradstudy/health/guide/part1/beyond

[LakeWashington]

A college’s Office of Pre-med Advising is critically important to an aspiring medical school applicant. Besides the undergraduate student’s own hard work (grades, MCATs, etc.), the pre-med advisor’s track record of successful candidates is a factor in an applicant’s acceptance to medical school. Ask about it.

[ThankYouforHelp]

“Re 2) @mom2collegekids in another thread today I saw a chart about grade inflation and interestingly the most selective private colleges had the highest gpas. How does this square with the advice to go to a somewhat easier to get into school when gpa is such an important part of med school admissions, do you think?”

The students at very selective private colleges have better average GPAs in large part because they are much better students than the average college student. I mean, if you have a kid at Stanford who excelled in high school and got a 2300 plus on his SAT, how likely is it that this kid suddenly is going to do lousy work in college? Well guess what - that’s almost every single kid at Stanford now. And every kid at the Ivies and Chicago and Duke and the Little Ivies are basically the same. Why would you give those kids C’s when they are doing great work?

I think mom2collegekids would say the reason to go to an easier school is because you are going to be much stronger academically than the average student, so you will be an absolute stud that will get a perfect GPA and stand out from the crowd. There is something to be said for that. On the other hand, the elite private schools send a much, much higher percentage of their graduates to medical school, often almost every student who is interested in going to medical school gets in. They also provide undergraduate research opportunities for basically every interested student, not just the handful of very best out of the giant swarm of students at a large state school.

mom2college kids is absolutely correct about not going into debt as an undergraduate if you plan on going to medical school. Medical school is ridiculously expensive and it will be pretty much all loans.

So if you absolutely know for sure that you are going to be a super overachiever and never slip up, not even for a semester, then it makes sense to go to a less competitive school so you can be sure to stand out more. If you are not absolutely sure about how you are going to do (or not absolutely sure that you want to go to medical school at all) then it seems like a much better bet to go to the elite private college. The typical graduates of those colleges, the ones who didn’t choose to go to medical school, tend to have much better other options than the typical graduate of a less competitive school.

But either way, never kill yourself with a lot of undergraduate debt. That is a recipe for disaster.

[OHMomof2]

The students at very selective private colleges have better average GPAs in large part because they are much better students than the average college student.

I thought of that. So I wonder how colleges that are elite but are pretty strict about grades (Princeton, Reed) fare with med school as compared to those that are known for inflation (Harvard, Brown - according to a couple of sources).

[anon67749591]

umich

[zobroward]

Muhlenberg

[mom2collegekids]

@OHMomof2 Was the chart dealing with only premeds or the entire student bodies of these schools?

[i_wanna_be_Brown]

@mom2collegekids, it was @thankyouforhelp that brought up the chart. I haven’t seen it, but I bet it’s for the entire student body.

[mom2collegekids]

thanks! @iwannabe_Brown it may be confusing since multiple posters are talking about similar issues. I was responding to (post #6):

[QUOTE=""]

Re 2) @mom2collegekids in another thread today I saw a chart about grade inflation and interestingly the most selective private colleges had the highest gpas. How does this square with the advice to go to a somewhat easier to get into school when gpa is such an important part of med school admissions, do you think?

[/QUOTE]

But I agree with you. I also bet it’s for the entire student body. If so, then it doesn’t matter. Even the elites that have grade inflation will still “weed” in the premed prereqs…not just to weed premeds, but also to weed the frosh STEM majors who need to quickly find out that they need to pick another major.

No school, not even the elites, want a student to be given “easy A’s” in those 1XX/2XX level STEM classes. Schools want those students to learn early on whether or not they have what it takes to continue in majors that will require more difficult math, science, and eng’g courses…which often build on those 1XX/2XX level courses.

[OHMomof2]

Thanks for your thoughts @mom2coIIegekids . It was for the student body as a whole.

My kid’s 1XX Chem course grade is based on exams but also labs, homework, even participation. It doesn’t seem like a “weed out” atmosphere as she describes a lot of collaboration in and outside of class. I am going to ask her about exam curves/grades and see what she says.

[mom2collegekids]

<<<
My kid’s 1XX Chem course grade is based on exams but also labs, homework, even participation

[QUOTE=""]

[/QUOTE]

Yes, grades are often based on a combo of those elements…sometimes even attendance.

Some schools separate the lab grade from the course grade (the lab may even have its on XXX number. Some kids will lose points on their labs for not carefully following directions or including the required elements in lab reports or following lab rules.

The term “weed out” doesn’t have to do with a “gunner atmosphere”. It refers to the the way schools will limit the number of As and Bs in those classes.

A “gunner atmosphere” is more prevalent, IMO, in Calif schools where there are too many premeds and too few med school seats.