UR has a BA/MD program (REMS) that matriculates 8-10 students/year into the UR med school–which may largely account for the appearance of an admission bias, particularly since REMS is a binding guaranteed admission program that does not require a MCAT to progress to the medical school portion of the program.
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“my parents will help but not a lot.”
That right there is a huge red flag. You need to have a talk with your parents ASAP and find out how much they will actually pay. If your EFC is $50K/year and parents will not pay that, you might as well forget about that school and target ones that have merit scholarships – it ain’t Yale or similar schools. You also need to find out if they will sign loans because a part of your aid package will also be loans.
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Nine were from REMS in 2025. That still leaves 7 who weren’t which is 2 more than JHU (the only school with 5). The vast majority of other undergrad schools in the class have 1 or 2 who were accepted.
@wayoutwestmom, can you please let this poster know about things that are incorrect on his post, mainly about research? I Know you have posted before of the ranking of important things, and IIRC, research was low.
Just important that he doesn’t give wrong info. Also, not super important to go to a college with a med school attached.
How much research matters depends upon the med school. Some have it low, others have it high. Someone applying to med schools just needs to look at which are which.
And agreed that it isn’t necessary to go to a college with a med school attached. Go where the student finds the best fit academically and financially.
Agree with @Creekland.
You don’t need to go to an undergrad with a med school attached, but pre-med hopefuls need access to health care facilities where they can volunteer (which doesn’t need to be an academic hospital. Public health clinics, physician offices, community hospitals, hospice centers, standalone surgical centers, nursing homes, county EMS services, etc. all are perfectly suitable locations to get healthcare exposure.)
The need to have research experience is dependent on what med schools a student plans to apply to. For most med schools, having research experience is a plus, but not a necessity. For research intensive med schools, having prior research experience is highly valued, but is not an absolute requirement.
However, even at research intensive schools, MD applicants are not expected to have first author publications, nor be published in high impact science journals, nor have national-level poster presentations. (MD/PhD applicants are another story.)
BTW, students attending colleges that don’t emphasize research can attend summer programs to gain the research exposure to support an application to a research intensive medical school. There are summer and year round programs offered by the NIH, NSF, HHMI, Amgen, and other institutional sponsors at numerous locations all across the US, as well a summer research programs sponsored by individual universities.
I will also note the @CottonTales is correct. A survey of med school admission offices showed that adcomms ranked having prior research exposure of being of only medium importance when making decisions about who to invite for interviews and who to accept. (See p. 15 of Using MCAT® Data in 2022 Medical Student Selection) Clinical exposure (thru volunteering or employment), community service (particularly with disparaged and disadvantaged groups) and leadership were all ranked as more important than research.
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And these things can be done in a year or two following undergrad, and/or during summers and school breaks.
-Have more research opportunities (potentially?)
Except for the very smallest LACs, there will be opportunities to get involved in research if you’re interested in doing so. Even if you do attend a smaller U, there are all kinds of summer science research programs you can get involved in. (including some that actually pay a stipend to the student for the work)
-Be more competitive for top medical schools (I was looking at JH med school’s student profile and most of them went to top undergraduate colleges.
This a chicken and egg problem. Are these schools over-represented at certain med schools because of the reputation of the university? Or are they over-represented because of the quality of students who attend this universities in the first place?
There is no real way to answer that question.
I know it’s a long shoot, but if I could I would love to work as a research doctor. Do I need to go to a top Med school for that?).
There are basically 2 different kinds of research physicians.
There are some who do basic laboratory research (wet lab or animal research), although that type of research is mostly done by MD/PhDs or by a select few physicians who are academic staff members at academic hospitals. (To become a staff member at an academic hospital is more about where a physician does their residency than what med school they attended. Every year the top students at public and mid ranked med school go on to do their residencies at top academic research hospitals.)
There are some who do applied research? (Designing different type of nanotech devices. Or testing for side effects of particular drug. Or efficacy of using certain herbs as part of a plan of care for diabetes.) Almost any physician who wants to can become involved in clinical/applied research, regardless of where they went to med school. In fact at many academic and larger community hospitals, getting involved in clinical research is an expected part of the job.
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And for that matter, so can research… (Be done after graduation, that is.)
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The take away is that is no one clear and absolute route to medical school. Each individual’s path will be unique to that person. Some may be more direct than others, but in the end, everyone ends top in the same place.
This is a pretty big award though, and being a Hispanic in STEM would increase your chances considerably. You’re an excellent applicant, don’t apply ED anywhere, especially since you may need to compare financial aid packages. If Yale is one of your top-3, apply there SCEA and UPenn/Columbia RD. I would echo the MIT and Harvard suggestion as well. Good luck!
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I thought Yale was more expensive for them when they did the NPC? Did I miss something?
If med school is in the future, save for med school. Many of the tippy top schools give no merit aid at all. Apply to those which have merit scholarships, because I think you’re a great candidate. Skip those that don’t. I’d bet you’re a great candidate for a full ride at some really good schools. No sense paying 200K just to have a different really good school’s name on your diploma if you don’t have to.
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Actually what she said was that Yale net cost was $50,000, while her state school was $27,000.
She also said that she would qualify for some need based aid at Yale (this the net cost of $50,000).
But the biggest thing is that she hasn’t gotten a firm dollar amount for annual college costs from her parents…and frankly that’s THE most important data point that needs to happen.
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Which to me says Yale is still more expensive than other schools, and if that’s 50K annually (vs 4 years), it’s 200K for four.
Perhaps the OP can clear it up if I’m misunderstanding.
If you are serious about premed, then you need to focus on reducing the costs. You should try to avoid debt for your bachelor’s degree if you reasonably can (not everyone can completely avoid debt, of course).
There are HUNDREDS of universities in the US which are very good for premed. Premed classes will be a lot tougher than you think and premed classes will be full of very strong students at any “top 200” college or university in the US.
Given the need to find an affordable university while not qualifying for much in the way of need based financial aid, you probably should not apply ED anywhere. You want to have the opportunity to look at the offers that you have from multiple schools and compare them before you decide which to attend. The opportunity to compare offers from multiple universities will also give your parents a small amount of time to come to grips with the reality of the cost of university in the USA.
I understand that Yale, Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Harvard, and a few other schools get a larger percentage of their incoming freshmen into medical school than your local in-state public university. A lot of this, some might think all of this, is due to the excellent level of freshmen that arrive to be students at these top ranked universities. If you were to show up as a freshman at Yale, you might be surprised how many of your fellow freshmen were either #1 or #2 in their high school class. These same students still would have been top students if they had attended a different university (assuming that they continued to study very hard and attend all classes and pay attention – which will be true for most of them but not quite all of them).
In terms of research and clinical opportunities, these are indeed valuable. However, you can get these at many different universities. As one example, one daughter was doing cancer research while an undergraduate student at a small university that you have never heard of. She personally applied for and won a small contract from the government to continue her research over the summer. You might want to attend a university that has medical offices nearby where you could volunteer, but this might apply to a lot of universities.
One daughter was into the many thousands of hours by the time that she applied to DVM programs. I would take 600 hours as a minimum. However, many students take a year or two or three between when they get their bachelor’s degree and when they apply for MD or DVM programs, and you can get experience during this time. My other daughter has a friend who was premed with nearly straight A’s in tough classes but very little clinical experience who was turned down by every MD program when she applied as a senior in university. We all believe that the lack of clinical experience was the problem. However, she is getting this experience now and will have quite a bit more when she applies again after a year or two. Full time work for a year comes out to roughly 2,000 hours, which of course can help a great deal.
One doctor I know tells me that other doctors in his MD program came from “all over the place” (these are his words). I think that finding an affordable school is probably more important than the ranking of the school that you attend or whether they have their own medical school. Finding an opportunity to get clinical and research experience will however be important.
I am assuming in all of this that you will keep up your excellent academic performance when you get to university, and that you will verify whether you want to go to medical school during the tough premed classes and during the clinical experience that you will get before applying to medical schools.
$27,000 per year for your in-state public university might sound expensive, but it is actually not all that bad by US standards.
The really top schools (Ivy League, plus MIT, Stanford, and a few others) do not give merit based financial aid. Many other universities do give merit based aid. Given your excellent academic performance to this point you probably will qualify for merit aid at some universities. Being Hispanic will probably help at some schools. It is however very difficult to know which ones will give you the best aid until you see the offers from the universities (which you can’t do if you apply ED).
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Regarding colleges without associated medical schools, this site recommends several that offer great opportunities for premed students:
If the OP might be interested in a purely undergraduate-focused environment, then, with further research, she might find that schools such as Swarthmore and Amherst would make desirable additions to her list.
If you are certain you want to become a doctor, you should consider applying to joint degree programs where you get into college and med school at the same time. The schools that have these programs have different variations, such as whether it’s a 7 year program or 8, whether you have to take the MCAT and if so what score do you have to get to retain your seat for med school, and if you have to retain a minimum college GPA, and the undergraduate class requirements.
I’m familiar with Brown’s PLME program, which to me is ideal, since you go the full 8 years so you aren’t missing out on any of your undergraduate education, you can major in anything you want for undergrad, you don’t have to take the MCAT and you don’t have to maintain a minimum GPA. Given your current stats etc, I’m sure you will do fine with your undergrad GPA and the MCAT, but think of everything you can do with the time you’ll save by not taking the MCAT, and think about the academic freedom of not worrying about grades, and being able to take whatever classes you want (except you have to take the several traditional preMed classes). The PLME program offers excellent advising from day 1 of your undergrad experience and will help you with internships and other experiences.
Just something for you to think about.
Note that the OP has stated, “I want to go to pre-med but I’m not 100% sure.”
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Every joint degree program I know of requires one to have had quite a bit of shadowing or other experience before entry into the program. They want to make sure students know what the career entails and are 99.9% (or more) sure they want to head that direction.
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