My parents had bizarre rules too like that. I wasn’t allowed to apply to Emory or Fordham for no apparent reason- my mother had “heard bad things about Emory”? still have no idea 30 years later, and she knew someone in high school who wasn’t very smart who went to Fordham. Bizarre stuff. But I survived, it all works out.
This is a very good average grade. Congratulations!
Regardless of how smart you are, you are almost certainly going to need to learn to deal with people who are even smarter. There is an old saying: “If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room”. The point is that you learn from people who are very good at what they do, and what you want to learn about.
One thing that you need to understand about university: There are a lot of very strong students there. You can’t expect to be at the top of the class. If you attend a university with a 60% acceptance rate, then remember that on the most part only the top 1/2 of the high school class applied, and 40% of them were rejected. However, you will be in premed classes. Premed classes will be full of even stronger students.
I heard a story about a presentation for incoming freshmen at MIT. One speaker asked how many students expected to be in the top half of the class at MIT. About 90% of the students in the room raised their hands. Incoming MIT students should all be smart enough and good enough at math to understand the implication.
Both daughters had majors that overlapped with premed (one was pre-vet, and is currently studying for a DVM – the other is currently doing biotech research and applying for PhD programs). They got to see what sort of students are in premed classes at a good but not super-selective university. One daughter dated a guy who was premed at her “not quite top 100” university (she had met him in class). He had never had a B in his life. This is not all that unheard of (at least until they get to university) among the students who are premed. This same daughter referred to organic chemistry as “the most difficult B- that I ever had in my life”. This did not stop her from getting multiple acceptances to very good DVM programs. A bit of imperfection is entirely reasonable and to be expected.
I have worked with or studied with a lot of very smart people. There is one person I have worked with who is obviously way smarter than me, and who might be smarter than anyone else I have ever met (he has started multiple successful high tech companies). We have solved a few really tough problems together. There is one problem that I discussed with him, but expecting that it was simply not possible to solve. A few weeks later he had a colleague call me to discuss the same issue. The next thing I knew it had been solved. I was flabbergasted that it had even been possible to solve the problem at all, but it all became possible when my perspective met with his ability to get things done. Sometimes when you get to work with very, very smart people, you can find yourself learning from them, and sometimes solving some really tough problems.
Learning to interact well with other super smart people and super strong students will be helpful in multiple ways, including but not limited to situations where you run into really difficult problems and a collaboration is needed to be able to solve the problem.
Your stats are very good. You are likely to get accepted to multiple very good universities. I think that there are two main reasons why so many of us are suggesting SUNY’s.
One reason is to make sure that you have safeties and that you will have acceptances. Admissions at the top universities in the US is insanely difficult to predict. You just cannot know whether you will be admitted to all of Harvard and Princeton and Cornell and WUSTL and Dartmouth College (throwing in one selective school that is not in a city), or if you will be rejected from all of them. It is important to have one application into a school where you will be admitted.
The other issue is that medical school is insanely expensive. It is very common for students to graduate with an MD and a huge debt. This can take decades to pay off. You should assume that by the time that you get to medical school it is likely to cost $100,000 per year. You do not want to borrow all of this, or even a big part of it.
Most students who start off as premed end up doing something other than medical school. Some for example might end up doing biotech research with my younger daughter. Some might end up as engineers or something else. However, if you start university intending to be premed, then I think you should make sure that finances will not be difficult if you stick with premed for the full 4 years of undergraduate education plus another 4 years of medical school.
Perhaps a third issue is that there are large numbers of universities with very good premed programs, and the top medical schools have students there who have graduated from a very, very wide range of undergraduate schools.
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OP what schools does your family have in mind? Would they consider allowing you to choose 2 SUNYs if you are open to their suggestions?
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Had another thought. What about Holy Cross? Dr. Fauci went there. Everyone I know who went there loved it. I wouldn’t call it urban. It’s certainly less urban than Providence. It’s in Worcester which is a smaller city, if you are from NYC I might compare it to Hackensack NJ in terms of size?
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Worcester has a population of just over 200,000 so not exactly a smaller city. It is a larger city than Providence population wise. The campus of Holy Cross is pretty contained but still urban and no real quad or expanse of grass but beautiful campus. Fantastic school to look into for the OP but is much more competitive than Providence for admission.
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OP, my kid got 36 and 35 on the verbal ACT sections. He is a great reader and writer - always got top grades in his rigorous private high school in those subjects. He was pretty confident, overly so, as it turned out.
At Bama - BAMA - he is sweating a B+ in his Blount honors class, which is all about reading and deep thinking and writing very long essays every single week. I mean, he’s reading and studying and rewriting and spending hours on his essays. He’s never worked so hard on a humanities course.
This is just to say that smart people are everywhere, and smart professors are most certainly everywhere. Please drop this idea that state schools won’t fulfill you intellectually.
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I’m just concerned i wont get a good job with a not prestigious undergrad.
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They really like High Point, probably for politics based reasons because i know for a fact it’s biology area isn’t as good as Bing, Stony etc. They also keep bringing up unc for some reason. They dont know that much about college looking back, but to be fair im only a junior
Are you planning to work after undergrad, or are you hoping to go straight to some type of professional school? It is very common to wait before returning to school. I am a little confused by your comment.
Keep in mind that getting a job has less to do with the name of the school (for most careers), and more to do with what you accomplish while you are there. Your undergraduate resume will be what matters.
I did not realize that majoring in political science was an option (I may be misinterpreting your comment). Why High Point? You are better off at SUNY. UNC is extremely hard to get into OOS.
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Try UNC Chapel Hill, Boston College, Penn State or Virginia Tech
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As a biomedical research professor, I can assure you that the SUNYs (and most any other schools) are better than High Point for biology.
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Thank you!
I’ll probably head straight to pro school. And i meant that my parents like the political atmosphere in high point. I dont like political science.
Got it
Hows he finding bama? My cousin goes there
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Your parents would be ok with High Point but not Stony Brook? Stony Brook is a much, much stronger school.
I do not understand your concerns about college prestige and getting a good job.
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My parents think suny = bad. I think i could convince them otherwise with all the information given by the people in this thread, though.
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I dont want to be disadvantaged when applying for a job or med school. I also wanna push myself
I do not understand your concerns about being disadvantaged when applying for a job.
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There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who good jobs and careers who did not attend “prestige” colleges. They were hard workers, strong students and were highly motivated to do well.
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UNC Chapel Hill, BC and probably VA Tech are reaches for this student at this time.
And Penn State will not be affordable….unless the grandparent really is willing to pay.
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You will actually be advantaged for med school if you attend a school where you are among the top students because college GPA is much more important than prestige of the undergraduate school for med school admissions. If you are one of the top students in your college you are much more likely to get a high GPA in general and in your science classes in particular and that will help you reach your eventual goal .
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