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<p>All US MD med schools are good enough. Seriously. Medical school is a lot “flatter” of a field than law or business, in which there are clear tiers of quality and where doors are closed to people who haven’t gone to top law or b-schools. What matters is where you do your residency. People from Average State U go to med school right along from people from Harvard and Yale, and they are on all a level playing field. People from Average State Med School do the exact same residencies as people from Harvard Med School. The medical profession doesn’t idolize certain schools / programs the way that the law and business worlds do (Yale Law, Wharton, etc.).</p>
<p>Also anyone with any common sense can open up the phone book, look at all the doctors within, and know that they didn’t all go to the same handful of Elite Schools for undergrad. Honestly, that’s a big fat duh.</p>
<p>Actually the national “fall out” rate for pre-meds is close to 65-75% nationally. (I would suspect it’s the same for most STEM majors. The attrition rate among engineering and physics students I know is particularly high.)</p>
<p>I have one D in med school, another applying next cycle. Everything PG and Mom2 says is true. The UG school one attends has very little bearing on med school acceptances.</p>
<p>One of my kiddos went to a Top 30 private research U known for pre-med. The other went to USN #150-200 ranked state flagship. And honestly, I didn’t see a whole lot of difference between the quality of instruction each received, nor the types of opportunities available, nor the weeding/grading standards. (Or even the quality of pre-professional guidance for that matter.) </p>
<p>Both schools offer committee letters, but D1 didn’t use the committee at her school and I think D2 is leaning against using the committee at her school also. </p>
<p>RE: committee letters. A student on another message board personally contacted 40 [mostly upper and upper mid-tier] medical schools on how they perceived the value of a committee letter and whether the lack of same would negatively affect an applicant’s standing during the admission process. He posted the verbatim emails he received. Only 3 med schools indicated the lack of a committee letter would negatively affect an applicant’s chances.</p>
<p>Committee letters are nice to have, but are not a be-all end-all and the lack of same really doesn’t jeopardize an applicant’s chances at admission if everything else is in place,</p>
<p>Thank you to the last several posters for injecting a voice of reason into this thread. The OP’s child is a HS junior, and has miles to go before any of this matters much. As parents of high school students we need to be careful we aren’t shoving something like med school down the throats of our 16 year olds. We should be sure that they are taking enough years of science, math, english, social studies and foreign languages in high school, so that they can attend an appropriate college. We should be encouraging our teens to put forth their best effort in school and to have some balance in their lives.</p>
<p>So much can change in the next few years of any high school junior’s life. The kinds of questions being posted on this thread seem a little suffocating. There isn’t a “best” undergrad university for premed. There are many, many undergrad iniversities that will be just fine, however.</p>
<p>Walt- the good news is that if your kid is smart and ambitious enough to be thinking about med school, there are no doubt 20 other occupations which will appeal to him as well along the way.</p>
<p>I know dozens of college/post college kids who started life as premeds. The only variable that seems to fit all of them is that at age 16 they just didn’t have enough exposure to the wide variety of interesting and fun careers that are out there to figure out what they wanted to do. So medicine (prestigious, socially useful) seems like a good catch all.</p>
<p>I think the best way to encourage your S right now is to do a deep dive on last year’s income tax form, fill out one of the financial aid calculators, and take a look at the family budget to see how much you’ll be able to pay out of current income for college. Having a kid who knows the financial parameters going in to senior year is infinitely preferable to having a kid who learns with sadness in April that Dream U will have to be Unrealized Dream due to finances.</p>
<p>Then encourage your kid to read and explore and become an interesting human being. The rest will follow.</p>
<p>Many kids who decide not to go to Med school don’t do it because of weeder classes or organic chemistry or obnoxious professors who grade on a tough curve or colleges which don’t have a sophisticated med school advising program. They decide not to go because they fall in love with something else- bioinformatics or public health or agronomy or urban planning or law or dozens of other things. There are people right now working in insurance companies and in government over the cost/benefit analysis of various medical treatments who will have a greater impact on the health of millions of people than any single physician can. There are people at the UN running anti-malaria programs (with degrees in accounting or political theory or anthropology or sociology) who will do more to increase life-expectancy in the developing world than any single physician can.</p>
<p>Your kid doesn’t know this yet (because he’s a kid!) so help figure out how to pay for college and then step back. So many ways to “move the needle” for humanity without ever taking the MCAT!</p>
<p>“Many kids who decide not to go to Med school don’t do it because of weeder classes or organic chemistry or obnoxious professors who grade on a tough curve or colleges which don’t have a sophisticated med school advising program”
-Actually many do for exactly these reasons. Good pre-med program realize this and includes that weed out class in the first semester of freshman year and make it “strongly recommended” despite of any grade in AP class. In my D’s UG, it was first Bio class. She did not even start classes when she heard horror stories about it. The whole Honor dorms was filled with them. And yes, many honor students fall out of pre-med track right after it. It either made pre-meds stronger and much more confident or broke them…,.and then, of course, it was Orgo as a cherry on top, that derailed few more who were unlucky enough to have wasted a bit more time trying to stay in pre-med… at the end all of D’s firends were accepted to Med. Schools though…even the once who were not that brilliant but continue working very hard and do whatever was required.</p>
<p>Miami- yes, there are kids who leave the pre med path because of these reasons. I am trying to point out to the OP that there are thousands of kids who leave for other reasons. One of my kids went to MIT- where most of the required classes for the core would make you eligible for being "pre med’ some place else. The vast majority of kids who graduate from MIT do not go to med school (although some do, and do very well at it, including several of my my kids classmates). These other kids aren’t avoiding med school because of bio or chemistry- which are required, even you are majoring in urban planning or econ. They don’t go to med school because they fall in love with something else.</p>
<p>Which is my point to the OP. Medicine is a fine career and calling. There are dozens of other fine careers for a kid interested in math and science.</p>
<p>I respect that for your D there were no other things she could see herself doing. That is not the case for the vast majority of high school kids, who learn in college that if you want to help humanity there are many paths to do that.</p>
<p>A college classmate of mine runs a state agency (for a large and populous state) which manages medicare reimbursements. He has the lives of millions of elderly people in his hands every single day. A neighbors kid works at a start up which is developing cheap prosthetics which can be used for kids who step on land mines. Another acquaintance is working at a well known foundation which is trying to eliminate malaria in our life time. None of these people have any medical training.</p>
<p>OP’s kid may or may not decide to go to med school but there are lots of wonderful ways to earn a living which don’t involve taking the MCAT’s.</p>
<p>Kudos to your D for loving the path she has taken.</p>
<p>My middle son is heading to college this fall as a pre-med. He first told us he wanted to be a doctor back when he was 8 years old and hasn’t wavered since. I believe he has the drive and ability to do it. BUT, my advice to him is to keep his eyes open because there’s a big world out there and he just might find something he likes better. If so, go for it with our blessing! Or, he might still become a doctor. I just don’t want him so pigeon-holed that he feels he can’t consider anything else internally.</p>
<p>Of course, I also tell him to specialize in geriatrics so we (parents) can have decent medical care… ;)</p>
<p>It’s worth it to look at schools, but don’t get too hung up trying to find the one “right” school for pre-med because it doesn’t exist. There are several “right” schools each right for the right students. My guy picked his based upon best fit and great finances. Once he had spent the night with other students he knew he belonged there, but any of his choices could have gotten him into med school.</p>
<p>Excellent advice on this thread! My oldest just graduated from medical school and when he was interviewing at the med school he attended, one interviewer showed him a list of about 25 schools this particular state medical school considered “premium schools”. (my term, I’m not sure what label they used). Students who graduated from these schools (ivy league, top LACs) were given a few extra points along with their grades, MCATs, recs, experiences, etc. He happened to have attended one of these “premium” schools for undergrad, but overall this probably only helped a little. His goal was to attend an in-state medical school because it was about half the cost of an out-of-state public or private. If we had known he was going to apply to medical school, we might have tried to talk him out of that expensive LAC! :)</p>
<p>^Agree.
“If we had known he was going to apply to medical school, we might have tried to talk him out of that expensive LAC!”</p>
<p>-Yes, we did complete opposite. D. went to state public UG on full tuition Merit award. The place was perfect fit for her with much more opportunites than we could have predicted. And she took advantage of every single one. She still misses it and visits very frequently. Because of free UG, we told her not to consider price of Med. School, but rather choose the one that she preferred otherwise. She happened to choose the most expansive on her list. But the diff. in price is basically the price of one car. We are paying for her Med. School and we decided that another car purchase can wait. In our state, state Med. Schools 3rd and 4th years are the same as private anyway. I am glad that D. had an opportunity to choose what her heart desired.</p>
<p>D. went to state public UG on full tuition Merit award. The place was perfect fit for her with much more opportunites than we could have predicted. And she took advantage of every single one. She still misses it and visits very frequently. Because of free UG, we told her not to consider price of Med. School, but rather choose the one that she preferred otherwise. She happened to choose the most expansive on her list. But the diff. in price is basically the price of one car. We are paying for her Med. School and we decided that another car purchase can wait. In our state, state Med. Schools 3rd and 4th years are the same as private anyway. I am glad that D. had an opportunity to choose what her heart desired.</p>
<p>Similar situation with us. </p>
<p>Son is attending his flagship on a near full ride (full tuition + 4500 per year). We told him not to worry about med school costs. But…lol…if he gets accepted to UAB (instate/cheap), we won’t complain if he picks that. ;)</p>
<p>For DD she will end up at whatever UG is the least expensive on her list. She has chosen schools with strong science departments with good med-school placement rates to start so that won’t really be an issue as long as she does well in college and on the MCAT. The goal is no UG debt and she should be close to that. For med school, if she has to borrow every dime, oh well but hopefully that won’t be the case.</p>
<p>*good med-school placement rates *</p>
<p>I think that the term “placement” is misleading. Acceptance rates is one thing, but undergrads don’t “place” students into med school.</p>
<p>“good med-school placement rates”
-Be carefull, statistics is tricky, it could be very deceiiving. Who is at Ivy’s? Who is accepted there? Average HS kid? I do not think so. Many valedictorians are not making it. it takes a kid who is used to spread himself very thin and still be on top in academics. Who are successful pre-meds? Average UG students? I do not think so. It again takes a kid who is spreding himself very thin and still on top in academics. Which UG’s have greater percentage of these type? You can make conclusion on your own. Again, no UG is putting its graduates to Med. Schols. Applicants do it themselves. That is why you see at Med. School that everybody is on absolutely equal footing, no matter where they came from. Nobody and no institution will ever “place” you anywhere, you yourself will do it…or not.</p>
<p>We are well aware of placement rates and how they work. Most of the schools that we are looking at have had 95-100% of their grads go on to medical school right after UG. I’m really not concerned about kids that start freshman year on the pre-med track and drop out because they weren’t viable candidates anyway. I am looking at seniors that took the MCAT and applied to medical school and how many got in first try, period. Some schools we looked at only had 50% accomplish that, dropped those schools from the list. If DD gets to junior year and doesn’t feel like med school is the right path, so be it and she will be one of those 'fall off" kids, not a problem what so ever in my book. She will most likely still end up doing something in the science field anyway. I can actually see her going the PA track vs med school but right now, she wants to go to med school so we are looking that way (but keeping options open too).</p>
<p>She has zero desire to practice medicine on the east coast so going to Harvard is not going to get her into medical school any easier than the schools she is considering–and actually may hinder her since she wants to go into practice in a rural area.</p>
<p>Steve MA-- You know you really can’t blame the school for kids not getting in on the first round of med school applications. </p>
<p>There’s so much involved in who gets accepted and who doesn’t that goes waaaayyyy beyond academics. Timing of the application, choice of schools applied to and how well a student presents him/herself at interviews, quality of ECs–these are critically important to the application process. And something the undergrad school has absolutely no control over.</p>
<p>WayOutWestMom–I’m not “blaming” anyone, just setting standards for schools to consider. She has 11 schools on her list that have 95-100% of the above students getting into medical school on the first try. To me that says that the UG advising at those schools is on the ball getting the kids ready to go to apply to medical school–they know that EC’s are important, etc., etc., etc. When we have looked at some schools online we can’t even find information about pre-med advising or it’s a paragraph on the biology page–didn’t even put those schools on the list of maybe’s.</p>
<p>I still say, that it depends on type of student, not the UG, he/she attended. And again, once in Med. School, everybody is on the same footing.
I am saying that the kid who get in from Harvard would have gotten in from lowerest ranked state public…because of the type of student/person he/she is. It is pretty evident currently as there are kids from various places as well as few PhD’s, MS’s and lawyers in D’s 2nd year Med. School class. D. is constantly getting offers for opportunities that are not available to everyone in her class (according to her). Apparently nobody cares that she graduated from state public while currently at private Med. School. These are the facts. D. selected her UG without any kind of consideration for the rate of acceptance to Med. School. She wanted to have an awesome 4 years of college and she got much more than anticipated.<br>
Do not worry about the rate of acceptance, choose the place that is the best for a kid, for personality and wide range of interests. Med. School may or may not happen, it will not depend on UG’s rate of acceptance, it will depend on a student.
One thing is very very important - pre-med advising. The best advising is not always at the most prestigious pre-med oriented place either. The best to figure it out is do much more than on-line research. Visit, talk to current pre-meds, stay overnight, observe what kind of student go there, how they spend their time…there is so much and relying on on-line research is simply not good enough, although it might be a starting point to put the school on your list.</p>
<p>Some good points above. I agree wholeheartedly that after a point, no one cares in med school where you went to undergrad. I remember the eyebrow raising when we remembered, at the end of third year, that one of our classmates was a Stanford grad. She was a very weak student in the clinical years. By the last two years of school especially, your merits are based on your own merits, completely. True of residency, too. Once you’re in the trenches, no one cares where you went to med school, either. </p>
<p>Use the great undergrad schools to give you a great college experience and help get you into med school. Don’t get hung up on which med school, but if prestige means something to you, research how to do it best. Advising for med school could be really important, and as stated above (or not-- I just got good grades and kicked ass on the MCAT but was clueless about getting advising re med school) and as Miami says may or may not correlate with the prestige of the school (ie a middling college can have great advice and support re med school admissions.)</p>
<p>*consider. She has 11 schools on her list that have 95-100% of the above students getting into medical school on the first try. To me that says that the UG advising at those schools is on the ball getting the kids ready to go to apply to medical school–they know that EC’s are important, etc., etc., etc. </p>
<p>When we have looked at some schools online we can’t even find information about pre-med advising or it’s a paragraph on the biology page–didn’t even put those schools on the list of maybe’s.*</p>
<p>First, I’d love to know which 11 schools boast 95-100% acceptance rates (I refuse to use the word “placement” since no one is placing these students).</p>
<p>Secondly, unless all these schools are all within Top 10 national univ and maybe top 3 LACs, I really have to wonder about those stats. Heck, I’d wonder about those stats even if these were HYPS/Wms/Amherst/etc types of schools. </p>
<p>For a school to have 95-100% SOM admittance, the school would almost have to have a lot of control/influence over who actually applies to med schools. The students with that 3.5 BCMP/cum GPAs are likely told, “don’t bother” and/or “you won’t get good LORs.” The ones with 3.8+ BCMP/cum GPAs and 35+ MCATs are given the White Glove treatment. </p>
<p>I would be quite suspicious of those admit rates. I think on the pre-med forums, many/most top schools are claiming admit rates in the 80%-90% range.</p>
<p>As for the schools with 50% admit rates. I know that many/most UCs have such admit rates, but that’s not saying that the a student attending UCLA will have a less chance of admittance than the same student/same stats attending University X with a 90% admit rate. </p>
<p>The UCs have a LOT of med school applicants, many who probably don’t have the stats to be a good applicant, but no one is preventing them from applying. I suspect that the UCs also have a number of kids who are only allowed to apply to “top SOMs” (parent restrictions). So the rejection of a bunch of unqualified applicants or the rejection of kids whose parents narrowly restricted apps is not a reflection on the school.</p>