So im currently in a community college doing my general AA, after completing that i plan to transfer to a four year university to complete my prerequisites for med school.
Iam just curious, that me transfering from a community college will it affect my chances of getting admitted into a med school. Will my cc transcripts count against me while applying to a med school. I heard that med sch dont really look high upon cc candidates. Is it true. Will it affect me, if yes how much and what should i do to make the effect less.
There are fewer than 5 US medical schools that will not accept CC credits.
If you maintain a high GPA after transferring to your 4 year college, do well in your pre-req classes and have a strong MCAT score to reinforce the rigor of your preparation, that fact you started your college academic career at a CC will not be held against you.
When we talked with med school admissions folks, they told us they dislike students who choose cc over a 4 year school because they think it will be “easier.” They do not want someone attending med school who is looking for the “easy” route. If you have a solid “different” reason (finances, unsure of what you wanted to do, etc), they look at your app differently.
What they did not say is how they tell the difference… somewhere in the app essays or interviews I suspect.
Oh, and it’s the same way with attending a 4 year school way below your ability. State vs private is fine. Many students opt for state due to its usual cost advantages and many state flagships are solid schools. But did you attend the low level 4 year because you had a full scholarship (probably fine) or because you thought Bio 101 would be “easier?”
It’s the attitude they don’t care for.
I migrated last year from Fiji. I never even had the plan of studying abroad. My mom won a green card lottery and hence we migrated last year june. I had no idea as to what the American Education System was like because like i said i never intended to study abroad so never researched. I talked to a few university advices when i got here but by then all the applications for freshmen were closed so many of them advised me to go to cc and transfer to four year university later. So its been one year for me in CC now and also the UNi’s required me to take SAT and subject tests which initially i had no idea what it is, and then i had to take time to study for it and all before i take it So i decided to complete my AA in cc while also study for SAT n all.
I dont know if that would be a valid reason for med schools to consider or not.
@Creekland
The OP only recently immigrated to this country. She graduated from a high school in another country where the educational system is quite different than here. She has limited funds and does not have a good grasp on how higher education works in the US. She’s just learning her way–be gentle with her.
@WayOutWestMom I didn’t realize I had said anything bad. Nothing was meant bad. I was merely answering the question asked based upon what we heard when others asked (in group sessions for high schoolers led by med school admissions folks).
Personally, it sounds to me like the OP can pretty easily explain her situation as something other than “looking for easy” so should be ok given decent grades and MCAT, etc.
A major financial constraint is a good enough reason to attend CC.
^^^ I totally agree. I assume this is why the admissions folks mentioned that specifically (finances) as I put in my first post on this thread.
Having worked in a high school for 17 years now, there really are students who look around to find the (presumed) “easy” way to get better grades for med school and then there are those who truly have to look at various options for affordability reasons. Then too, there are those who don’t really think “med school” until they get beyond the first year or two.
I am not on cc often or thoroughly enough to know the background of everyone posting. Every now and then I just try to answer questions based upon what I’ve seen or heard IRL.
@princess Fiji Welcome to land of Opportunity. You are in the right forum since there are so many wonderful people like @WayOutWestMom , @Creekland & @texaspg have wealth of information and they share & guide new folks.
Not sure, if you have landed in CA or in which state. In case if CA, CA has a specific program (in some UC it is guaranteed also) to apply and get in to UC after completing 2 years of CC. So students take advantage of that. I assume other states also may have a similar program.
As others told, in your case doing CC will not impact your medical admission process because of unique & unavoidable circumstance. GL
FYI: How did you create your cc id with space between princess and fiji. I could not figure out how to address you since when you try @Princess with a space, it is not showing your id.
There are some posters here on CC who advise students to go the easiest school possible so that they can get a high GPA. Yeah right.
^^^ There are many posts on cc that don’t really line up with what I’ve seen, heard, and experienced IRL. I can only assume they are in different locations or have had different experiences. I know I base anything I write on real life situations and try to mention where the info came from (student, graduate, employer, med school admissions, whatever) so folks can figure out for themselves how much it applies to them and their situation.
That said, my experiences are limited, so there definitely can be others with different experiences and they’re free to share those too.
Medical school admissions is nuanced. It’s more than just GPA. It’s more than just a MCAT score. Members of the adcomm take into consideration the road travelled by the applicant to get to the point where they are applying to medical school. They want to see how an applicants has dealt with the challenges in their life and whether they have optimized their opportunities–that they’ve done the best they can given their situation. Adcomms do not expect applicants or their families to bankrupt themselves, go into debt or put the parents’ retirement into jeopardy to pay for college. Adcom members also understand about applicants having family obligations if, say, a parent is chronically & seriously ill (physically, mentally or emotionally) or a sibling has major handicap and the applicant’s help is needed at home. (Jeez, many adcomm members are physicians and they’ve spent their entire careers dealing with people who have serious illnesses and major handicaps. They know the stress and toll this places on families.) They understand that some applicants have cultural constraints where leaving from home to go to college is NOT the norm. They understand that not everyone comes from an advantaged background or from the mainstream culture or understands how the higher educational process in the US works. What I’m saying is that if a student choses to commute to a small local college or start at community college, and they don’t need to justify or even explain their choice. Not on CC. Not to adcomms. Not to anyone. (Because among other things information about family income, family size & constitution, and amount of financial aid received for college shows up on the AMCAS/AACOMAS application.)
As for choosing the least difficult college–admission officers do like to see student challenge themselves academically. But this does not mean they need to attend the highest ranked college they’ve been accepted to. It only means they want to see evidence that the student can and has succeeded when intellectually or academically challenged. And one can be academically challenged at a small, local regional college just like one can be at the state flagship or big name research U. It’s just not that cut & dried.
The road to medical school is not always straight-forward and smooth. Ever individual takes a different route. And that’s OK, and in fact that’s a good thing because as we need doctors who can be compassionate and understanding and diverse because their patients will be diverse and often quite different from what the typical upper-middle class applicant has grown up with.
/soapbox
I’ve seen the best results (for the average high school student with normal “concerns”) when they go to a school where they are in the Top 25% stats-wise, but not so much over the top that they are alone with their accomplishments. A student with a 30 on the ACT can more easily do well (pre-med wise) at a school where the Top 25% mark is at a 26 - 28, perhaps even 30. If they head to one where the Top 25% mark is 21-23, I’d expect that to look far more suspicious unless they had a free ride or some other solid “reason” for attending.
I never recommend someone go to a school where they are in the lower half of the stats - unless, maybe, it’s a lottery school where there really is no significant difference between 25% and 75%. I’m fully aware that stats are supposedly “meaningless,” but I haven’t seen that in my experience. I’ve seen a minimum of a less (solid) foundation in students who score significantly lower than others and that lack of foundation can hurt them considerably when they hit freshman classes in a new experience. Many find themselves overchallenged and they could potentially have done better with a better fit. One will never know because we can’t replay life.
There are (usually) many options for a “good” pre-med school, but it is important to tailor the fit to the student and their needs. Med schools select students from a wide variety of schools for all the reasons WayOutWestMom mentioned. I had even heard Pensacola Christian disdained, but know a student (personally) who got accepted to a US MD school from there without issues. Ditto with Liberty and some other scorned schools. Acceptance from state schools is common and certainly not scorned. None of those I know chose their schools for the “easy” route though. They were good fits for them, then they did well.
Thank you everyone for the helpful advices.
@GoldenRock im in WA state however i dont know if there is any programs like the one you mentioned.
Im in Clark College right now and then plan to transfer to University of Washington.
Thanks again, i feel so much more assured that there is chance of getting in med school with cc credits provided i do good in MCAT and that my gpa is good.
Washington state has a Direct Transfer Agreement (DTA) between community colleges and the public state universities.
Here’s link to FAQs about DTA
[Transfer Brochure for DTA](http://www.wsac.wa.gov/sites/default/files/TransferBrochure2011.pdf)
Here’s UWash’s Equivalency guide page for community college transfers:
[Equivalency Guide](https://admit.washington.edu/EquivalencyGuide)
The equivalency guide page will allow to see what specific courses offered by your CC will transfer to UWash, what the UW courses you will get credit for based upon your CC classes, and whether or not your CC class will fulfill UW’s graduation requirements for your major.
@WayOutWestMom thank you so much
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There are some posters here on CC who advise students to go the easiest school possible so that they can get a high GPA. Yeah right.
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I think that’s a mischaracterization.
I don’t think people advise students to go to the “easiest school possible”. People advise that premeds go to a “good school” (not Podunk and/or where most students have lowish stats) where they can “shine” and have opportunities. Premed is hard at good schools…not easy to get A’s.
Many students/parents naturally think “premed = tippy top colleges”…and that can often be a total disaster for a strong (say ACT 33)/3.8 UW) but not tippy top student. They arrive in their classrooms full of ACT 34-36 Val/Sal premeds and their chances of grabbing the limited number of A’s are lowered. At a “good school” where the classmates are a range of - say - an ACT 29-36, they stand more of a fighting chance. Even a tippy top student attending a tippy top school is taking a risk since all students there are tippy top and yet those schools still weed.
We’ve even seen folks insisting that they’re going to borrow huge amounts for some of these “name” undergrads because they think it will be get their “ticket punched” for med school.
I think that this “tippy top school” thinking comes from the belief that med school admissions is tough therefore Adcoms will be impressed that the applicant went to IvyU. Same goes for those who choose sexy sounding majors or double majors…they think the Adcoms will be impressed. We’re not even really sure that Adcoms pay that much attention to the name of an applicants’ major. Interviewers do, because they often don’t have grades or scores to look at so they look for “something” to talk about and will mention a more interesting or exotic major or minor.
If someone is SERIOUS about being premed and they’re CERTAIN that they want to go to med school, then why handicap themselves by running in a race filled with superstars?
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When we talked with med school admissions folks, they told us they dislike students who choose cc over a 4 year school because they think it will be "easier." They do not want someone attending med school who is looking for the "easy" route. If you have a solid "different" reason (finances, unsure of what you wanted to do, etc), they look at your app differently.
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I have doubts about what Creekland wrote. Maybe she was told that, but that response may have been generated by something she said, such as: “some of my best high school students are choosing School A for premed so they’ll get top grades.” Such a statement might generate the response she heard. However, I doubt an Adcom would just say that out of nowhere…and, I doubt that, in practice, Adcoms would know that an applicant did that. I have no idea how med schools would determine that a student chose a CC or local state school “for the grades” unless the student was stupid enough to write that in their PS or say it in an interview…which is very unlikely. My son was never asked: Why did you go to Bama rather than, say, Tulane, Case, Miami, URoch, Boston U, G’town, Cornell, or…
The reasons a HIGH SCHOOL senior decides to go to X school is often influenced by THE PARENTS, therefore to say that a med school judges med school applicants for that is just…well…nutter butters. The Val with strong stats may have parents that just can’t pay for the “better schools”. The low income student with super stats may have lucked out and found that the a top full-need school is the most affordable choice. For a med school to judge a decision made 4 years prior seems unlikely.
@mom2collegekids You can doubt all you want. That advice was given at two separate Top 20 “medical” days at undergrad colleges in 2011 and were both in group sessions when KIDS asked if going to certain types of colleges would help or hurt them. The sessions were LED by med school admissions personnel. I found it quite interesting to see how much the advice given was the same (as were the questions asked).
Perhaps you should attend one of these before “doubting?” I often recommend students looking at pre-med attend them if they can.
One of these schools also admitted they have a list of preferred colleges… but cautioned that there weren’t “30” schools on the list, but “more like 300.” They also said if they got an application in from a school they didn’t recognize they would take a quick look to see where it ranked, but that didn’t happen often.
I’m sure you doubt that part too… so be it. Students can decide for themselves or sign up for a similar day at an undergrad with a med school near them and ask the questions themselves (or listen to the answer when someone else asks it).
It’s also entirely possible that other med schools do things differently. We visited two before deciding we had enough info to go on for our needs.
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when KIDS asked if going to certain types of colleges would help or hurt them.
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Pretty much as I suspected. The med school people didn’t just randomly say that. They were prompted by a question/comment, and naturally they would provide that answer…even if it’s really not practical. Sure, if students asked, “hey, I’m thinking of going to a CC instead of my flagship because I think my grades will be better. How will a med school view that?” …then of course they’re going to give the responses they gave.
HOWEVER, during the application process, students (unless they’re idiots) aren’t going to be offering up that info. So, the med school shouldn’t be assuming anything negative. They should be assuming that the student didn’t have the funds or wasn’t sure about career goal or whatever.
[QUOTE=""]
One of these schools also admitted they have a list of preferred colleges... but cautioned that there weren't "30" schools on the list, but "more like 300." They also said if they got an application in from a school they didn't recognize they would take a quick look to see where it ranked, but that didn't happen often.
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Why would I doubt this…they admitted that their list isn’t restricted to 30 schools…more like 300, which sounds reasonable…that would include the good schools that we’ve mostly have heard of.
FWIW, the question asked was the often repeated (everywhere), “If I go to a CC first, then transfer, will that hurt my med school chances?” No “reason” was given by the students in the question.
Along with the answer above, it was recommended that students NOT take their pre-reqs at the CC, but at the 4 year school. They should take their “other” courses at the CC if they chose that route.
And lastly, they cautioned that this advice is for students from high school who know they want pre-med going into college (like the audience they were talking to). If one decided later - in or after college, even many years later - then the they looked differently at those applications.
I seriously doubt the advice has changed in the past 5 years, but again, this was at two different Top 20 med schools. If one lives in a state with med schools that are very in-state state biased, they could very well have different answers. The student I know from PCC who got into med school went to a state school with an in-state bias (his own state, of course). It wasn’t PA (my state). My middle son met the lad when he went to Cote D’Ivoire on a medical missions trip a couple of summers ago.