Need advice choosing college for premed and possibly med school... neuroscience especially

College Search & Selection
1

First of all, I am completely new to this site. I am currently a high school upcoming junior (high school class of 2017) in a new, little known school called SAMi (science and math institute) which is a sister school with SOTA (School of the Arts) in Tacoma, Washington. (near Seattle) I want to go into neuroscience. I am going to be taking a number of AP classes junior year. These include: Advanced Physics, Advanced Chem, Calc 1/2, neuroscience, some more. I also take orchestra, as I am fairly devoted (as hobbies go) to playing the violin.
I took 4 semesters of Spanish… I decided not to take another 2 semesters in favor of orchestra…
Freshman year, i messed up and got around a 2.9 GPA and soph i got 3.1 or so. Second semester soph i managed to straighten up my Cs to B+'s… I’m hoping to get a 3.6+ this year, even with the heavy courseload.
In my defense, I will say that though I immensely enjoy science, math, and even humanities classes, I get sidetracked easily. And I like French but I was forced to take Spanish because French wasn’t offered. It was horrible. Overall, though, my school has excellent teachers.
I am going to take the SAT junior year, and I am hoping/expecting to get a 2100+, since I find tests easy usually, and I got a 2100-equivalent PSAT score…
Out of school, I do a lot of STEM-related stuff by myself. I was involved in the school robotics club (I quit for personal reasons) and I do a lot of programming (websites, C++, Flash games)… I’m hoping to make a game good enough to get on Steam eventually…
BTW I’m male, indian but born here(US).

Now for my question:
Where should I apply?

I definitely want to pursue a career in medicine, specifically neuroscience.
I have to rely on financial aid for tuition, or get a loan.
I prefer larger colleges with more opportunities.
I don’t especially care where the college is, but I feel more at-home on the west coast or new england, in a preferably big city.

I know that people say, “It doesn’t matter where you go for premed” but… I want to aim as high as I can…

Thanks for reading all that, if you did.

2

Stay instate since out of state fees will not be cheap.

You really need to look at some college websites to get a feeling of their requirements for admission.

Try looking at UW.

You need test scores, not estimates.

3

UW is the place you wanna be.

4

UW or any state school! That way you can save money for med school :slight_smile:

5

“I have to rely on financial aid for tuition, or get a loan.”

The go to the Financial Aid Forum, and start reading through the threads there. If you are successful at pulling your grades up, and also earn ACT/SAT scores in the range that you are hoping for, there may be good merit-based aid available for you.

Medical school itself is extremely expensive, and you will almost certainly end up having to pay for it entirely with loans. That means that you need to keep your undergraduate costs down. Fortunately, for medical school admission your college GPA and your MCAT score will matter much, much, much more than the name of the college or university on your diploma. That means you can safely choose the cheapest place to attend.

And don’t worry about not having “challenging enough” classes at that cheap institution. Everyone else in the pre-med classes will be either pre-med too, or pre-PhD in a bio-science, and will have chosen that cheap place for its affordability just like you did.