Hi all,
My daughter is a Junior who wants to go pre-med. I read a lot of posts here about schools where the pre-meds are really cutthroat. I have two questions about this:
What does that actually mean? Are the students mean to each other, sabotaging each other, etc. Or just that everyone is out to get the highest grades possible?
Are there any schools out there where the pre-meds are not cutthroat? If so, I’d really love to know which ones!
Thanks everyone.
For me it is about the difficulty of the weed out classes relative to the curve. If you are stacked against top notch competition and a hard curve, it can be cut throat. If the school is known to or seems to encourage premeds to go packing, as part of the culture, its cut throat. If the grade deflation takes an average or above average - vs a top student -to a less competitive gpa level (which matters to med schools), it’s cut throat.
Cornell. Hopkins. CMU. Have this rep. And you’ll undoubtably hear in the following threads from the parents or super star grads who had no problem at these schools. I didn’t go there so I have no direct knowledge at all.
Just giving you what I would feel people mean by the term
If you’re talking about secretive study groups, no collaboration and sabotaging notebooks. Only Cal Berkeley seems to come up as that type. But I do not know any of this to be true at all
The increase of premeds have been higher than any other major. This is becaaue of curves. Do you honestly think the common premed will take a course that isn’t curved?
Yes of course they will take non curved classes. But if you’re talking about the common weed out classes then. No. Of course not. But not every organic chem class is filled with the same level of students or same type of grind at all costs mentality. These environments are what (I believe) constitutes the places people call cut throat.
Now back to the OP and what you all believe and away from what I think.
Take a look at Rice. Happiest students, stunning campus, and world’s largest medical center literally across the street, so easy to do research.
Vanderbilt competes with Rice for happiest students. Didn’t seem competitive when my D visited there.
I just checked Naviance for Rice and it looks like none of our kids ever get in! We do better at Harvard (slightly)
Did any of the students visit Rice? I suspect demonstrated interest matters.
If you can’t get into Rice, Harvard is impossible to get in
Rice pre-meds are still very competitive and grade-conscious. Not in a malicious way, but if you’re looking for “low pressure”… nope. My d who majored in CogSci at Rice found the pre-med culture quite oppressive in her natural science classes. It’s a “happy” school but also a “grind” school where people bond over how overworked they are.
Anyway, the problem with looking for a “kinder and gentler” pre-med program is that the goal is still to go to med school. Pre-med is the way it is for a reason. Unfortunately a lot of toughening up is required if one is to make it through medical education. We could debate whether it needs to be that way (valid arguments on both sides) but it is what it is.
@aquapt This is really what I suspected. Thats why I’m always surprised when people talk about the pre-meds at school X being cutthroat. I have to imagine they are that way everywhere.
I think if you go down a couple of tiers, you can find hardworking, dedicated premeds who aren’t full of anxiety. And for your daughter, checking out the women’s colleges. I know of some cheerful premeds from those types of places.
My daughter is at a very strong public university and she does not find it to be cutthroat at all. She is almost done with her prerequisites for medical school… at this point she is still not sure she is applying, but at least she is doing what needs to be done just in case. I think it’s possible to find schools that are more collaborative if you do the research.
I think it’s important for your D to find a school where she feels comfortable with the overall vibe and where she thinks she can get a high GPA in premed classes. That may happen at a school like Vanderbilt… or it may not and she will have to take it down a few notches. Is she the type who will get the A when surrounded by kids who all got perfect ACT scores? If not… those schools may not be for her and she may find that attending such a school will prevent her from having a GPA that is worthy of medical school.
Cutthroat … to me… means that the students are hyper competitive and lots of kids get weeded out because they can’t keep up their GPA. This does not have to happen ( not happening with my D).
If medical school is on the horizon your D will have to shadow, show leadership, possibly do research- depending, and volunteer in underserved communities ( immigrants, etc). She may want to choose a school where at least some of this can be accomplished during the school year. This is another area where you want to make sure there is enough to go around… or she may feel as though it is “cutthroat” and everybody is competing for the same positions. Keep in mind that it is becoming increasingly more common to take 1-2 years or more off before heading to medical school. Lots of students today are working first, doing TFA in underserved communities, Peace Corp etc.
You may find it helpful to post in the premed forum.
In general, kids from my high school who have done well going pre-med have been those where their stats are in the Top 25% of students attending.
I suspect this is because it shows they have the foundation to be competitive with the other top students. Work ethic still has to be there (because academic smarts isn’t everything), but when one has less of a foundation than other students in basic classes, it makes them feel inferior. That leads to stress of another kind - difficult to overcome, even if their capability is the same if they had had the same foundation.
I see this often enough that it’s become something I highly recommend when talking with students who think they want to go to med school. The actual school doesn’t really matter. Pick based upon fit and finances.
Try to look into LACs for pre-med. The classes are generally smaller and the teaching quality is good without having that sense that professors are trying to weed out students.
Surprised that Emory wasn’t mentioned as a potential school-it doesn’t have the weed-out reputation of Hopkins or WashU for premed and it has the benefit of having a top medical school and the CDC. Case Western is also a top school for premed and it doesn’t have as much of a reputation for weeding out as other schools and is also associated with a top medical school.
The comment about Rice premeds bonding over the grind of science classes sounds almost exactly like WashU. My kid likes to say that all the premeds suffer together over General Chemistry and Biology without being cutthroat.
I think the weed-out/cutthroat reputation is from students who aren’t used to a style of learning in STEM classes that is completely different from the plug and chug style and teaching to the test in high school.
There have been some rumors, that some California schools have Premed’s that sabotage each other because it is such an unlucky state…Way too many Premed’s for the number of med school seats. My sister-in-law told me that her daughter experienced some sabotaging in premed prereq classes .
Frankly, it may be a safe plan for your daughter not to tell fellow freshman classmates that she’s premed. She can quietly go about her business and stay under the radar. Quietly doing some shadowing in your hometown during breaks. If there are premed clubs to join, perhaps wait until sophomore year. Some schools don’t even allow freshman to join . My son told very very very few people that he was premed. Lol… he didn’t like the students who ran around announcing that they were premed. Not surprising many of them were weeded out the first year… not surprising many of them we’re weeded out the first year.
Every school weeds their Premeds because every school has too many freshmen Premeds. Many schools have Premeds that just aren’t strong enough science students And those ones usually get weeded out after the first exam fall semester
The Premed pre-rec classes are just regular biology and chemistry etc. classes. There will be a bio majors, chemistry majors, engineering majors, etc, in those classes and they will get weeded too.
Following up on the suggestions above about LACs and women’s colleges in particular, some are known for their supportive atmosphere. And, though my child hasn’t gone through this yet, I understand from this forum three major factors to consider. The first is that as @mom2collegekids has said, too many kids apply from CA for med school. The idea is to avoid that state for premed. The second piece of wisdom that I’ve gleaned is that med schools look at GPA and MCAT scores more than they do the name of the school. People who went to Princeton for premed or Yale for example, are sometimes rumored to have a harder time getting into med school over someone at a lower-tier school. This is because of the curve described in another post on this thread. The curve at Princeton or Yale is tight at the high end. All students are competitive. If your highly academic child is in a lower tier school, they would be more likely at the high end of the curve. A friend of mine whose daughter struggled through Princeton and had a very hard time getting into med school told me: I wish I’d told my child to go to nursing school instead of Princeton. The child would have been far less miserable while achieving the goal. Add to that third factor, which is the fact that some schools actually seem to promote collaboration among the students rather than competition. These three Venn diagram circles (not CA, slightly lower tier; promote collaboration) overlapping creates the sweet spot.
Colleges that seem to fit into this sweet spot, in my estimation, include:
Earlham (has a cadaver course!)
Muhlenberg
Juniata
Bryn Mawr
Mt. Holyoke
Simmons
and several others.
Also: you may want to figure in the post-bac part of the equation. There seem to be two kinds of post-bac. One for people who didn’t realize that they wanted to be premed while they were in undergrad. Those programs are set up for, say, the poetry major to collect all of the premed courses s/he would need after graduating college. The second kind seems to be about grade-recovery, to the extent that’s possible if a student got a score in a premed subject lower than desired. Do your research on this. I mention this because to my mind knowing about it can relieve some pressure. Anything that relieves pressure is good .
Pre-med is an aggressive weed-out process everywhere. Even schools with the highest grade inflation like Stanford have pre-med courses where fewer than half of students earn A- or higher grades, while highly selective state flagships may have only a quarter of students earning A- or higher grades in pre-med courses. See http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/2074436-some-colleges-have-grade-distribution-information-available-by-course.html .
The difference is that a non-pre-med biology, chemistry, or engineering major will usually see B grades as good grades (unless s/he is trying to get into a capacity-limited major which admits by grades/GPA), while a B grade is a bad grade for a pre-med. I.e. at many schools, B grades will not weed out a non-pre-med biology, chemistry, or engineering major, but B grades will weed out pre-meds.
Pre-med grading scale:
A = acceptable
B = bad
C = catastrophic
D = disastrous
F = [foul language]
I have heard this, but not really seen it happen IRL TBH. Yes, the classes are smaller. The teaching quality may or may not be good - same as other colleges. One major difference is that some professors at smaller colleges have frank talks with pre-med wannabes who aren’t up to the caliber of others and kindly suggest other paths that could be right for them. At larger class colleges, it’s either kids figuring this out themselves or the pre-med advising that does it.
I also don’t suggest keeping the fact that one is pre-med to themselves. I suppose it’s a good route for the person who likes to stay private with their life, but it REALLY cuts down the camaraderie formed with many students at colleges - the “we’re all in this together” type of fun they have with study groups and sharing what they’ve had in opportunities, etc. That’s just as much part of the fun college experience (for many) as any other thing. I’d hate to see students missing out feeling they have to be secretive to be successful - 'taint so. Many in groups celebrate with each other as they get their acceptances, etc, and still stay friends even with those who end up on a different path.
Many years ago, friends’ DD who was a top HS student and a top student at a very good private college, started attending medical school at state flagship. She was incredibly turned off by the academic cheating she saw. I guess that lead her to her true calling. She entered flagship law school and is now a DA in another state.