Northwestern HPME vs Yale

<p>stanbrown3695: i didn’t do any research in high school. pursue what you are passionate about.</p>

<p>hellorn: No, HPMEs live all over campus. Everyone has their separate lives and are involved in separate things, but HPME unites them and they are an incredibly tight knit group of students! However, there are HPME students that choose to live together their first year. If not, sometimes they end up living together their 2nd or 3rd year! (Goes to show how good of friends we become) </p>

<p>A prospective HPME student visited today along with their parent. Parent remarked when he met the HPME students that we seemed incredibly happy. I have friends that are doing regular UG and are extremely stressed with pre-med requirements. It’s just an added stress.</p>

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<p>Does that mean that HPME students do not have to take the premed required courses?? Aren’t you all premed, technically? The regular premeds would have additional things to do in ECs, research, clinical, taking MCAT, but the premed course requirements should be the same as HPME, right?</p>

<p>Sorry to be unclear. I meant that they are stressed about pre-med requirements such as MCATS and getting “perfect” GPAs… which are basically requirements… or high standards that they’re pressured to get.</p>

<p>Yes, we do take pre-med courses. However, we are not under the deadline of the MCAT to finish those courses by a certain time.</p>

<p>@toughyear - a lot of us do actually end up doing medical-related activities and such, it’s something we’re all still interested in… and yes, we all take traditional premed courses and work hard to do well in them</p>

<p>@hellorn - feinberg has a fantastic match list, and we actually recently met an hpme who just matched to her first-choice residency program at UCLA… so we definitely tend to work hard all the way up to the last year of medical school. :)</p>

<p>hideandseeek/Twilightxoxgirl
Thanks. Which other college options you had along with HPME?
Do they have any opportunity to meet with HPME students/M1/M2 students on WC day?<br>
Do they get to stay/visit UG and medical dorms?</p>

<p>You will find that many of our students were given opportunities at HYP, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, MIT, Caltech, UChicago, Duke, etc. etc. etc. as well as opportunities as MULTIPLE BS/MD programs and still turned those options down in favor of NU’s HPME program. And let me make it clear that no one regrets it. </p>

<p>You will be able to meet with at least 3 students from each undergraduate year in the HPME program during Wildcat days. M1 and M2 … i’m not exactly sure about.</p>

<p>If you have time in your day, I am sure that one of the HPME students would love to eat dinner with you/show you their dorm room/ introduce you to other HPMEs.</p>

<p>I am turning down Brown PLME, Case Western PPSP, UMiami HPM, Rice/Baylor (I rescinded interview offer), UPenn, and Duke for NU HPME. I am so excited. I have heard literally, nothing bad about the program or about NU in general. Really, the only thing is the weather…but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.</p>

<p>I agree with twilightgirl. I can’t imagine anybody regretting their decision. </p>

<p>I was fortunate enough to have had the privilege of choosing between many “top” BS/MD programs (including WUSTL USP in Medicine), and I felt HPME was the smartest choice in regards to what I wanted to accomplish during my undergraduate years. I think everybody feels the same way.</p>

<p>8yearman, invest in an Arc’teryx jacket and you won’t even feel the winter. it’s well worth it. A North Face jacket can still do the job though.</p>

<p>“they are stressed about pre-med requirements such as MCATS and getting “perfect” GPAs… which are basically requirements… or high standards that they’re pressured to get.”</p>

<p>-Well, it is still a good idea to do the best. My D. is graduting from UG in another bs/md. She is graduating with almost perfect GPA (3.98 - 3 “A-” in Music minor ), she had a decent MCAT score also (although an OK score of 27 is her program requirement, she scored much higher). As a result, she feels confident that she is prepared well. In fact, she had an opportunity to sit thru M2 lecture at one of the top Med. Schools during an interview visit (as part of interview visit program) in a middle of semester. She was happy to realize that she understood material very well. She was less stressed out than other pre-meds in her UG because she knew she had a spot at Med. School. This was very important factor in her success applying to other Medical Schools. And, as I have mentioned she has been accepted to Feinberg and considering it. She liked it a lot, including location and medical students there.</p>

<p>I know a few kids who had to make these choices, between HYPS vs HPME/PLME. If your goal is to be a doctor in life, HPME probably offers the best choice to enjoy life as an undergrad without having to have the stress of making it into a good medical school (I assume same with Brown but not as highly ranked med school), mainly because the GPA and MCAT requirements drive most undergrads to concentrate a lot more on getting these squared away without enjoying life on campus. WashU scholars program gives you the highest rated med school but they require you to have 3.8 GPA and 38 MCAT which probably get you into any of the other medical schools too anyway. </p>

<p>If you look at HPME students, there is probably not a single one of them who has nt made it into at least one of the HPYS schools (unless they had nt applied) and I believe NU structured it as their own private Ivy to lure the best students who probably would nt go there just for the fine undergrad program. Although you hear of the easy life from the current attendees, it is not what lured them there but the freedom to explore during undergrad. I know one final year HPME student since he was a 6 year old who struggled with Stanford vs HPME choice but has nt regretted a single day for the last 6 years. He says he has had a lot of fun, but does nt mean that he has nt spent every summer doing research, because he does enjoy it too. I have a nephew who made it into HPS couple of years ago along with HPME but he chose Stanford over Harvard and feels comfortable about getting into a med school irrespective of which one. Depending on where he ends up, he may or may not regret his choice but at the moment he is very happy with his choice. At the same time I have heard of another kid who went to Stanford from the same batch as the HPME kid who had rice/baylor admission but went to Stanford instead and was struggling to ensure he got into a top med school while spending a 5th year at Stanford (it is hearsay and I dont know if he was aiming for Harvard with the hard work).</p>

<p>Ahh…it is that time of the year when many of you (and your parents) are sitting on a dilemma of choosing between HPME and HYPS and other fine UG schools.</p>

<p>First off, congrats to all of you who got into HPME and all the other top schools, and are wondering what to pick. You really are a selective bunch…cr</p>