Are you leaning towards, Rice?
Rice being next to Texas medical center will provide useful for volunteering/shadowing opportunities.
Choose the major that is the easiest to get better GPA. For MCAT, required premed courses will provide good foundation.
PLME is available when applying ED to Brown but you risk going to Brown UG even if you donot get into PLME part.
Rice is a better option for a medical school aspirant than WAUSTL. You can probably obtain Texas residency and apply to Texas medical schools after UG. Texas medical schools offer one of the best deals in the country. As far as a major is concerned , check with a pre-med advisor when you join. Most popular are biology, chemistry, biochemistry, neuroscience among premeds.
Another option that i have heard of is Wayne Med Direct in Detroit Michigan.
Admission to this program is via Binding Early Decision only as per my understanding - https://provost.wayne.edu/wayne-med-direct/prospective
Go to Rice.
Much better support and relatively more relaxed environment with lots of research opportunities.
WashU has a general reputation of being a tough school and highly competitive at undergrad level. However if you are from a rigorous high school background and feel confident that you are adequately prepared for college, going there can significantly improve your chances of getting into their wonderful med school. As an undergrad from there (who did well), you will have a significant edge in getting into the med school.
Rice may be a relatively safer bet but you wonât get the benefit as above.
Gap years
10 years ago the number of students entering medical school with gap years was negligible.
Does anyone think they turned out to be bad doctors?
It seems everyone keeps saying taking 1-2 gap years is ok.
If you take the length of medical training, it is atleast 4+4+3 = 11 years.
For certain specialties, add another 2 to 5 years for fellowship.
In Such a scenario you have to ask whether your are comfortable adding 1-2 Gap years via traditional route vs potentially saving 1 year via BS/MD.
It has become a competitive race to more gap years in the traditional path - nearly 60% kids take 1 gap year.
Wow - nearly 12,000 kids (who matriculated) thought they had bad grades or bad ECs or bad MCAT.
If we apply the same ratio to applicants, this means 30K kids thought they had bad grades or bad ECs or bad MCAT. Still not all of these 30K students got in! (only 12K did)!
Frankly that only points to the expectations and process via the traditional path being screwed up.
The number 30k is approximately 0.6*50k applicants. Out of 50k applicants, a decent percentage have no realistic chance of getting into medical school. The real number should be much lower. Some where it was mentioned nearly 33% have no gap year.
Agree with you one should take 1-2 gap year only if necessary, not feel it as a necessity.
I am not advocating gap years for everyone. My S is not planning to take gap year and lot of kids I no didnât take gap years. My argument is if a kid wants to challenge themselves by going to a reputed UG program and prestigious medical schools (USNWR or TImes or some xyz ranking system), 1 or 2 gap years should not be the deciding factor. They will come out stronger having faced some obstacle and overcoming it. I know parents are not fond of it.
Nothing wrong with wanting to have a relaxed UG (like my nephew) or not sure about getting high MCAT (my friendâs D) or burned out in a competitive HS (canât name them) and opting for BSMD but one should willing to admit to it rather than coming up with loss of income or 1 /2 years gap years fear as excuses. Again most of these kids will be working till 70 (or longer) and I personally donât see 1 or 2 years is not an issue. To get into competitive residencies some are taking gap years from BSMD or regular PD programs.
This is really useful statistics @PPofEngrDr from AAMC. Looks like Biological sciences only 40 % applicants matriculate. For rest of the majors like Math and Humanities the rate is higher 46 %. I was thinking of picking BioChemistry as a major , but BioEngineering major at Rice is ranked higher nationally. Would this fall under Physical Sciences category under AAMC chart here ?
Yes @Vicky2019 leaning towards Rice and conflicted about Major at Rice too.
WashU has many good majors like Computational Biology
My S is doing biochem major at Vandy and not an easy major at Vandy. So look at the requirements closely. Some schools require advanced math classes which are tough to get A. Typically engineering majors are GPA killers.
Does State of Texas give preference to its own residents for Med school then me being OOS for Texas will have lower chances when applying in Texas.
@DroneFly If you could arrange time to volunteer at Methodist Hospital, you should have priority at getting research position with Methodist.
WashU med school takes roughly 17 kids from its own undergrad. That is 17 out of 370 that apply every year .
Donât see any engineering as separate category so safe to assume in Other. Generally engineering majors are hard to achieve medical school caliber GPA (it is irony all majors are treated same by AMCAS, a photography and BioE major has same GPA value). so lots of kids avoid engineering even if they get admitted to and some takes a chance if medical school doesnât work out, at least engineering degree will be better than other science degrees.
JHU med school takes approximately 22 (including alumni) out of unknown number of applicants from within.
Imagine the chances of being one among the rest 120 or so out of whatever thousands of highly qualified applicants from outside.
Top SOMs are known to intake 7~13% of their affiliated UG qualified pool. So if your UG doesnât have an affiliated SOM, you may be at slight disadvantage.
Check out the rules for establishing TX residency. Iâve heard people say itâs not that hard.
I heard there some bias towards ibstate UGs. I would say go to Rice.