Hi!
After applying to a bunch of LAC’s during the fall, I have received a majority of my decisions from my colleges. Fortunately, I have gotten accepted into every school I applied to (I didn’t don’t include schools that I can’t afford to go to). However, I am having trouble deciding which school, out of my choices, would be the best for a pre-med major. I want to go to a smaller school, but I also want to have a typical college experience, in a school in or near a big city. All of the schools I have been accepted to will cost the same amount for me with the scholarships I received.
Here are my choices:
UT Austin
Rhodes College
GWU
Hendrix College
Hofstra University
Southwestern University
A&M College Station and A&M Corpus Christi
I was wondering if anyone knew anything about these schools. I am a bio/pre-med major from Texas. Thanks for the help!
As a Texas resident, Texas medical schools will be relatively inexpensive compared to other medical schools, so you may want to stay in or near Texas for relatively easy travel to medical school interviews.
Obviously, you want to keep undergraduate costs down as well. Colleges with higher grade inflation could be helpful in terms of maintaining the 3.7+ college GPA (overall and in biology/chemistry/physics/math) to avoid being screened out or downgraded by medical schools’ initial automatic screening before human readers get to your application. Accessibility to pre-med extracurriculars (shadowing, volunteering in health care and charitable contexts) is also a criterion.
Any major is ok for pre-med, as long as you take the pre-med course work alongside. Biology is popular due to course overlap, but if you have some other interest, you may want to consider that as a major, particularly if it helps with your alternate plan in case you do not get into any medical school (most pre-meds do not get into any medical school).
A “typical college experience” may not be the same as a “typical pre-med experience”. Expect the latter to be more competitive, with more time reserved for studying and pre-med extracurriculars.
Have you visited all of these schools? GWU is a typical big city urban college - it doesn’t really have a “campus” in the traditional sense, so I’m not sure it fits your idea of a typical college experience. I’d strongly suggest not confirming a school until you’ve actually visited it.
But also GWU only has ED1 decisions available so far so I’m not sure how it’s on your list of acceptances …unless there’s another GWU out there I’m getting confused with? (I’m taking about the DC one.)
UT and A&M (College Station) seem very different from the others on your list. You will get a “typical” college experience but they are both huge schools. My friend’s son is at Rhodes and loves it. Great college atmosphere but also small enough to know your professors. I have had a few friends with kids at Southwestern - either you love it or wish you were at UT-Austin.
Have you visited? I would visit as many as possible and see which one feels right. Good luck! (and congrats on the acceptances!)
GW was a mistake to put on the list, I applied there, hope to get accepted, but havent gotten a RD acceptance. However, it would be good to see what others believe about it. UT and A&M were my safeties, but I know they aren’t LAC’s.
I can’t speak of the other schools but I do have a daughter at Rhodes College. She choose this school over higher ranked LAC’s she was accepted to (not due to cost but rather fit). She is in her second year there enjoys her classes and knows her professors well. She is not on the bio/premedicine track but my spouse and I are in medicine and thought their program sounded good, especially with St. Judes hospital right in Memphis. You should talk to other premed track students at these schools to see if they feel they have enough opportunites for volunteering, shadowing, and participating in research projects. Since they are all in the same price range, you should go with the best fit. Congratulations on having so many options!