Hey all! I am a senior at a pretty competitive public school in Colorado. I’m completely lost when it comes to finding a college that would be a good fit for me. A few schools I’m interested in are Brandeis, Bowdoin, and possibly Boston University. I was hoping someone might be able to recommend schools for me. I plan on being a biology major/pre-med and am concerned about finding a school that will adequately prepare me for med school.
ACT (w/o wrtg): 30
SAT I: 1900 (CR: 630, M: 580, W: 690)
GPA: W. 3.90 U.W. 3.70
Class rank: 41/313
The majority of my classes freshman and sophomore year were PreAP as those were the highest level available. I took four AP classes (Lang, Chem, Psych, USH) junior year with two PreAP classes and am taking three APs (Lit, Calc AB, German IV) this coming year alongside a program at the local community college in which I will be able to test to become a CNA in the spring.
Some of my ECs are National Honor Society (inducted freshman year), German Honor Society (inducted sophomore year), and Peer Ambassadors (inducted junior year). I also completed ~80 volunteer hours in the last school year and have aided for one of my teachers four/six semesters of HS.
I would prefer to go out of state for college and am mostly interested in schools in the Northeast but am open to colleges elsewhere. I am not interested in schools with very predominate Greek life and would like a campus where students are equally academically driven.
FA is a major concern for me. I am half Hispanic, a first gen. student, and a first gen. American on the Hispanic side.
This list, available online, can help you identify colleges that have good track records of furthering the goals of their pre-med students: “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges With Great Pre-med Programs.”
You can go anywhere for pre-med. As long as you get a good GPA at a solid school of academic quality AND get a good MCAT score, you’re good no matter what. You don’t need to choose prestigious schools. 99% of schools can prepare you adequately for medical school. If FA is a major concern, the places you are looking at (Brandeis, BU and Bowdoin) may not be the best choice for you. You need to close the radar a little closer to home and focus on places where you can get merit scholarships.
Definitely study and retake your ACT and SAT. Get the ACT to a 32+ or the SAT to a 2050+
Also, it’s always better to save money in undergrad so you can go to a better medical school. Say you go to University of Denver, Colorado College, Colorado School of Mines, or University of Colorado Boulder and save money and get FA, you could be able down the road to go to a very nice medical school anywhere in the country as long as you apply yourself academically.
There are many great schools that have an excellent track record for preparing students for med school.
There are very tough to get into NE schools, such as Bowdoin and Bates.
There are schools outside the NE that are much easier to get into, and that provide outstanding merit aid in many cases. Some of these are Earlham, Denison, Wooster, Rhodes, Beloit and many more. Your chances of getting in and receiving good merit from these LACs increase substantially when you demonstrate genuine interest and visit. The teaching is outstanding at these colleges. The difference from the elite LACs is that they accept a wider range of student abilities. But at any of these colleges there will be plenty of students in the 30+ ACT range.
My suggestion is to study the common data sets for a lot of schools. For every Bowdoin that you are interested in, find another LAC that you would like to attend, but at which you have a much greater chance of admission. If you do this, you should end up with a much greater range of choices next April from among all your acceptances.
