D wants to understand and consider medical career/pre-med. We are both lawyers and have no doctors in family. Programs above seemed interesting to her and Georgetown has neuroscience track. She meets requirements for all. All would seem like great places for premed/med for different reasons. We saw video of Hopkins campus at night and it seemed unlit, dark and dangerous. Georgetown seemed safe/gated, and Northwestern safest. D is a sophomore. We also looked at Brown but program recommended AP Biology prior to it, which she will only take next year. Any experience with any of these programs? Any recommendations?
I would pick a summer program that you think she would enjoy and learn a bit. Prestige of a summer pre pre med program doesn’t matter.
I was in your shoes a few years ago. I suggest you research the process for getting into medical school, the costs, and the outcomes. It’s a tricky system (but fairly transparent) that is too hard for a teenager to navigate alone.
These are all very rigorous schools. Competition will be fierce not just for admission, but also for pre med students getting through their required courses for med school.
As far as JHU, the campus was well policed and felt very safe to us. They had more security protocols than most campuses we toured. The campus has green space with a steep ravine on one side and museums on the other. Felt like an island in the city with a very defined campus.
Meeting requirements is the bare minimum to be considered. These are all reach schools. Take the time now to spend the energy on finding match and safety schools with strong premed advising and no grade deflation.
FWIW I’m seeing a trend amongst my friend group of their kids turning down the traditional T20 research powerhouses to go to small, supportive LACs for pre med. anecdotally those students are having better med school outcomes. More interviews and acceptances without the need for a gap year.
Would advise searching the forum here for @WayOutWestMom ’s posts. She is the premed advice guru.
It sounds like you are looking for summer programs for HS students. I would recommend the one at Wisconsin (https://wcaty.wisc.edu/alp/). They have both a Neuroscience and a Human Body and Disease class. My DS (EA admit to Georgetown) did two different classes there before his Sophomore and Junior years. They do a good job both inside and outside the classroom. Many of the students are from Wisconsin. However, there are also OOS (my DS was) and international students. My DS also did a pre college program at Alabama before his Senior year. The Wisconsin program was better for younger students because they had more structure in the non class times.
If you are interested, make sure that she applies as soon as the applications open. The medical ones fill quickly. Another advantage is that it is likely way cheaper than the options that you have listed. Madison is a beautiful place to spend three weeks in the summer.
Summer programs for high school pre-meds are pretty useless. They won’t help at all with a med school admission. They offer very limited exposure to the medical field. (No patient contact because of liability issues.) I doubt they will help with college admission either.
If your child is interested in pre-med she would be better served by volunteering at your local hospital in any capacity–even as a baby snuggler or helper in the child’s life dept. (At least with those jobs, she’s getting actual patients contact exposure.) Volunteering at summer camp for disabled children would be another option. Volunteering at a nursing or elder care center is still another.
Why is patient exposure important? Because it takes a very special kind of person to spend the rest of their life working with the sick, dying, chronically ill, mentally & physically disabled, mentally ill, elderly demented and those who are in pain & suffering. And it’s exactly all of those I just mentioned who will be your daughter’s future patients. If she can’t deal with that, it’s better to figure it out sooner rather than later. (BTW, patients are seldom grateful, cooperative or compliant and as a physician she will de dealing with them and their families on what may be the very worst day in their lives. It requires excellent people skills, empathy, compassion, patience and emotional resilience.)
Additionally I would check with your local hospitals. Some offer career exploration type programs geared to high schoolers that introduce them to a whole spectrum of medical careers, not just physician, but nursing, anesthesia assistant and CNRA (which are NOT the same thing), specialty technicians like the person who operate the heart-lung bypass machine, radiation therapist (which is not the same same thing as X-ray tech), and a whole lot of other medical/medicine- adjacent careers you and she have probably never heard of…
And although this sounds odd, any kind of real world work experience that involves customer contact is very valuable for a future pre-med. Hostessing in a restaurant, waitstaff, counter service, retail sales, camp counselor, day camp assistant/leader-- all teach people skills that future doctors need.
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Are the programs at the undergrad campuses or at the medical campuses? It would not surprise me if you found the Hopkins medical campus scary and dark - it’s not in a nice part of town.
Most of the summer programs at colleges are at their undergrad campuses as they use the dorms and facilities (pools, gyms, meeting rooms) and are trying to keep those occupied in the summers. My kids went to a few camps on college campuses in the summer and there were more ‘camp’ kids on campus than college students.
I concur with @twoinanddone Hopkins medical campus is in a very bad section of Baltimore. High crime area.
BTW, you should be aware that all hospitals/healthcare facilities are places of violence. Healthcare facilities have the highest risk for workplace violence of any work location in the US. See: [OHSA: Workplace Violence in Healthcare](https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3826.pdf)
Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. This was my first posting on CC. We are going ahead with Georgetown because we think the college-living experience will be helpful to her and the academic side of the program seems well though out. DC is also hard to beat for a couple of free weekends, and discipline/safety at GT looks great. Luckily my best friend is a neurologist and D is interested in that field in particular (and neuroscience/neurobiology), so she will be volunteering with him in his office and at hospital in the near future. Also GT has real early med admission in sophomore yeat without MCATs.
Be aware that EAP (early access programs) like the one at Georgetown are extremely competitive and programs typically accept < 10 students/year.
IOW, neither you nor your students should choose an undegrad just because it offers a EAP program.
Plus there are several EAP programs that are open to applicants other than the school’s open undergrads.
University of Rochester’s EAP will consider applicants from 12 top LACs. Temple’s EAP will consider applicants from 12 PA-based colleges & universities. George Washington University’s EAP lists 15 partner schools in locations from Hawaii to the East Coast.
FlexMed at Mt Sinai and MedStart at University of Toledo are open to applicants attending any undergrad in the US or Canada.
Georgetown’s is not limited by numbers (only overall GPA), is only open to its undergrads and is applied to at end of sophomore year. The Brown program is applied to on the admission application and they take 50 a year.
Thanks so much for your great advice above; very thoughtful and frank. Things are going well with strong continued interest in pre-med, distanced volunteering, stem and language honor societies, other extracurriculars etc., although no national championships or top office yet (starting junior year). We are starting to think of college list for visits (duly distanced etc) and wanted your reaction/insights. So I thought to check back with you and try to gain some more from your wisdom.
Financial aid is not an issue for undergrad or med school, D attends the top private prep school in our state and is top 25 out of 300 in class, with 3 APs/yr. Taking ACT in the fall, URM and legacies at HYDuke. Only considering New England, NYS outside NYC, PA, NJ, DC, NC and Atlanta, and flexible between LAC and 3-10k undergrad private others. She likes performing arts for distraction and social structure and is not big into parties. Also very interested in residential college setups.
This is what we have so far beyond the alumni schools for campus tours: Georgetown, Bowdoin, Amherst, Williams, Bates, Tufts, Colby, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Emory, Tulane, Davidson, Vassar, Boston College, Wake Forest, Colgate, Villanova, Lafayette, Holy Cross, GW. Any others you would recommend that we visit with above characteristics?
Univ of Rochester in western NYS. No required GEs so that students have extra flexibility in course section. Research U with adjacent med school & hospital. 6K undergrads. Eastman School of Music is part of the university.
Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford near Philadelphia, especially if you’re already considering Villanova and Lafayette. Bryn Mawr and Haverford have reputations for being very good pre med schools. Bryn Mawr has one the top pre-med post-bacc programs in the country.
(I grew up in the Philly suburbs so that idea that anyone finds Villanova desirable always comes a kind of a shock. My high school was within walking distance of Villanova and 'Nova was always seen as everyone’s fallback option, where you went if you couldn’t get into anyplace better…)
Lehigh? Bucknell? Both are kind out in the sticks. Bucknell is in a small town in central PA. Lehigh is just south of the Poconos in Bethlehem–another old industrial town that has seen better days.
Agnes Scott in Georgia.
RE: Vassar–Poughkeepsie is a dying/dead old industrial town and there’s not a lot of stuff to do outside of campus activities unless one wants to take the train to NYC. D1 said she found the whole town really depressing when she interviewed for an attending job at Vassar-Brothers Medical Center.
Are Harvard, Yale and Duke as alums out of question?
@texaspg HYD are front runners as you can imagine. Any thoughts on those with the couple of hooks + strong academic record?
@wayoutwestmom Thanks so much. We are feeling same way re Nova. Love your advice every time.
Will add Haverford as D does not want single sex. D has ruled out the others due to location or other reasons. She does think seem to like Vassar a lot as plan B to front runners, but visit will be required; I loved New Haven in the 90s (in part because of Metro North) so I will recuse myself from whether to keep that one 
Any specific thoughts re the others on our list? She seems unenthused re Maine, but liked idea of Vermont, go figure.
@texaspg as follow-on, question re HYD is whether they would be too cutthroat for premed; she is thinking psych/neuro as she is envisioning psychiatry/neuro in her current dreams.
@gablesdad - I have always been told Yale is one of the best places for premed and people are much happier attending the school. If one can do well at Harvard they can get into any medical school but if one does n’t, they spend several years making up for it (although with a degree from Harvard, they may not need to do medicine). I personally think Stanford is better for happiness factor and Ivy league schools are not the happiest places (may be Brown) for most children trying to keep up their GPAs. Duke students seem to graduate with nice GPAs needed for medical schools. Your HY alum status might play well with Stanford. I like Rice also for GPAs. Since you are going to be full pay at most places without merit scholarships, my suggestion is to apply broadly and pick the highest ranked school where admitted.
@gablesdad
Just as FYI, she doesn’t need to major in neuroscience or psychology to go into neurology or psychiatry. High schoolers and college pre-meds are notoriously bad at guessing what specialty they will end up pursuing.
The typical med student changes their mind about their future specialty on average 3x during med school, as they gain more exposure to different fields and they see what their board scores look like. (Medical board exams-- USMLE for MD students or COMLEX for DO students–are a major factor in qualifying for specialties.)
My neuroscience major–who did 2 years of post-grad neuro-psych research at a Top 10 med school and was absolutely, positively sure she was was going into neurology or neuropsych–is now a resident in a specialty that’s about as far from neurology as you can get.
What about Dartmouth? Dartmouth has chiller vibe than some of the schools on her list. And probably less competitive than H, Y or Duke for pre-med. It's not in Vermont, but New Hampshire--Vermont, not much of a difference.