<p>While reading step 9 (make sure the school has good advising) of <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1122176-bluedevilmikes-ten-step-guide-picking-premed-school.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1122176-bluedevilmikes-ten-step-guide-picking-premed-school.html</a>, I thought of a question: how do I know if a school has good advising or not?</p>
<p>You’ll have to talk to students and the office there. Examples of things to think about:</p>
<p>How often do students get to meet with the advisor?
How easy is it to meet with the advisor?
Does the school do a committee letter? If so, what does it take to get one?
Does the school ever prevent students from applying to med school? If so, what criteria do they use?
How does the pre-med office disseminate info to students?
What kinds of programs does the pre-med office run? (e.g. speakers, mock interviews, school fairs, info sessions, essay writing workshops, etc)
What kinds of resources does it have? (e.g. databases of mentors, databases of docs to shadow, databases of researchers, data on past applicants, etc)</p>
<p>Ask how many students per advisor. We saw one highly regarded college that had one pre-med advisor for 700 students. Also ask if students are ranked or tiered in their committee letters…recommended, highly recommended etc. At one college, the criteria to receive a highly recommended required almost perfection.</p>
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Many committees do that. The committee at my son’s school does that too. I am not sure if there are a whole lot of better alternatives to that. Writing a vanilla or vague recommendation letter to the top applicants would be doing an injustice to them. Vanilla letters end up hurting all applicants, as a matter of fact.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks guys, that helps a lot. :)</p>
<p>Hi Kal123 - most committees rank and there’s no problem with that. The question is how they rank and what the criteria is.</p>
<p>Would it be possible for anyone to post an example of what the committees use to rank?</p>
<p>@oregonducks–not all, perhaps even not most, advising offices will disclose exactly how their committee ranks students, but most take the following factors into consideration: GPA; sGPA; MCAT score; awards & competitive internships earned; quality and length of ECs; personal statement on why medicine as a career; letters of recommendation; how well they interview with the committee; personal qualities of the candidate (leadership, work ethic, adversity overcome, etc)</p>