Pre-med and Engineering Schools?

College Search & Selection
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Hello, I am currently a junior in high school and was researching different colleges with great pre-med and engineering programs. As of right now, I want to go to med school but I don’t know whether I will stick to that decision. I want to have engineering as a back-up. So it’d be great if you could recommend colleges with great pre-med and engineering programs. I don’t want to transfer if my mind does change.

Also, please include the campus life and the financial aid at those schools. I really want to go to a school with great school spirit and that are interactive with many clubs and activities.
With financial aid, my family isn’t in a financially stable condition right now so paying for the tuition is a problem. Especially with med school in mind, I really don’t want to make any loans during my undergraduate years.

Size of the school doesn’t really matter, but if I had to choose, i prefer small schools with small classroom size.

Any type of recommendations/opinions/comments will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!

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Your GPA, ACT/SAT, and home state?

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@txstella
GPA: 3.92
ACT: 29 (Will retake next week)
Home State: Michigan

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University of Michigan is a great place to start. Phenomenal pre-med AND engineering programs.

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And UMich is a reach for a student with a 29. http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2014-2015_umaa.pdf

OP, work on getting that SAT up. The vast majority of schools will work for premed. Mich State is a great option for engineering.

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Are you saying that your family likely can’t pay anything towards college? is that because they’re low income? or because they have a lot of bills?

Which college can you commute to?

Finding an affordable school is going to be your first issue.


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researching different colleges with great pre-med

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Great premed? virtually all schools are fine for premed. There are no rankings or anything like that in regards to premed. there are no “great premed” schools.

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@“Erin’s Dad” Yes, I am currently working on it right now. I will take it again in September to raise it up to 32+.
Is Michigan State good for pre-med?

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@mom2collegekids The family income is too low to pay for college. My sister graduated from Michigan State a few months ago and everything was paid for her. We didn’t have to pay anything for her tuition, room and boarding, books, etc and my parents are always talking about how I need to get a lot of scholarships and financial aid because they cannot pay for college. My sister lived in a dorm for a year, lived in an apartment with her friends another year, and commuted from home the last year. We live about 1 hr away from MSU.

I’ve seen from other CC discussions that some schools aren’t very good with advising? Also, the med school placement rate is really high in some schools and very low in other schools. I don’t know if that is because their classes don’t adequately prepare the students for the MCAT and has bad advising or because their students aren’t just motivated enough to work hard for med school? I’m still in the process of learning about all this so if there is anything wrong about what i said, feel free to correct me.

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Also, will i be limited to in-state colleges? Is there any out-of-state colleges that I will be better suited to? (with great financial aid)

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Any college offers good classes in the premed core. You can be concerned about 1° ease of articulation between this and your major 2° how weed out they are and 3° quality of pre-health advising, but that’s it. The premed classes will be regular classes and any college can teach them well.
If you’re interested in undergraduate teaching quality, look here:
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching
and here:
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges/undergraduate-teaching
and here:
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities/undergraduate-teaching
This should help you to start a list.

The premed core is just a set of basic classes; 2 semesters each of biology, chemistry, physics, English + 1 semester each of calculus, statistics, organic chemistry, biochemistry, sociology, psychology, a diversity-focused class, and preferably a language spoken by an immigrant group (Korean, Urdu, French Creole, Hmong, Portuguese…)
Non Engineering majors are more flexible to accomodate these classes since Engineering has a fixed, sequential path with very few electives. However, if you look at the Engineering major flowcharts, you’ll see quickly whether those classes are already included in the major / can easily fit into the elective choices… or not.
Ask Mom2collegekids, since her own son followed this path.

Are your parents unable to pay for college (low EFC to zero EFC) or unwilling to pay for college (high EFC)?

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<<<
I’ve seen from other CC discussions that some schools aren’t very good with advising? Also, the med school placement rate is really high in some schools and very low in other schools. I don’t know if that is because their classes don’t adequately prepare the students for the MCAT and has bad advising or because their students aren’t just motivated enough to work hard for med school? I’m still in the process of learning about all this so if there is anything wrong about what i said, feel free to correct me.


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Some schools don’t do well with advising.

Placement rates have nothing to do with “preparing students for the MCAT”, since premed prereqs and schools do NOT prepare students for the MCAT. The prereqs are just regular classes that other STEM students take as well. They’re not special for premeds, they’re not designed for the MCAT.

Acceptance rates into med schools has to do with a few different things…the state the school is in, the weeding process, and the quality of the students to begin with.

And, since all schools weed, the acceptance rate means nothing to an incoming frosh. By the time the school’s premeds are applying to med school, 3/4 of the frosh premed will have changed their career goals.

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The family income is too low to pay for college. My sister graduated from Michigan State a few months ago and everything was paid for her.


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What kind of aid did she get? What was her EFC? Did she also get merit?


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Ask Mom2collegekids, since her own son followed this path.

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Yes, my son was an engineering premed. It is probably the most challenging path. Getting into med school as an engineering major can be done as both son and his med school housemate were engineering majors, but it is tough.

Since your test scores aren’t that strong, I would advise that you NOT seek out the schools that have the strongest engineering majors, etc. Those top students will grab all the A’s leaving you with a GPA that isn’t med school worthy.

We see this misstep all the time. HS students who are interested in being premed seeking entrance into schools/majors where their classmates will be stronger than they are. Guess what then happens.

There is a premed student who recently posted in the premed forum. He had started college at one of the UTexas schools (maybe UTexas Dallas?) I don’t remember which. He had a very strong GPA. Then he transferred to Vanderbilt and guess what? His GPA tanked. What a misstep. A misstep that may end up costing him acceptance into med school. UT Dallas is definitely good enough for a premed, but the student didn’t trust that or something.

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All those OOS colleges with great FA are HIGHLY competitive for admission (because they have great FA). Your GPA is competitive but your ACT is not. You can look here to see what schools might work with your current stats:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html#latest

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You seem unaware that some colleges screen their applicants. A college can make its admit rate anything it wants thru judicious use of the committee letter.

Since this is an advice forum, here’s advice. Get a job or volunteer position this summer in a hospital or other place delivering health care. A summer spent in actual health care will remove the stars from your eyes, you’ll know whether the medical field is right for you or not. And this experience is an unofficial requirement for med school acceptance, might as well get started now. Like many kids, I’d bet you know little about the actual day-to-day life in the field. And so when many kids think about health care its automatically 'I’m going to be a doctor!!" without a lot of understanding of whether its work they’d really enjoy, or any consideration of alternative careers in medicine that take a lot less time and expense to enter. Actual experience will let you learn about those other possibilities.

I also suggest you spend a few minutes learning more about what becoming a strong med school applicant takes. Read thru the very informative FAQ at http://www.rhodes.edu/hpa/15890.asp They also have a nice writeup in the “PreMed Essentials” link on the left side of that page.

Trying to “have it all” may mean having nothing. It’s your life, try if you like, but engineering is probably the toughest way to med school. Unless you can keep your gpa high you’re not going to be a competitive med candidate. And if you start in engineering and quit the major (like 1/2 to 2/3rds of all do) with a low gpa then you’ve probably doomed your chances for med school as well as lost that “back-up” plan.

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As stated up-thread, dozens of schools will provide the foundational life sciences coursework that you will need for your medical school applications, including Michigan State U and its EXCELLENT Lyman Briggs School of Life Sciences, right down the road from your front lawn.

As for engineering school, it is very tough to maintain the high GPA you would need to be admitted to Medical school, as M2CK indicated. Not impossible, but very tough because ENGINEERING IS HARD!!! That being said, you might want to look to a liberal arts college with Engineering, like Trinity in Connecticut. There are also midsize universities such as Marquette, Saint Louis U and Washington University in Saint Louis). Pull up your ACT score and you have a shot at good financial aid from U of South Carolina or Ohio University. Finally, a great low-cost/high ROI alternative is South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.