I disagree. In fact, as a recent medical school graduate I would say hchun301 has given the most useful advice in this entire thread. The most important thing for a medical school applications is GPA and MCAT. It is going to be tough to maintain a high GPA at all of these schools and all will prepare well for the MCAT. As for other factors, you can volunteer anywhere, get clinical experience anywhere and get good LORs anywhere. It really doesn’t matter how large your class size is when it comes to getting good LORs. Why? Because regardless of whether there are 500 people in a class or 15 the bottom line is that you need to put in an effort to get to know a professor outside of the lecture times in order to get a GREAT letter of recommendation. And yes, this is easy to do at a school as large as Michigan (I did it and so do HUNDREDS of other medical school applicants every year). But if you still think having a small class size is that important in terms of getting good LORs then just request them from professors in upper level classes, which are going to be small even at a huge school like Michigan.
As far as pre-med advising I will say that I chuckled a little bit reading through this thread. In medical school, my peers and I often made fun of the quality of “pre-med advising” that was given at undergrads across the country. In general, these advisors have just as much knowledge as the posters in this thread when it comes to medical school admissions (i.e. they read something online, or know someone who applied to medical school). In other words, most have never went through the process themselves. Regardless of which school you attend, I would suggest using Student Doctor Network over a pre-med advisor. This is coming from a white male who was a traditional medical school applicant that graduated from a Top 25 medical school with an undergrad GPA that was destined for “no MD acceptances or maybe, if VERY lucky, an unranked med school” or “Osteopathic Medical School or Med school ranked 30-50”.
I would say the biggest difference (as far as medical school admissions) between the schools you selected is going to be research opportunities. Having a large academic hospital nearby is a huge plus as an undergrad. Sure, it is possible to do research at a school like Notre Dame that lacks this. But in general it is way easier to reap the benefits of a clinical research project than a basic science one. You can jump on a clinical research project for a couple of months and get multiple publications out of it (I did this with ease). I have never heard of such a thing happening in the world of bench research. Unless you are going to be a physician scientist, doing clinical research will also be more helpful for a future career as a physician. I honestly can’t think of a single hospital in South Bend, IN (although there has got to be one) and there is certainly not an academic hospital. This is where Georgetown and UM really have the upper hand, with UM being far superior to Georgetown in my biased opinion.
I am not saying you should attend Michigan. But if you are going to consider spending a considerable amount of money on Georgetown or Notre Dame I think Michigan is worth the money as well, in your case. Enough to justify not going to an in-state school? That is for you to decide, but seeing how you did not mention any such schools in your post that topic is rather tangential.