Pre-med at UChicago!

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
41

<p>Calexico - goldenboy’s post is helpful, but I’d strongly recommend that you go straight to the source. Contact someone in Chicago’s pre-health advising office and ask to see Chicago’s medical school placement information.</p>

<p>Generally, it does seem that Duke has really good medical school placement, even in comparison to its immediate peers (UChicago, UPenn, etc.). </p>

<p>Outside of Duke’s advantage in goldenboy’s thread, it’s hard to make out much more. All the schools do pretty well, and, especially when adjusted for size (Cornell is quite large), are pretty comparable. </p>

<p>You must also keep in mind, and is discussed in this thread, Chicago still seems to have a bit of a reverential attitude toward the PhD. At least some of Chicago’s top students probably go for a PhD rather than a MD, so that may soften Chicago’s numbers a bit.</p>

<p>If you like Chicago for other reasons (being in a large city, probably having the best liberal arts departments out of the schools you mentioned, etc.), I’d strongly recommend Chicago, but you must then go about your business as a pre-med, as I’ve said above, boldly and smartly.</p>

42

<p>Yeah, it’s important noting that of the schools you are considering, Cornell is the biggest by quite a bit over Penn, Duke and Northwestern. Chicago is smaller, Dartmouth is even smaller and Amherst is downright tiny.</p>

<p>Here’s something to consider, the amount of med school applicants from each school: [Pre</a> Medical School Programs Producing the Greatest Number of Premeds](<a href=“http://www.doctorpremed.com/pre-medical-school-programs.html]Pre”>http://www.doctorpremed.com/pre-medical-school-programs.html)</p>

<ol>
<li>Cornell: 471</li>
<li>Penn: 350</li>
<li>Duke: 341</li>
<li>Northwestern: 332</li>
<li>Brown: 270</li>
</ol>

<p>Dartmouth, Amherst and Chicago send out fewer than 200 medical school applicants each year so Dartmouth is actually fantastic at med school placement when size is taken into account. I would put it and Duke on par.</p>

43

<p>The data that you really need to compare undergraduate institutions isn’t easily attainable, but this data from the AAMC is (I think) more up to date than whats in the post above. The downside is that the charts are organized by race but total applicant numbers are listed.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

44

<p>wow this thread has been really helpful to me, a UChicago applicant. You’d think that all this talk of poor advisers and low med school acceptance rate would dissuade me from applying, but in actuality, I’m even more determined to get in. Then again I think this coincides perfectly with the typical masochistic UChicago pre-med student.</p>

45

<p>DMA017 - just be bold and smart about navigating the pre-med process at U of C, and you’ll be fine.</p>

46

<p>Basic message has probably been said before but:</p>

<p>Was premed at chicago. Now a physician…honestly many would be happy with my life…</p>

<ol>
<li>did an ivy league md/phd. out of 8 in my year…3 were from u of c…u of c did not hinder us.</li>
<li>My first impression of my med school…and i was at a good med school…with kids from very prestigous undergrads: i knew how to study better than many of them…u of c taught me how to be a student…very valuable…</li>
<li>Medicine is not intellectual (i love it but it is neither rocket science nor shakespeare). Thank god i went to U of C where i was exposed to true higher learning.</li>
<li>U of C was not a pre med pressure cooker where you feared your classmates…or obsessively talked about getting into medical school…</li>
</ol>

<p>reality: in general, if you have it in you, you will get into med school…if you do not you wont…(however, there are a few schools like harvard or princeton where you may be able to get in with less than stellar performance simply because some med schools want grads with those credentials…)</p>

<ol>
<li> Finally…as i said in 4 above: pre med bio major can be mind numbing…memorizing; competing; obsessing about get into med school and not very intellectual…U of C is a unique place…you go to college once…</li>
</ol>

<p>premed can = fear…dont be so scared…and do not focus on a far away future goal so much that you miss out…on four short years…</p>

<p>p.s. do a quarter/semester abroad…even if you are a premed…medicine is a multiyear grind…you will never have the opportunity again…</p>

<p>p.s.s. take it from someone who has been through the process, and as this thread shows: premeds can obsess…reality is most stuff you read and most stuff people talk about is simply an expression of their anxiety, and in really contains very little useful information…i believe in the “andrew carnegie” theory of achievement: either you have the right stuff or not; all else is external…to say if you go to u of c you wont be a doctor but if you go to school X you will is probably drivel…pick a place that is good and you think you will enjoy and fit into…</p>

<p>p.s.s.s. one of the best ways help yourself to get into med schools is by working in a research lab (think recommendations; think stuff to write about in your essay; think broad horizons)…U of C has many great labs and a med school right on campus…and a relatively small undergraduate class size…</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

47

<p>I don’t have much to add to this specific conversation, but just to add that I don’t believe any 17-year-old truly “knows” that he or she wants to be a doctor.</p>

<p>There’s a lot more I could say on the topic of work, but I’ll let an essay by Paul Graham (Cornell alum) take it from here: [How</a> to Do What You Love](<a href=“Paul Graham”>How to Do What You Love)</p>

<p>But suppose you, after doing your homework and assessing your collegiate options, attend the University of Chicago and enter as a pre-med student. Here are a variety of plausible outcomes to consider: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>You attend the University of Chicago, you complete the pre-med program, you are accepted to medical school, you become a doctor, you live in a home with a white picket fence and 2.3 children. This is the future you’re thinking of most. Hooray!</p></li>
<li><p>You attend the University of Chicago, you complete the pre-med program, you are accepted to medical school, you become a doctor, but you wake up in the morning wishing you didn’t have to go to work. You are undepaid/overworked you hate how you spend more time wrangling with insurance companies than treating patients, your colleagues are abusing the system, charging Medicare for unnecessary surgeries at high profit margins, your patients are ungrateful and unhappy, your job is telling people they have a terminal illness/fussing with screaming children/performing routine operations. You ask yourself, “How is it that I thought being a doctor would be everything to me, and I didn’t think about the kind of work I’d be doing?”</p></li>
<li><p>You attend the University of Chicago, you complete the pre-med track, but something in you decides to take a few years off before applying to medical school. In the meantime you find an intellectually satisfying and financially rewarding career, and decide never to apply to medical school, because the whole reason you wanted to be a doctor in the first place was to have an intellectually satisfying and financially rewarding career. You realize (as many of us have) that there are lots of careers that are both intellectually satisfying and financially rewarding that don’t involve hospitals or gore or crushing sadness.</p></li>
<li><p>You attend the University of Chicago and start the pre-med track but realize early in that there’s so much more you’re interested in than just medicine and surgery. Maybe your grades aren’t great but your heart’s in medicine, so you go for an LPN after graduation. Maybe you’re fascinated by health insurance policy, so you migrate towards the University’s BA/MPP program. Maybe…</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Anyway… I just want teenagers reading this thread to realize that college is a lot more than just input/output. I also want teenagers to do some serious homework on what being a doctor is all about, considering that legislation could change the doctor experience in a heartbeat, and that the kind of doctor most people fantasize about being is the kind of celebridoctor who doesn’t take insurance.</p>

<p>I also want to put out there that had I followed the career path I thought I would when I entered UC, I’d be pretty unhappy. Through a series of accidents, some of them happier than others, I got a new path.</p>

48

<p>That is a very biased post. I’m sure there are doctors out there who find rewarding careers without becoming brainwashed suburbanites.</p>

<p>I know my mom loves being a doctor, more specifically a pathologist.</p>

49

<p>^ You are absolutely correct. I didn’t mean to suggest that all doctors are “brainwashed suburbanites” or unhappy with their career choice. I just wanted to point out that not all doctors have the same kind of work life-- What Dr. Oz does for a living is not the same as what a GP in an local hospital does for a living. I don’t know if teens get that.</p>

<p>[The same holds for lawyers-- there are lots of different kinds of lawyers out there in lots of different working environments!]</p>

<p>Just to give a sense of the varied fields of medicine, here’s a snippet from a New York Times article that’s reporting on the dearth of rural physicians:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/health/policy/23doctors.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/health/policy/23doctors.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

</p>

50

<p>To follow up, here’s a snippet from a thought-provoking piece from anesthesiologist Karen Siebert:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>From: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html?pagewanted=all[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html?pagewanted=all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And in an extended conversation on NPR, it’s revealed that “part time” in primary care is considered about 40 hours a week, down from 80-100 hours a week: [After</a> Earning MDs, Are Docs Obligated To Keep Practicing Med? : NPR](<a href=“After Earning MDs, Are Docs Obligated To Keep Practicing Med? : NPR”>After Earning MDs, Are Docs Obligated To Keep Practicing Med? : NPR)</p>

<p>There are complicated underlying issues here (Medicaid funding, the difficulty of staffing primary care positions, and so on) that should be considered.</p>

51

<p>I’m a premed at uchicago and based on the “Application Seminar I” handout we all received:</p>

<p>CCIHP acceptance rates were 69% in 2010 and 77% in 2011.</p>

52

<p>That’s weird the percentages vary so much from 2010 to 2011, but 77% ain’t bad… I think most top schools are in the 80-85% range, so Chicago seems right about there, and, as is generally seen throughout the rest of the school, hopefully improving on this number.</p>

53

<p>What’s your opinion of Northwestern University?</p>

54

<p>^ Wrong forum bro</p>

55

<p>Dear All,</p>

<p>I recently became aware that information in my original post is inaccurate and therefore the foundation for false judgments. I regret that I cannot delete the original post (but remain actively working to do so). I’m sorry for any confusion this misinformation has caused.</p>

56

<p>I remember how much the PhDs at UChicago look down on the MD’s (sorry to tell those of you whose parents may have told you being a doctor is the world’s noblest profession–before the insurance companies eliminated their income.) But cheers to all.</p>

<p>@Light23 Asking about Northwestern University on this Forum will bring out the wolves.</p>

57

<p>siege1214: Can you elaborate on this?</p>

58

<p>If you are considering U Chicago and your goal is to become a Dr. don’t even think of attending U Chicago. There is a popular slogan,“U Chicago-Where fun comes to die.”
There could be another one. U Chicago-“Where your dreams of attending medical school die.”</p>

<p>As a parent of a recent Grad I have to give my experience with the U Chicago and CCIHP. My daughter, pre-med/biology, took the freshmen placement tests and her scores indicated to her advisor that she was capable of taking 300 level courses in Calculus and Chemistry. I tried to tell my daughter that Medical Schools were not going to look at the specific classes she took but at her GPA and her MCAT score. She followed her advisors advice. What did dad know? She started her FIRST quarter with 2 C’s. I tried to discuss my daughters educational plan with her advisor and he hid behind FERPA. THe Advisors at U Chicago do not want to talk to parents about the advise they provide or do not provide to their assigned students. Her advisor actually told my daughter that she was an adult, 18 years old, she needed to start making her own decisions. He was gone after her 5th quarter. By then she had figured out that he had no clue as to what he was doing and he really didn’t care what happened to his students. </p>

<p>I am told several of her professors were absolutely brilliant. One problem they couldn’t speak english. Twice she had professors who were removed the year after she had them as her professor. No more teaching, only research. My favorite quote from one of her chem or biology professors. “I don’t give out A’s, when you know more than me then you will get an A.” </p>

<p>Her experience with CCIHP was even worse. CCIHP is not an aid to students but a barrier. I see that J Violet Gannon is no longer the director. I wonder what grade she would give her self during her tenure at CCIHP?</p>

59

<p>As the previous post was written by a father, with all due respect, if what I am about to say is false, then I really apologize.</p>

<p>But as this is a person who created an account just to post this 1st post (that happens to be rather negative), I am a bit suspicious as to whether this post is legitimate. I don’t see the normal person creating a CC account just to post this and nothing else.</p>

<p>Here at UChicago, we don’t address courses as “300 level.” Courses have 5 digits and different levels are often in the 2nd digit with the 3rd digit indicating quarter (fall, winter, spring). For example, 3 different levels of general chemistry are 10100, 11100, 12100. With AP chem 5 which give full credit for general chemistry, you could technically start in Honors Gen chem 12100 or Organic Chem 22000. I don’t understand what “300 level” is. No one I know has address classes using “300 level”.</p>

<p>I’m usually not one to start these kinds of things, but something is odd about the previoust post: it being the first post of the account as well as unorthodox methods to name a class. It makes me question the previous post’s legitimacy. Plus, this thread would have had to be searched for as the last post was about 7 months ago.</p>

<p>If I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, I greatly apologize.</p>

60

<p>3.5 Minimum in Math, Physics and Sciences. 3.5 min. overall. The student advisors at U Chicago really don’t have the best interests of their students at heart. Every parent should have a FERPA release signed by their child. The Advisor can snow and intimidate the 18 year freshmen. They absolutley do not want to have anything to do with their parents. Advisors do not want to be held accountable.</p>