Hello, right now I am deciding between uf and fsu for pre med. I know it’s important to go where you feel at home, but why exactly is uf so competitive? I know the science classes are hard everywhere, but why is uf so much more difficult than fsu and others? If I decide against pre med, than uf would be the best school. But I don’t want to go to uf if I’m going to get destroyed and burned out as a pre med. Could someone just give me their experience as a pre med or science major? I know this is subjective and depends on each person’s work ethic but uf has that rep.
I’m currently a health science major on the pre-med track and I’ve taken courses such as general chemistry 1 and 2, biology 1 and 2, and organic chemistry 1 (currently taking organic chemistry 2 this semester). I will say that many of these courses do not come off as easy. A lot of them are weed out courses designed to make some students drop so you’ve got to master your studying techniques early in order to do well in them.
@allthingsamanda do the students on the pre med track seem to be very competitive and cutthroat?
Many of the students here at UF are smart, trust me. I wouldn’t go as far to say they are competitive and cutthroat because here, to me it seems, it really isn’t a competition to beat out other students rather than help each other succeed because the classes are just that hard. Of course there will be students who manage to get an A on an exam (and ruin the curve aha) but majority of the students here get what the average is on their exams. A lot of it depends on who your professor is as well because there are a lot of good ones and bad ones here at UF.
Look at it this way, a lot of the students at UF are very strong academically. The people who are being “weeded out” of these early prerequisite classes were probably superstars in high school. They are just competing against other superstars for the best grades against the curve. Unfortunately, someone has to be below the curve’s midpoint, and these students get weeded out. If it were me, I’d be tempted to go to the school where I’d be more likely to be one of the stronger students, at least in the top half, more likely in the top quarter.
Unless you have your sights set on UF Medical School, that might be different. The thing to keep in mind is just being a student at UF does not improve your chances for medical school generally, unless you have the very high GPA to go with it. One of my relatives got into medical school after attending a tiny liberal arts college. It wasn’t the college’s name that got her in, it was the very high GPA (along with MCAT and some health-related ECs, of course).
@allthingsamanda I’m sure you’re happy at uf, but did you ever regret choosing it because you thought you would do better at another school?
@herosaurus17 No, I don’t regret it! Coming into UF I knew that being a pre-med major would come with its challenges and that these courses would be hard. Medical schools don’t only look at GPA when considering your application; MCAT scores, involvement, and other things get considered into their decision as well.
All schools are competitive for med school admissions, and all schools have weed out classes. The only schools that don’t weedout would be combined programs like Brown’s or Northwestern, and even they have minimum GPAs.
allthingsamanda, how are the ECs at UF for premed students? I understand there are only about 2-3 facilities like the UF Health clinic for premed students to gain experience working in a hospital.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate UF’s undergraduate research/lab opportunities outside of coursework? UF is my state school but I’m concerned the environment is just too big and not competitive enough to foster a good premed/bio learning environment.
Also, would it be wise to start getting research experience my first yr at UF? And would it be wise to start that during the fall/spring term or wait for summer?
Thank you!
https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/factstablea2.html
@vishnu.nanduri101 Currently UF is ranked #2 in the number of applicants supplied to medical schools (2016-2017).
- UCLA - 1,011
- UF- 854
- UC-Berkeley - 819
- UM-Ann Arbor - 781
- UT-Austin - 756
The environment is big, but so are the research/lab opportunities. UF spends over $500 million a year on life sciences R&D. Just don’t expect a lot of hand holding, you have to take the initiative.
Good Luck!
@Gator88NE Wow, thanks for that info.
Obviously a major reason why UF is so high up on this list is that it is a huge school. But, it must be pretty darn good for pre-med regardless to get that many students in. Maybe a more accurate figure would be the % of pre-meds that get in.
That table appears to be total “applicants” supplied to medical schools, not “matriculants.” How many of those 854 actually got into medical school?
The UF med school acceptance is near the national average in the low to mid 40 percent range. They don’t restrict kids from applying, so the application numbers are inflated. The same is true for the other schools on Gator88’s list.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
What you can take from the “statistics”, is that UF is comparable to the above schools, and that it has a “pre-med” culture (lots of students doing Pre-med, lots of EC’s and medical related research and opportunities, etc.).
You might call the numbers of kids applying “inflated” because they don’t restrict kids from applying. An applicant is an applicant, so I’d call those numbers “accurate.”
At other schools where they restrict students from applying I’d call the numbers “deflated” or maybe even “somewhat misleading.”
@Gator88NE @Trisherella have your kids made the final decision yet?
@Trisherella - I used to think that it was good that schools like UF did not restrict the number of med school applicants, but after looking over the process, I have changed my opinion and become more in favor of schools that limit the number of applicants simply because it benefits the students who have little chance of matriculating.
Florida had a total 854 med school applicants in 2016. If the UF matriculation rate was equal to the national average of 42 percent, that means that that about 359 UF grads got into med school which is a healthy number. At the same time, it also means that 496 UF grads got rejected from med school. This is one of the highest number of med school rejections in the country, and is devastating to students who dedicated four years of studies with one goal in mind.
Frankly, many of these students had little chance of making into med school, and they would have been better served being told early in the process so they would have a chance to change their major.
If you look at the entire state, there are at least 2,677 med school applicants in 2016 in Florida. The breakdown is as follows:
UF: 854
USF: 366
FSU: 338
Miami: 334
UCF: 321
FIU: 197
FAU: 150
Nova: 61
FGCU: 29
FAMU: 27
The above does not include any applicants from smaller colleges like New College, Rollins, Eckerd, UNF, etc.
At the same time, there are seven med schools in Florida and they accepted a total of 943 students in the same time period.
https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf
Dividing the number of Florida med school applicants by the total number of in-state med slots indicates that there are only enough med school slots to accommodate 35 percent of the states med student production. Some of these kids will go OOS, but a number of Florida high schools grads who went OOS for college will attend in-state med schools so the numbers probably wash out.
Looking at the numbers, if UF has a med school acceptance rate equal to the national average of 42 percent, and the state of Florida has an overall acceptance rate of 35 percent, the acceptance rates for schools below the UF and Miami level must be abysmal. Many of these students would be better served being weeded out in the freshman and sophomore years than being allowed to complete four years in the med school track only to have their dreams crushed when it is too late to change anything about their undergraduate studies.
@herosaurus17 He’s going to UF. 
@Zinhead If I had to guess, schools restrict the number of med school applicants via the Pre-Health or Pre-Medical Committees. Which means you’re not sorted out till your junior/senior year. I don’t know how much more effective that is at influencing a student to switch out of pre-med. I may stop them from wasting a year or two, applying to schools they have little chance of being accepted too…
The same would go for pre-vets…yes, that D in OChem means you really need to start thinking about something other than vet or medical school…
I’m sure UF (and most of the large public universities) don’t use committees, simply because they lack the resources (to screen and write letters for a thousand students, each year).
For the most part, the big state schools don’t do committees because of costs. Some state schools have special programs for select pre-meds, but to a large extent, it is sink or swim at these schools.
A potential advantage of a private school is that some of them will have sufficient guidance to tell students in freshman or sophomore year that they are sinking, and allow the student to choose an another path that won’t lead to med school rejection.