<p>Trying to help my son decide where to apply for a pre-med education. He LOVES UNC. Looking at UNC's website it does not look like they offer much in the way of pre-med counseling. Can anyone speak to how good pre-med is at UNC? My son plans on majoring in biology, I am sure UNC will offer a great education. My questions are around what he will experience outside of the classroom. Are there volunteering opportunities in the hospital that undergrads can take advantage of (or are all volunteering positions filled by medical students)? Are there real research opportunities? How hard is it to make connections with faculty to get recommendation letters? Is the honors program at UNC a benefit in a pre-med program or are the extra classes just extra work? Any thoughts from individuals who have experience with UNC as a pre-med program would be helpful. I would also be open to suggestions for other great pre-med programs. Son has good grades and test scores, well rounded. Not looking for schools with a $200,000+ price tag so unless merit aid is available will not be considering private schools. (Would like to save money to pay for med school!) Also son not interested in small liberal art schools. Thanks!</p>
<p>Have you see this website? <a href=“http://careers.unc.edu/students/pre-professional-advising/pre-health”>http://careers.unc.edu/students/pre-professional-advising/pre-health</a></p>
<p>Sometimes, it feels like every incoming freshman is pre-med around here. That’s a stereotype at UNC. I’m just saying that to illustrate a point: it is a very common, very highly-supported career trajectory around here. I’ve been doing research in a hospital since my freshman year, getting faculty recommendations and all that, and I’ve never even taken a biology course. You land research positions by emailing random faculty as a freshman until someone bites. Speaking of which — oh, lordy, are there a bunch of bio labs around here. Undergraduate research is encouraged by the administrators and faculty of UNC like nothing else. In their eyes, the problem is not that there aren’t enough opportunities, but that students aren’t getting into research early enough.</p>
<p>Sorry — your post implies that you may have heard that pre-med isn’t a real thing around here, but — do you know how much resources and money are poured towards the chemistry and biology programs at UNC? A LOT (I don’t know the number). Biology is the most common major here (well, that or journalism). If you get a map of the campus and start highlighting every building that’s dedicated to some type of biological, medical, or chemical research, you’d be swinging that highlighter around for a while. I read an article about the ten hardest collegiate courses in America; organic chemistry was up there, and they quoted a UNC student. If a person is caught with an organic chemistry textbook when midterms come around, you know they’re having a bad time. The problem isn’t that UNC isn’t pre-med-oriented enough, but that the pre-med programs around here break the egos and GPAs of younger students, making a lot of them give up on it and switch to something else. </p>
<p>Honors program — plenty of intersection between that and pre-med. There are so many bio- and chem-based honors courses (<a href=“http://honorscarolina.unc.edu/current-students/curriculum/honors-carolina-courses/fall-2014-courses/”>http://honorscarolina.unc.edu/current-students/curriculum/honors-carolina-courses/fall-2014-courses/</a>). Honors Carolina even developed a minor based in medicine (“Interdisciplinary Minor in Medicine, Literature, and Culture”).</p>
<p>Volunteering positions in hospitals — anecdotally, I know a studio art major that does that just because it’s fun, and a chemistry student that’s developing some kind of program for the families of cancer patients in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center — those are just two I can think of at the moment. I can also name a plethora of students that are doing medical trips or research in Central American or African countries over the summer.</p>
<p>I could ramble about this a lot, but my point is — if pre-med is your son’s thing, the problem is less “Are there enough pre-med opportunities at UNC?” and more “Pre-med is really, really, really hard at UNC”. So, I hope this sheds some light on that situation.</p>