@bsms2018 - You welcome. You can PM me if you need more info.
Any natural science major will be curved quite harshly so be prepared. Also, I wouldn’t suggest doing premed-CS at a top university like VU if you don’t already have a good CS background and are willing to put in all the extra hours coding that’ll distract you from premed studies. You’ll be competing against kids who’ve been coding at a high level since high school and aren’t premed, so 100% of their time is spent on CS related projects. Anyways, being CS isn’t going to help as a practicing physician and will certainly be a disadvantage if you can’t make the cut. If you’re good at CS and want to pursue a career in research it’ll help for an MD/PhD route but that you’ll most likely need a 3.7+ GPA and a 515+ MCAT. If you want to just be an MD and practice it’s not really any added benefit at all lol… You can find the average grades awarded by department online so it’s always good to do that research before deciding. I’ve heard Vandy’s engineering school is quite deflated compared to other schools too. For instance the average Bioengineering/BME grade awarded at UCBerkeley is a 3.56 while the Biology average is a 2.8, and Molecular Cell Bio -the uninformed parents most popular premed majors- is a 3.02. I’m looking for this reference but I saw something about BioE/BME there having the highest GPA/SAT average by major recently and it seems the school rewards those students.There are quite a few BME programs that operate in the same model such that it’s much harder to get into the major but the major is curved quite well when compared to the other typical premed majors. BME at these schools is a smart choice but I would highly recommend against it anywhere else.
Here is my source for the grade distributions:
http://projects.dailycal.org/grades/
Like other posters here have said, MHS will be easier to attain a much higher GPA and better chances at admission granted you have the MCAT score to back that GPA up. However, from personal experience, BMEs @ top programs including Vandy tend to knock the MCAT out of the park and have solid medical/clinical related EC’s, which makes up for their lower GPAs*. The average BME GPA @ the top 5 programs (minus GT) I know of are all around 3.4-3.5 so the myth of BME GPA suicide isn’t quite warranted, which someone else in this thread alluded to. However, the programs that tend to inflate their BME’s GPAs all realize their graduates need a graduate degree i.e. MD or MS/PhD so they do their best to help their students out getting acceptance. If the overall culture of the school isn’t pre-grad school centric they tend to deflate like most traditional engineering programs. IMO any BME program that isn’t pre-med/grad school centric is not the best choice because it’s just not employable enough for the workforce since most programs are just way too broad and don’t really prepare one for a traditional “engineering” role.
Short summary:
If you want to be competitive to a top 25 medical school you’ll need like a 3.9+ with a very high MCAT. I’m talking like 518+ PLUS really good extracurriculars.
If you want any medical school you’ll need around a 3.5-3.8 with a high MCAT, 512+.
Good way of gauging your competitiveness is your LizzyM score which is your GPA x10 + MCAT (converted to old). You need around a 70 be competitive at the middle-tier schools. Any top analytical science program will prepare you well for the MCAT but tend to lower your GPA so choose one that has slightly higher grade inflation to inch you closer to that 70.
@Jsteez : You meant “pre-professional” centric? Graduate school STEM programs will gladly take into account what they know about the rigor and grading in certain programs more carefully than prof. schools because they typically receive less applicants so can more heavily scrutinize applications and often request more STEM courses than the pre-health core will demand so will look for those and additional courses. In addition to that, many are looking at GPA in the last 4 semesters which is when most have found their stride/are taking classes with a more select group.
I also would not over-estimate CS programs at elites as a whole. It really depends on the strength of the overall program, the teaching resources, etc. Do not assume that these are uniformly “solid” across elites. And definitely do not assume they grade harshly/doing well is hard because of the competition. Many CS courses will be project based (like engineering classes) and you either do well on the projects and the quizzes/exams in between or not. Most CS courses will not be a super competitive environment (sometimes group work will be forced) like a course that is large, exam based, and highly enrolled by pre-healths.
I feel as if some of the grading you see in biology and molec. cell have more to do with selection effects and them being go to majors for most pre-healths (whether they truly like biology or not. Some also have this idea that biology learning is like what they did at most of their high schools, endless memorizing. In college many may select instructors and courses that allow them to get away with that type of learning or simply not know any better/that the MCAT emphasizes reasoning) and this apparently shows up when people try to crunch numbers for MCAT performance by major. Biology majors often do comparatively poorly when compared to interdisciplinary majors like BME and some neuroscience programs (those pursuing this at basically any remotely competitive school should see an MCAT advantage if they do things right. Usually with engineering majors, it is impossible to dodge difficult courses or those that demand analytical thinking styles like you can in some other STEM majors, especially biology. So you can theoretically go through biology, get great grades and have a “meh” MCAT in comparison as undergraduate biology programs often only pay lip service to the idea that they now have courses that focus on analytical thinking. To ensure this, you would have to basically ensure that all faculty are which is impossible and difficult given the history and culture of bio teaching. Engineering has been always taught as though it were about problem solving and thinking) as well as physical sciences and some sparsely populated (by pre-healths and in comparison to STEM) humanities and social science majors. Hmm…lower GPAs and typically lower MCATS, also huge enrollment and number of majors. Wonder what is going on with biology at most schools. I just wonder.
Also, that 3.9+ seems high. Seems like many who are 3.85+ gain admission (especially coming from elites, but it may depend on major), but you do want 34+ (maybe even 35) equivalent on the new MCAT for sure. Many more than that like 3.8ish easily get interviews from the top 25s. Once you get the interview, it is pretty much up to you, and you have been deemed competitive. Even so called “ORMS”, I have observed tons 3.75+ being interviewed at several top 25s and many gaining admission. While “paper based perfection” is certainly at a premium in their admissions, it appears tons get away without it (especially when they have a solid research record or other things that make them stand out).
@srk2017 : Meh, Duke isn’t that bad (seems that they tend to curve most of their pre-health STEM courses, maybe outside of engineering to solid B) Vanderbilt seems to curve (or design exams and assignments that land at certain averages) lower division/pre-health courses to B-/B like some lower grading schools like JHU, Emory, Berkeley, and Cornell maybe. Duke is not a particularly harsh grader among elites and looks more like schools ranked around it (minus JHU) and my understanding is that it even shows up in STEM courses. If JHU and Duke are tougher, they are in the other ways that I discussed with you. The curriculum and skills needed to succeed in some of these key pre-med lower division and intermediate courses in the life sciences appears different and would be harder to most life sciences majors (especially freshmen) who aren’t used to that style of thinking/problem solving (as well as the new content that may be taught).
Only chiming in here to say my daughter goes to Pitt and has many Indian American friends (judging from her snapchat and the rare text picture I get). In fact, her suite has four…so 4 out of 8 girls are Indian American.
There are a few amazingly brilliant students my daughter knows who seem to breeze through First Year Engineering. But the rest are finding it a GPA low key bloodbath. These are ACT 34+ top 2% kids. Engineering Analysis is a 3 hr class there that will consume hours and hours of your time with coding assignments and written assignments. You are also required to attend two hours per week of seminar classes that are great but for which you get zero credit. FYE is physics, Chem, physics, EA and then an elective and a seminar.
If you are one of those amazingly brilliant kids then engineering should be fine for you. But otherwise, steer clear of engineering for undergrad and have a little fun and have time for the other things.