How is pre-med at BC? Do they have good advising, good connections, internship opportunities? I am thinking of majoring thinking of majoring in neuroscience.
Congrats on the opportunity. I can only tell you wat I know based on feedback from freshman daughter at BC. YMMV.
Pre health is very rigorous. And the workload is for real. Like all schools I would guess. The new neuro major is very popular.
Advising is great. And they will support you and let you work with them even after you graduate. They will be pretty honest with you along the way.
Internships are a big plus. And research too. It’s the nature of the school and location. But you have to be proactive too. She has a research spot lined up for next year at a hospital or lab. I don’t know the details.
She also applied for a spot on the BC journal of biology and chem writing on medical issues and was accepted.
She’s excited about that opportunity. And she joined or was accepted at a club that volunteers at hospitals. They have been going to a teenage mental health unit for a few hours on a Saturday morning. good opportunity for a frosh.
Best part was non pre-health opportunity which was a club for alternative spring break. They went to coal country in Appalachia. Service to others is more than a cliche at BC.
She is also in a club for women students that assigns a direct upperclassman woman “mentor” and they also meet as a group around women’s issues and support.
Because pre-health can preclude a semester abroad, she applied to do one this summer and was accepted. As she is only a frosh, she believes being pre health helped her get the one she wanted - it’s more popular than some. To help give a boost because they know the difficulty premeds have to get this opportunity. That is only her feeling. No specific proof.
Last thing I can tell you is she doesn’t find her classmates competitive with each other. Competitive in general. But not at the expense of someone else.
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Current junior pre-med at BC here.
Boston College is definitely a great school for pre-med. You’re in Boston which is often called the “Healthcare Mecca” with 2 of the best hospitals in the United States (BW and MGH), and there’s also a lot of opportunity to work with underserved communities being close to a city. A lot of medical schools come to BC and you could network with the admissions officers from those schools. There is a pre-health and biology mailing list that will e-mail you with opportunities in research, shadowing in the school and in the area. Professors at BC are definitely very open to getting to know their students and I have great relationships with a good number of science professors that I’ve taken. BC has a pretty great pre-health committee. Of those that end up applying with a committee letter, I believe over 80%, if not nearly 90% are accepted, which is extraordinarily high.
But it would be disingenuous for me to not mention that the science classes here are curved on a pretty tough (although I would say fair) curve. While there maybe 500 students that start-off pre-med, around 100 remain by the end of senior year. Now that being said, I think a lot of those weeded out were people were those that didn’t have the best study habits or just weren’t cut out for science - pre-med is rigorous at any school and schools want to weed out the slackers. But, in my own experience, if you put in the work and make sure you keep up with the material, you should have no problem getting a competitive GPA, and you will be well-prepared for the MCAT. From talking to BC grads now in medical school, they’ve told me that BC prepared them very well for medical school and they feel ahead of their peers that graduated from state schools and other less competitive schools. So that all being said, I would advise going to an easier school just for the sake of possibly getting better grades, because if you don’t develop good study habits in undergrad, your preclinical years in medical school will be very tough.
Best of luck in your college selection process.
Lmk if you have any other questions.
My daughter is considering BC for premed. Are grades graded on a curve for the science classes and how hard is it to get A’s and a GPA over 3.8? She is considering BU, BC, Brandeis, and Carnegie Mellon for premed. For CMU she is in the College of Science for biology. Thanks!
ALL colleges grade STEM courses on a curve, even if they won’t admit it. There is no difference between a grading scale of 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B…, and a true curve.
For example, in the former, all a Prof has to do is to adjust the rigor of the next test to obtain the intended grade distribution. In fact, my D’s Organic prof did just that after the first test had a mean of 91 (if I recall). He made it clear to the class that the next test would be more difficult – it was as the mean was more like a 76. Thus, by the end of the semester, the Prof will have the grade distribution that s/he desires.
My point is therefore not to choose a college based on this spin (curve vs. no curve).
Are costs an issue? (Med school is expensive and it doesn’t hurt to save some money on undergrad. Has she visited all 3? BU, BC, and Brandeis have a very different community feel.
btw: BU has a reputation of being a little less generous wrt grades. Dunno anything about Brandeis and CMU.
I believe they set the midpoint at b-
@bluebyyou- I have a friend @ Brandeis doing pre med. He has a near 4.00 GPA approaching the end of his senior year. Yet, his HS ACT was 34 and his HS GPA was 3.90 with a fairly rigorous but not overly AP laden course load. BC is a tougher school than Brandeis for sure.
Brandeis pre-med is quite rigorous. My son is doing the pre-med track now, as are many of his friends. There definitely is a wicked curve. Kids who were valedictorians in high school have been known to struggle mightily. Pre-meds are often in the library on weekend nights when other kids are partying. Perhaps @bluebyyou’s friend at Brandeis has achieved a near 4.00 GPA by working super hard.