Pre-med college list help

Hello,

I am interested in going to medical school and want to go to a college for undergrad that will have great pre-med resources and prepare me well for mcat, interviews and help advise me through the process as a whole, I am currently a senior in high school and am looking for colleges/universities to add to my application list.
Here are my stats:in top 10% of graduating class
3.94 gpa/ 4.275 weighted
Act: 30
Can people recommend certain colleges that are have great pre-med tracks that I could be a competitive applicant for? I’m stuck with “brand name schools” on my list so far and I’d really like to branch out but I’m having trouble.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Thanks

What state are you in?

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great pre-med resources and prepare me well for mcat,


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Colleges don’t prepare students for the MCAT.

Your ACT is good, but not strong enough to be a premed at a “brand name” university, if you’re meaning a top 30-50 university.

All undergrads weed their premeds. If you’re serious about med school, then attending a “good school,” where your score is considered a high score is best for a premed. If you attend an undergrad where most of the premeds are stronger than you are, who do you think will end up with the A’s?

what is your home state?

How much will your parents pay each year?

Go to a school that is a good fit for you - meaning where you can thrive (with strong grades), and what is cost effective. Major in something you will do very well at while meeting all the med school course requirements. You do not want much student debt from UG. Look very carefully at where you can get four year merit money, or if you live close to commute to a school that has good educational standards (if that is your situation).

Posting a bit late in the application cycle as a HS senior - have to hit deadlines.

Agree with all posted in comment #2.

Bates, Bucknell, Franklin & Marshall, St. Olaf, Muhlenberg, Knox . . .

http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/lists/list/the-experts-choice-colleges-with-great-pre-med-programs/199/

^^^ @merc81
what is your affiliation with College Xpress?

@mom2collegekids : None.

The OP needs schools. In this case, I recommended six at which his ACT score would be average or above, then provided sourcing which he can review himself.

This would be contradicted by colleges with top-notch health professions advising, which seem to be all about helping their pre-med students succeed, with MCAT preparation guidance being a major part of that. Course planning recommendations can often be quite specific as relates to this topic:

“Due to the heavy emphasis of biochemistry on the MCAT, it is recommended that premed students take Chem 270 as well as Biochemistry 346.”

This would be, based on the objectives stated, exactly the type of preparation, support and guidance that could be of interest to the OP.

I would add College of the Holy Cross and Tulane and 2nd @merc81 suggestions

Holy Cross is known for only writing committee letters for med school for their top students, thus weeding out students they feel will bring down their med school acceptance rate.

^^^ There is a weeding out process at many schools. At Muhlenberg for instance, a large portion of those who start out pre-med end up switching due to the rigors of the required chem and bio classes. At Holy Cross, a committee does review prospective med school applicants as well as providing guidance throughout the 4 yrs and some may not get a letter, but they do end up supporting a good number -perhaps 40-55 a yr, which for a school of its size is a robust number. There is no easy path to med school at any of the above mentioned schools. The labs and many of the required science classes are really tough. It’s not your high school AP Chem!

St Olaf, Earlham, Skidmore, St Lawrence, Muhlenberg, Dickinson, Wheaton MA - all matches or good if you need merit.

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This would be contradicted by colleges with top-notch health professions advising, which seem to be all about helping their pre-med students succeed, with MCAT preparation guidance being a major part of that. Course planning recommendations can often be quite specific as relates to this topic:

"Due to the heavy emphasis of biochemistry on the MCAT, it is recommended that premed students take Chem 270 as well as Biochemistry 346.
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Yes, and virtually all colleges have that same recommendation. That wasn’t my point.

And, yes, the goal of health profession advising is to have successful applicants, but you’re over-estimating their impact. Much, much, much is up to the individual student. Recommending premeds take a MCAT prep course is simply that: a recommendation. The Bio, Chem, BioChem, Physics courses are not set up with a mission to prepare the students for the MCAT.

Even Amherst reminds students that they don’t have some magic dust that helps their students get into med school. Harvard students have complained that H doesn’t “prepare them for the MCAT”. The MCAT isn’t a test where memorized info is simply regurgitated onto a test.

Johns Hopkins has complained that students (and parents!) don’t always accept the advice given.

Much is up to the student. Much.

Committee letter weeding could be a good thing, even though it may feel bad for the student who is weeded out. The student then knows early on that applying to medical school is likely to be a waste of effort, time, and money, and can work on alternative career paths.

However, that may not be so good for a student whose risk tolerance is higher than that of the pre-med committee. If the committee only writes letters for >90% chance pre-meds, but the student is willing to try even with a lower (e.g. 50%) chance, then the committee letter weeding could prematurely end his/her pre-med quest.

The med school admission rate tells almost nothing about how good a job the college does in preparing its students to apply to med school. Some schools boast admirable rates but it boils down to one of two things. Either they start with great students (think Stanford, Dartmouth, etc) or the school weeds out students.

Premed weeding can be done with introductory math/science courses with a tough curve, ensuring only the best students still think of themselves in the running after a few semesters. But the biggest club is the “committee letter”.

Why does the letter have such power? If your college supplies such a letter then med schools either require you to submit it or will be suspicious if you don’t. As Swarthmore writes

So how to jack up admit rates? It’s simple, really. Decide what rate you want your school to have, then use the apply/admit matrices on the web based on GPA and MCAT scores at https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/factstablea24.html to figure out who you can let apply.

Holy Cross is frequently suggested on this forum, its fans mentioning its great admit rate. HC is the poster child of the screening process. Let me write the committee letters and I can get any college in the country the Holy Cross admit rate.

“Openly as possible” means they make it crystal clear that without their rec you are wasting time and money applying. And surprise! Of those that end up applying, 80% get in. Of course they don’t tell you how many people spent $240K for a Holy Cross degree only to have the advisor tell them their committee letter is not going to be favorable. You can bet that kids with a 1-out-of-3 or 1-out-of-4 chance of admission are not getting favorable recs from HC.

But I shouldn’t be too hard on HC; things have improved. Until a few years ago you had to actually be accepted to the premed program at HC in order to even be eligible to meet with the premed advisors. I imagine that didn’t set too well with parents who found out their frosh child didn’t make the cut. Today HC proudly provides “Open access to health professions advising for all students”

@mom2collegekids “Your ACT is good, but not strong enough to be a premed at a “brand name” university, if you’re meaning a top 30-50 university.”

I think you should temper your comments somewhat. That’s a bit categorical and exaggerated. First, there are a lot of academics, studies and points of view that tend to favor GPA and rigor as a better predictor of college success than the test score. Whitman has been struggling with the decision whether to go test optional for years, and their own internal memo on the subject, which has found its way to the internet, suggests that’s their view too.

Plus, you’re telling a kid who hit a 30 that they may not be well advised to attend, what, the #48 ranked school in its category? Are you suggesting that the odds are stacked against a pre-med kid at U Miami because they have a 30 on the ACT? You yourself say later on in the thread that much is up to the kid.

I have three kids, two of which are gifted standardized test takers and one of which is just pretty good and his results are probably more reflective of the cumulative effect of a rigorous HS education than any kind of talent. One is at Pomona and the other is wrapping up at Middlebury, the latter of which is a bear of a school in terms of academic rigor. The one with a 31 ACT, at Middelbury, is by far the most accomplished student amongst his siblings, and his brother and he are both hard science majors, so we’re talking apples to apples.

I think it’s a little reckless to tell a kid that their 30 ACT score somehow will hold them under the bell curve at a top 30 to 50 school. You’re not saving them from trying meth, so I don’t think such extreme conservatism, which I know is your schtick, is warranted in this context. Probably better to just point out that the competition gets exponentially more stiff the higher up one travels the food chain. But a 30 ACT is a decent score, and it seems to me that there is a lot of possibility from that starting point.

I also think you took the comment about “MCAT preparation” a little too literally. Some departments and faculty are more cognizant of how their curriculum ties to an important test than others.

“And, yes, the goal of health profession advising is to have successful applicants, but you’re over-estimating their impact.”

@mom2collegekids , may I ask, how do you know this? First, how do you know how much the poster estimates its impact, and more to the point, how do you honestly know what the impact is of a program that puts resources and focus on this very thing?

Of course, it goes without saying, premed is a rigorous endeavor, and, again of course, it is ultimately up to the student. A mediocre candidate isn’t going to get there with all the resources in the world trying to pull them along. But it does not follow from that, which candidly falls into the category of “duh”, that a kid won’t benefit from a variety of advantages that some schools may offer over others.

And, really? Amherst doesn’t have magic dust? I don’t think serious people seriously thinks anyone has magic dust.

First off, the quote originates with Amherst itself

Second, I think quite a lot of kids coming here do think if they pick the “best” school they will increase their odds of getting into med school over their peers; while I can’t read their minds you see sentences that seem to imply some schools “know” how to get kids in, or have that special “something” that gives their kids a boost. “Magic dust” is an obvious exaggeration to make a point.

It has definitely been a subject of debate whether going to a better school (i.e., more noted for rigor, ranking, prestige, whatever) helps, or in an of itself doesn’t affect, your odd of medical school admissions. There are several posters on this site who seem to be involved in med. school admissions, or are very close to it in some capacity, with differing views on that point. Some say, yeah, a lower GPA from Yale is going to be just fine; others say you’re better off Phi Beta Kappa from a lower-tier school. Don’t know. That is a legitimate point of contention. If that is what Amherst is saying, then that’s their own view of the thing.

I don’t know how to measure it, or at least I haven’t given it much thought. Must it be measured to be important or to be real? How can we practically measure it in any event? You have to control like 100 other variables. My view is, who cares? We all do a lot of things in life based on a set of reasons that have not been perfectly reduced to quantitative analysis and conclusion. With a kid who spent at least part of his undergraduate studies pursuing a pre-med curriculum, I think we think that there was value in what his LAC faculty and advisors brought to the equation. But, of course, I didn’t do a regression analysis on Middlebury’s med school placement vs. the Ohio State University’s.

So I look at this way. If a school has made an attempt to organize its affairs such that they think they offer some level of attention and thought to preparing kids for med school admissions, then I think it reasonable to assume that there’s something there. I guess we’re talking about proving the negative vs. proving the positive. Depends on how you want to assign the burden of proof. All else being equal, I’d lean toward a school of repute that has devoted time and thought to its pre-med advising and curriculum structure. The idea that coursework does not translate to standardized testing is in my view inaccurate. There are ways you can spend your undergraduate years that will better benefit you than others for, say, the LSAT. There’s a reason the philosophy, math and music kids have historically out-performed the English and Poli Sci kids on that particular test, and that reason is known to those of us who have taught LSAT prep. I haven’t taught MCAT prep, and thus will defer to those who have.

Of course, it goes w/o saying that placement rates need to be read in strict context. For example, we know Middlebury has a nice placement rate because they are starting with pretty sound raw material to begin with. But, again, it doesn’t follow that they aren’t doing something right there as an institution. But, I can’t measure it.

Yes, a lot of kids, arguably most kids, come here at least seeking confirmation that better school = better chances. I don’t know if they’re right or wrong. As I said, there have been seemingly informed views expressed in this forum arguing both.

On the law side, which I thought I knew, my impression, based on experience 20+ years ago, is that the quality of your undergraduate school absolutely mattered. @Hanna, who is a counselor and knows her stuff, has suggested that has changed quite a bit as result of law schools trying to out-stat the competition.

Re #12:

Harvard hadn’t been recommended on this thread.