<p>I want to pursue a career in medicine and have been accepted to a few schools and do not know which school is the best in terms of pre-medicine/biology/sciences</p>
<p>I am considering
Cornell
NYU
Stony Brook
Binghamton
USC
Carnegie Melon </p>
<p>Which school is the best in terms of pre-med and med school acceptance? What school produces students with the best MCAT scores? Research opportunities for undergrads? Quality of life for pre-meds, etc. </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Whichever is cheapest.
Also, whichever you like best.
Finally, whichever has hospitals nearby that are least jaded against pre-health students and won’t mind hiring you during college…</p>
<p>(NOTE: None of these has anything to do with the school itself in terms of academics or prestige.)</p>
<p>You’re from Los Angeles, how’s USC in terms of what you stated?</p>
<p>USC’s a great school but it’s also quite expensive. Honestly, unless you go to a small community college, you’re not going to see much difference in terms of your chances (and even from a CC, you’d likely do fine as long as you excel there). Your best school is where your fit and money cross. That is, go with the cheapest school you liked. Heck, there’s a little Christian college that’s fully accredited out in the midwest that offers free tuition (paid for entirely by grants). Go there and don’t look back. You would finish UG with 0 debt and maybe even a few dollars to spare (a HUGE plus when it comes to medical school) AND you can bet that a small Christian college in the midwest would have GREAT relationships with the local hospitals (meaning your clinical experiences would likely be more attainable and such) AND you’d be a BIG fish (so faculty would be available to you for research and such, meaning your chances at a publication, especially a 1st-author one, would rise exponentially).</p>
<p>Otherwise, I’d suggest one of the service academies. Students at them get a GREAT education (for “free” – at least in terms of finances). Of course, then there’s the 4-year commitment…</p>
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<p>In general, that would be Harvard, but not because it “produces” students. Quite the contrary, it selects its students based in part on extremely high SAT scores; such students also tend to perform well on the MCAT and LSAT. Indeed, Harvard students has the highest average LSAT scores. (Have never seen published data for mcat.)</p>
<p>Apumic thank you for the advice. When most people ask questions regarding what school to attend in order to be successful in med school, most people usually give them the answer, “Follow the money.” I understand this and money is a huge aspect in my decision, however don’t different schools offer different levels of education. Aren’t certain schools better for different majors, have better resources, better professors, better teaching methods, more challenging course loads? </p>
<p>I’m new to this college thing, therefore I don’t know much, therefore can anyone enlighten me.</p>
<p>pf,</p>
<p>Sure… but you have no way of knowing which ones. In all honesty, schools in a given state are likely to have much better connections with their own med schools than are top schools out of state. You simply have no way of knowing where the connections are and who may have rubbed someone the wrong way at some point in time (and that can happen just as much w/ a Harvard professor rubbing an OHSU adcom the wrong way as anywhere else). The truth is that there is likely as much variability in professors’ and classes’ difficulty levels in a single department at Yale as there is in that same dept nationwide. In other words, variability in courses is individual to a given instructor moreso than to a given school.</p>
<p>Got it apumic. I guess I should go where they give me the most money. I’m waiting for my financial packages from most of my schools. I guess my ego wasn’t letting me turn down Cornell or USC for Stony Brook, but I’ll look into each school a little more. </p>
<p>If you don’t mind me asking where did you go for undergrad/med school?</p>
<p>
Generally speaking, this only comes into play for very specific majors/vocations/areas (eg, business, Egyptology, hospitality, engineering) and at the graduate level (some graduate biology programs are stronger than others, or emphasize different sub-fields).</p>
<p>But for your run of the mill academic majors (biology, chemistry, English, psychology, math, sociology, etc) it doesn’t really make one lick of difference at the undergraduate level. You might have an acclaimed chemistry professor, but that doesn’t mean much for you. General chemistry is the same general chemistry everywhere, from Yale to Podunk State U. Now if you were working with that professor in a chemistry graduate program, on the other hand, it could matter significantly.</p>
<p>This is why it always amuses me to hear high school students talking about “strong biology programs” and “top notch science educations” and whatnot.</p>
<p>Got it GoldShadow. I guess us high school students talk about strong biology programs and top notch science educations because we are too stuck with the big names, etc. Also in high school, different high schools have different resources and there is no question certain schools have better/stronger classes and education than other schools. Therefore, us high school students assume its the same in different universities.</p>
<p>GS… exactly. Even then, though, it would be almost impossible for an HS student to know what to look for in choosing a school w/ the best XXX Ph.D. program. For instance, if I were going into clinical psych and wanted a Ph.D. to have a split research/clinical career w/ a focus on urban psychosocial development, I would much prefer a school like Loyola-Chicago (a top 3rd school) to the Ph.D. program at UCLA (which is consistently in the top 5) simply due to their emphases. Nevertheless, it is at the graduate level that renowned professors/advisors are so helpful. Until then, you’re probably better off at a smaller UG where you are taught by those professors’ students who have been out working for 20-30+ years vs. going to the U of the renowned prof and actually taking courses and being advised by current grad students of the prof you hoped to study under (meaning you are getting someone w/ 0 experience and no credentials beyond being a current student of “the master”).</p>
<p>I’ve been reading up on the pre med route and I have constantly seen people say that the two most important factors in getting into a med school are GPA and MCAT scores. This is obvious. However, I have also read that getting a 3.8 in a state institution or a school not really known, is better than having a 3.5 in a highly prestigious school that is known to attract extremely intelligent students (Keep in mind in talking about undergrad). I know state institutions provide with great educations, however is this statement true? I’m assuming and may be totally wrong, that a school that is extremely well known/prestigious/attracts an extremely devoted and smart student body has harder classes than another institution that is not as well known or selective. </p>
<p>Do medical schools take this into account?</p>
<p>There is compensation to a degree, in fact some schools are known for having good students and high GPAs so they are also sometimes recruited to help balance out the deficit in average GPA when grade deflated applicants are accepted (I’m looking at you, crazy competitive california applicants). MCAT is the great equalizer. If you don’t have the MCAT, medical schools aren’t going to have as much mercy.</p>