Hello, I am currently a rising senior with a strong interest in majoring in neuroscience on a pre med track. My current GPA is a 4.3 weighted and I rank top 10% of my class in a public New Jersey school. I am currently going test-optional as I ran into several problems with testing this year and almost every school is test-optional that provides a decent to excellent pre med program.
I am heavily involved in several leadership activities from being part of the rescue squad, hospital volunteering, and running two student-based organizations to being the president of the national honor society and founder/president of HOSA - Future Health Professionals at my school along with several other leadership/extracurricular activities.
I am currently looking for good pre-med schools on the east coast (if possible) that would be great options within the 10%-40% acceptance rate range to ensure that I get a great pre-med program with volunteering and clinical opportunities, while also preventing schools that would weed out students at a high rate.
Please give me options for pre med schools that fit my criteria. I do not care whether it is a a public or liberal arts college as any would suit me perfectly.
Some options I am thinking of range from UNC at Chapel Hill (public state school) to Emory University (private research university).
Johns Hopkins University is the only top pre med school I believe I took off my list just because of how much they weed out pre med students making it very difficult to obtain a 4.0 GPA along with a decent to high MCAT score. I was hoping for several suggestions for target schools such as UMich, Emory, UNC, and BostonU.
The schools you just listed are still reaches. Remember that public flagships typically have much lower acceptance rates for oos applicants.
Look at Case Western, U of Rochester, Pitt, and of course your instate options as well. Med school is expensive. Cost should be a consideration for undergrad.
Wouldn’t Rutgers and other New Jersey public universities be some of the obvious answers?
Others can help you better if you describe your cost constraints and unweighted HS GPA. Remember that medical school is very expensive ($400,000 total these days, less if in-state public, but most medical school admits get into only one, so they are not able to choose by cost), so be sure to consider that in your educational financial planning.
As are most premed students. The majority give up on premed before they get to applying to medical schools, and of those who do apply to medical schools the majority do not get accepted anywhere.
“preventing schools that would weed out students at a high rate.”
That is pretty much all of them.
There are a lot of universities in the US with very good premed programs. Premed classes are going to be very tough at any decent university, certainly including anything in the top 100 in the US. Paying for eight years of university is also going to be very tough unless you happen to already have $700,000 sitting in your 529 plan.
I think that Rutgers would be a great choice. It is a very good university with a very good premed program. Because you are in-state, it would be economical and allow you to avoid debt while hopefully saving some money for medical school. Being in the top 10% of you class implies that if you work exceptionally hard in university you have some chance to be in the top 25% of premed students at Rutgers and actually have a chance to get to medical school. If you do not make it as a medical school student (which is true of the large majority of premed students) then it has a lot of majors that you can consider leading to other careers.
I do not think that you want to be attend a university where you will be entering as a student in the bottom 1/2 of admitted students. Premed classes are going to be tough anywhere.
“UNC at Chapel Hill”
UNC-CH is also a very good university. Since you are out of state, it would be just as good as Rutgers at only twice (or maybe three times) the price.
I realize my post is a bit negative. However, you really have a great option in-state. I do not think that you would be improving your chances for medical school by going out of state.
BA/BS->MD/DO programs should be considered reaches, even if hosted at colleges that are not that selective otherwise. Apply to them as well as Rutgers and others (including safeties, of course).
Check carefully about what the requirements are to retain the assured medical school admission, since the college GPA and MCAT requirements to continue to the medical school part of the program vary. Also, check carefully the total cost of the entire program (including the BA/BS costs and the MD/DO costs).
It looks like the BA/BS->MD programs at various colleges leading to Rutgers New Jersey Medical School requires a 3.5 college GPA each semester with no grade lower than B in pre-med courses: http://njms.rutgers.edu/admissions/programs_7_8_year.cfm
Yeah, that is for BS/MD students matriculating to NJMS. For regular pre-med, it may be relaxed. Rutger’s SAS has a B.S(Neuroscience) as well as
Temple University has a B.S(Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience) where he can excel and possibly get a 4.0 GPA.
For all these BS/MD programs, you probably need stellar stats including SAT I and SAT II subject scores. Your competition will have SAT I and SAT II subject scores. Have you done any shadowing ? Any research done in HS ? None of the above are 7 years BS/MD programs. They all (Case Western’s PPSP, URochester’s REMS, and UPitt’s GAP) are 8 years. The competition is very tough among ORMs ( read Asians including Indians).
UNC-CH accepts no more than 18% OOS students as required by state legislature. That can mean that in any given year it can be less than 18%. All priorities are given to admitting and educating NC residents. So many times it is a big reach for OOS atudents.
Younger son attended undergrad in NJ as an OOS (private undergrad) and attended UNC-CH for med and business school as an in-state resident (NC). He very much enjoyed Carolina!
And again preference for med school admittance at UNC is given to NC residents.
The previous advice to look to your in-state options especially when looking to future plans for med school is accurate.
Rutgers pre-med is as good as any other. You may even get a nice scholarship from Rutgers based on your stats. Why would you want to go to UNC ? If you have already made up your mind, good luck.
I love UNC overall and my parents plan to move there next year anyways. I love their campus and student life along with all their pre med advisories and opportunities for research and clinic work.