It’s currently the summer before my senior year, and I’ve recently decided I want to go into the medical field. In the long run I want to become a pediatric oncologist in a large hospital. I have a couple questions, though. I don’t know where to go for school. I was going for law before this, so I haven’t researched good pre-med programs yet. Also, what is the process you go through to become a pediatric oncologist? I’ve looked it up, but I’m hoping for some insight from a current one. My GPA unweighted is a 3.6, weighted 3.8. My ACT score is a 30. My new 2016 SAT score is 1310. I’m in NHS, so I have a lot of community service hours.
Also, I live in Indiana, so I could get in state tuition there. However my family is moving to Georgia in two weeks (I’m staying behind to finish senior year), so I could transfer my residency over there if needed for better tuition costs.
I also have taken honors all throughout my schooling. I am a year ahead in math ( I’ll be taking Calc 2 next year). I’ve also taken AP Chemistry along with AP Calc AB. Next year I plan on taking AP Calc BC.
IU and Purdue would be perfect for you. UGA if you want to be in Georgia.
GA Tech would be a good school too but a reach with your stats.
You will find several excellent schools to consider on this link:
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/lists/list/the-experts-choice-colleges-with-great-pre-med-programs/199/
Is the pre-med program at IU good? I want something fairly exceptional that I can still get into with my stats. I want something that will give me a lot of hands on experience in the field as an undergrad.
Have you picked which floor you want to work on? 
Seriously, until you’ve spent a few hundred hours volunteering in a health-care setting its open to debate if you even want to go into medicine.
Asking about “good premed programs” leads many into a trap, since they are told to consider acceptance numbers. For med school admissions the college acceptance numbers are meaningless. Impressive rates boil down to one of two things, great students or screening. It’s no surprise that kids that can get into elite colleges like Stanford or Middlebury do well in med school admissions 4 years later. Or the school aggresively uses their “committee letter” and only recommends the best kids. A regular poster used to chime in on posts like this to recommend one such school, Holy Cross.
Any college in the country offers the lower-division science and math tested on the MCAT. Whether you work work for good grades, get to know some profs so you get strong recs, take part in appropriate ECs, and develop compelling essays is up to you. The best colleges say as much.
The real question to address at this point is not what college, but why an M.D, let alone why “a pediatric oncologist in a large hospital”? Its almost a reflex action among HS kids, they think of a career in medicine and its “I’m pre-med!” Doctors are far from the only ones in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, nurses, speech pathologists, physician assistants, to name but just a few. Spend a few hours browsing on http://explorehealthcareers.org Unless you’ve considered the alternatives and have spent time actually working in a health care setting (which is an unofficial requirement to get into med school, BTW) its better to think of yourself as interested in exploring a career as a doctor rather than someone who has already made the decision.
IU and Purdue are excellent schools. with you stats admission to top 20 schools would be a reach.
Yeah, for in state, I would say IU and Purdue should be good enough. Notre Dame may be a bit of a reach for you.
What you do in high school does not matter at all to med schools. They only care about what you do while in college and beyond. While in college, you are going to need to try your best to maintain a 3.6+ GPA (and trust me, it is much harder to do so compared to high school). Idk what kind of score you need for the new MCAT.
You are free to choose any major you wish, and you just need to complete a set of prerequisite courses. Almost every university will have pre health advisors who can help you out with understanding those prerequisites. After you finish college, then go through 4 years of medical school, followed by a certain number of years of residency and fellowship, depending on your choice of specialty. For pediatric oncology, it will be 3 years of pediatrics residency, and I believe 3 years of fellowship after that. However, I heard that you really don’t decide what you will be until after your 3rd year of med school. About 4% of medical students won’t be matched into a residency, thus they basically waste all four years of med school.
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Is the pre-med program at IU good?
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There’s really no such thing as a “premed program”. Premed prereqs are just REGULAR bio, Chem, physics and math classes that other science majors and eng’g major are taking. NOTHING special or medical about these classes. They’re just regular classes that all univs offer.
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I want something fairly exceptional that I can still get into with my stats
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No…you want to go to a good school where you’ll get top grades.
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. I want something that will give me a lot of hands on experience in the field as an undergrad
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???
Undergrad school don’t give you “experience in the [medical] field”.
You need to choose a major, ANY MAJOR (English, History, Music, French, Bio, Math, etc) that you like and will do well in…and take the premed prereqs.
Get the best grades…then take the MCAT.
Med school is for four years after college. You don’t specialize while in med school.
After Med school, you’ll do a residency in a specialty.
Agree with all the advice given above-simply put, you need to do a lot more research about medical school and the medical school application process. For example, pediatric oncology is a very highly specialized field which would take years to complete after graduating from medical school(three years pediatrics residency, then three years pediatric oncology fellowship, while passing the many board exams, etc along the way).
But before doing that, you should spend time developing realistic goals about where you’ll attend college. As pointed out above, the Indiana state schools are fine for medical school applicants. However, it would be a good idea to calculate what you and your family can afford for college as you make that decision, as keeping debt to a minimum is key. There is very little true scholarship money available for medical schools, and with tuition alone at private medical schools running well over $50K/year, most medical students graduate with significant debt.
I concur with all the other posters. IU should be your target for UG and med school.
I just want to point out that you should concentrate on the application to a UG and do well there, don’t think too much about Med school let alone residency and fellowship for Oncology. Fellowship is especially difficult to get, a physician friend of mine with many years in the ER field could not get any fellowship positions for over 4 years.
For the record, this is highly variable by sub-specialty (and I mean across the board, not just ER sub-specialties). If I recall from the last time I checked, some sub-specialties have >95% admit rates and even have unfilled slots each year.