Having the “Pre-Med” designation on one’s degree is virtually meaningless.
@Mandalorian, I had no idea there was even such a thing as a pre-med designation on a degree! I agree that it would not be meaningful!
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Having the "Pre-Med" designation on one's degree is virtually meaningless.
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@Mandalorian ? did someone ask for this???
@mmom99 I don’t think there is such a designation at any school. A couple schools might have some sort of PreHealth major, but it would probably state that (which is weird anyway! Lol)
@mom2collegekids I have two juniors(probably national merit scholar semi finalist) looking at colleges. As you imagine, they are twins and we’re not eligible for financial aid so we’re looking for merit scholarship. They both got 224 in PSAT(Illinois) and 35(ACT). DD wants to go engineering school and DS wants to be a doctor later. My daughter has been interested in Uiuc engineering because it’s in-state and really good school for engineering but she says if she can get more opportunities and scholarship then she definitely wants to see other colleges. My son wants to go to school which has good premed advisoring system and not that challenging to keep good GPA. if he goes UA honors college, then isn’t it more challenging because that college is HONOR college? We’ve just started our journey to see colleges so my questions might sound confused.
^ honors students often get higher grades in their honors classes because those fit their learning style best (interactive, challenging ) with a strong peer group.
I would say that in my experience at LACs advisers are very good even to freshmen. They have fewer advisers obviously.
@3lovingmom - Not sure if you’ve looked at the stats yet regarding where UA’s students come from… but Illinois sends a large contingent to UA every year! And believe me, MOST of them would be viable candidates for UIUC (a large number of them are UA Presidential Scholars). If one or both of your students is comfortable going far away* to school, UA is certainly worth a very close look. Best wishes! (* 8 or more hours)
*fewer advisees (per adviser). So it’s easier to advise even the freshmen.
(typo in #24)
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My son wants to go to school which has good premed advisoring system and not that challenging to keep good GPA. if he goes UA honors college, then isn’t it more challenging because that college is HONOR college?
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Don’t know why the rest of my post above didn’t post
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My son wants to go to school which has good premed advisoring system and not that challenging to keep good GPA. if he goes UA honors college, then isn’t it more challenging because that college is HONOR college?
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No, it’s not. When someone is in the honors college, they don’t take most of their courses in the HC. And they don’t have to take any of their premed prereqs in honors. And, HC courses aren’t more difficult, they’re smaller, and more discussion based.
As for premed advising. Virtually no school provides personal premed advising to freshman and sophomores because it’s often a waste of resources since at virtually all schools only about a 1/4 of the freshman premeds ever apply to med school.
Nearly every college only has 1-3 prehealth/premed advisors, so you can see why there isn’t much individual attention given to frosh/sophs. Their time is largely directed to the juniors and seniors who are or soon will be in the app process. Just look at various schools’ premed websites and you’ll see how few advisors they have. Advising for frosh/soph premeds tends to be done in groups because they really don’t need more than that.
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not that challenging to keep good GPA.
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I need to address this. Premed prereqs are very difficult everywhere. They are weeder courses everywhere. Virtually all good schools have “too many premeds” and know that they have to get those numbers down for a variety of reasons. If your son thinks that the premed prereqs will not be challenging at Bama or similar, he may end up getting tripped up and getting behind.
A few years ago, a premed at Bama who came from one of those fancy super-hard-to-get-into NE boarding schools thought that he’d be able to skate thru Bama. His first semester, he barely got a 3.0…and that’s after his midterm grades were worse, but he got his act together later in the semester to increase to the 3.0. After that, he never underestimated the coursework.
That said, it can be “easier” to keep a high GPA at a college that isn’t a highly ranked one, because those schools are filled with tippy-top stats premeds…all vying for those limited numbers of A’s in the premed prereqs.
One reason for widespread premed weeding across the country that is rarely mentioned is with less than half of the med school applicants getting at least one med school acceptance, imagine how much more awful the numbers would be if heavy weeding wasn’t done those first two years. Instead of 50k+ med school applicants each year, there would be 150k+…all vying for only 21k first year seats. Awful for the applicants AND awful for the undergrads’ reporting acceptance numbers.
Now that my daughter is in 2nd semester of sophomore year, I wanted to update/reinforce some of the previous posts I have on this thread about pre-med at Bama. Some of this is repetitive from posts above, but just reinforcing what DD is experiencing at Bama now:
- AED The Alpha Epsilon Delta meetings and activities are a valuable form of pre-health advising, but in a group setting. DD just attended a weekend conference on campus about medicine. She has learned about MCAT and advanced classes, admission statistics, etc, all through AED. There are so many opportunities. Make sure student attends starting in freshman year: my DD had a class schedule conflict freshman year, she should have changed the class rather than miss AED!
- ADVISING The one on one pre-health advising is more thorough by sophomore year than it was for freshman year. For a student to get the most benefit out of it, he/she needs to go into appointments with some questions and some planning/ideas for classes, etc. They still are not going to hold the student's hand but they are able to advise more since she is a sophomore. By sophomore year, the advisor gives students feedback on how competitive they seem to be for med school based on grades and activities, and what to do to accentuate med school application, which is now just a little over a year away.
- WORKLOAD There is nothing wrong with changing one's career goals. The earlier they discover this, the better. has had to work really hard to keep good grades and balance extra- curriculars. She had attended a very challenging high school with huge quantities of homework. Organic chem is very difficult.
- OPPORTUNITY: Students have opportunity at Bama. DD is now involved in 1 credit of research with a biology prof, has been recommended for a fellowship in this prof's virus research project for next year; she has done lots of shadowing. I want to add that she was not part of the CBH, Blount, or in the Emerging Scholars or any of those great programs, so while they are valuable, they are not the only way to success.
Hope that this info is helpful to someone!
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