Can someone please tell me what they know about the quality of the premed course work at university of Miami and University of Florida? My daughter is not enrolled in the honors program as she didn’t realize she had to apply. I’m wondering if it’s harder to get hands-on and research experience if you’re not involved in honors.
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The program will be very difficult at both.
Not being in the Honors program doesn’t change the experience as much at UF as it does elsewhere, but there’s a lot of weedout.
What would her major be? (Premed is just an intention. Among the students who manage to survive first year weedout courses then organic chemistry -a majority don’t- of those only 40% get even one acceptance to med school. As a result, a solid Plan B is needed. Premeds can have any major.)
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Thank you for your response! She would be majoring in microbiology and cell science. Very good information! I appreciate it😊
LOL I think these courses are weedouts everywhere … at Cornell 1/3 of freshmen start off as premed … I think only 1/3 of those survive as premed.
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Ugggg
To give you an idea of the weedout at large public universities, I just checked the averages for General Chem and General Bio at UWisc for another thread. The average for the 1,000+ students enrolled is about 2.9 in General Chem; the 500+ freshmen in General Bio had on average a 2.6, with only 10% getting med school worthy grades - and those are not random students, but the top students in Wi, who likely had taken AP Bio in HS.
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I’m wondering if it’s harder to get hands-on and research experience if you’re not involved in honors
She should do these things if she is interested in them, but not because she thinks it is a prerequisite to get into med school. Back in the day it was, but now research is just another EC. The unwritten requirement for admission is experience in a medical care setting; they want students who know what they are getting into.
While I don’t know the specifics of these 2 schools, rest assured any college in the country is capable of teaching the dozen or so lower-division classes required to apply to med school. Whether she gets in depends on how well she does preparing. She can learn what it takes to get into med school by reading thru the very informative https://www.rhodes.edu/sites/default/files/PreMed_Essentials.pdf. There is also a good handbook at Amherst College Guide for Premedical Students – Amherst College | Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning and no doubt many other websites, as well as books.
But IMHO she should be thinking about “why an M.D?” When a lot of HS kids become interested in a career in medicine it becomes “I’m pre-med!” and they embark on a path that will take 11+ years of school/training plus enormous debt. Doctors are far from the only ones in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, nurses, speech pathologists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, to name but just a few. as you can see on http://explorehealthcareers.org Unless she’s carefully considered the alternatives its better to think of her as interested in exploring a career as a doctor rather than someone who has already made the decision.
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Great advice and resources. Thank you so much! As an aside she was recently accepted to Virginia Commonwealth University’s BS/MD program. You give me a lot more to think about in terms of helping her make a very big decision! Thank you so much!