I’m posting this for my daughter. She’s considering Washington, Wisconsin, and SMU for Fall. She’s going in as a Chem major and intends to do pre-med. She’s from California, and so out of state tuition. She received scholarship money from SMU to bring the cost about $12k/yr less than Washington and Wisconsin. Parents are paying the bills.
Options are appreciated about which school is more likely to set her up best for applying to med school (GPA, ECs, etc), while balancing a positive college experience? She likes all schools and can’t make a decision. Thanks!
We just went through the evaluation of Udub and Uwis in a very recent thread. In your case, since your D will be OOS, I think the SMU route will be better, because you do not want to get into a large school where racing for premed requirements are cut throat. SMU is a smaller school, you can get to know the prof. better and have a smaller class for the prereques. When comparing the three, it has little difference where you graduate, its what you do in the school that matters.
In addition a $50k total tuition saver can come handy when she goes to med school.
My opinion…these are all fine schools. Pick the least costly one…and certainly the one with the least amount of loans.
If you daughter does go to medical school, she will likely pay for it with loans…loans, and more loans…and huge ones.
Are you instate for any of the publics on this list? I ask this because if your daughter thinks is will be easier to get accepted to UWashington medical school as an OOS student if she attends the school as an undergrad, I think she is wrong.
Thanks for the reply. The $50K savings of attending SMU would pass down to her younger brother for when he goes to college. She’s paying for med school on her own.
@thumper1 She’s from California. Both of these public schools are out of state. My daughter hasn’t thought much about specific medical schools. I’m just becoming aware of the out-of-state limitations. There isn’t much we can do about that. Certainly Wash and Wisc have many more EC opportunities than SMU.
One difference with SMU is that they utilizes a committee for issuing letters of recommendations. I don’t believe Wash and Wisc do. Thoughts about that?
Also, if medical school doesn’t work out, I’m a bit concerned about how her science degree from SMU would translate to employment prospects, given its a much smaller school. Business and Law seem to be the school’s most prominent programs.
All of these schools will offer your daughter all the opportunities a pre-med needs to be successful. Actually getting into med school will depend on her and her successes, not which of these schools she attends.
Unless she absolutely hates SMU, she should go there because it will cost less. Med school is hideously expensive and every pre-med should minimize under grad debt as much as possible. Also applying to med school is hideously expensive–allow $5k just for that.
(Plus CA applicants need to cast a wider net for med school admissions due to high in-state competition and not enough med school seat in CA.)
And you say your D will be paying for med school on her own, but I have some bad news for you…
Private med schools will still consider her your dependent for FA purposes and will expect a family contribution toward her med school COA. Some OOS publics may also.
A pre-med committee letter is the university’s method of weeding out weak(er) med school applicants so the school success rate looks good to potential applicants and their parents. It really has no bearing on how successful on med school applicant will be–though it the school committee refuses to write a letter it should be strong sign your D should not apply. Students at programs without pre-med committees may need to be more pro-active about getting stuff together for their med school applications on time.
RE; employment. Employment for bio and most of its subfields isn’t terribly good not matter when one goes to college.
Your D can improve her employability by adding some coursework or experience in computer programming/ computer scripting, and data analysis Learn a few software applications like MATLab, SPPSS, Excel, etc. .A few additional math classes will also help-- advance stats, probability maybe some additional calc classes thru linear algebra if she’s a strong math student. She can also improve her post-graduation employment prospects by doing summer internships in industry/government. Not research position internships, but actual job-type internships. Real world job experience will translate even if she interns in one area of the country but wants to live in another. Another option is develop some sort of specialize expertise through her studies or research in college.
(For example, D2 had a very specialize expertise in fMRI and data analysis that she developed in her 3.5 years in a research lab and she was able to use that expertise to leverage into a full time job post graduation at several different universities and later at a biotech firm.)
University of Washington is the best option if your daughter wants to do undergraduate research.
P.S. Also, The University of Washington has a more serious culture than the other two options. If your daughter wants an active social life, then Univ. of Washington is not the best choice as it is a very serious school.
Yes, most med students finance their education mostly through loans, but private med schools will require family financial info & assign a family contribution to be paid before awarding any of their own institutional aid.
Med students can only borrow a maximum of $40,500/year in federal student loans–which is less (sometimes less than half) of med school’s COA.
The rest is made up through family contributions, Grad Plus loans (unsubsidized w/ relatively high interest rates), institutional aid (if you’re lucky…) and private loans (which require a co-signer, likely you).
If a med school assigns your D a family contribution, you (her parent) aren’t obligated to pay it, but your D will have to take out additional Grad Plus loans or private loans to cover it.
Med students cannot work during med school. And newly graduated doctors face 3 to 10 years of residency and fellowship training where they’re paid a pittance–often not enough to cover their living expenses.
@WayOutWestMom Thank you very much for the guidance. My dd is often overly confident, and doesn’t often consider plan b. So, here I am asking these questions.
Good point about skills learned as part of studies and lab work.
As many kids end up changing plans, and if that happens to my dd, the smaller private school may provide more flexibility in changing majors than I understand public schools to sometimes be. Is that your understanding?
A small private school usually is easier to change majors than a large public. For example, if you are not started with Udub’s pre-CS program, to transfer to their CS department is almost impossible. In addition, those hot majors in large schools are hard to get into as a Plan B, meaning if you don’t have a premed GPA, you won’t be able to transfer into the program anyway.
Agree. A smaller, more flexible private university will usually allow a change of major more easily than a large state U. At large state Us, a student may have a more difficult time getting into in-demand, required lower level classes if they change majors. And at large state Us there will be impacted majors where it’s all but impossible to switch into.
… and also carefully assessing how realistic their chance of being admitted to medical school are before applying. A school with a decent pre-med committee should give the pre-med advising about how realistic his/her chances are (whether or not it refuses to write a committee letter for one with a poor chance of admission). Knowing early that it is time to go to plan B without spending a lot of time and thousands of dollars on medical school applications can be helpful, even though it may be a bad feeling at the time.
Googled the student to faculty ratio at these three schools. Univ. of Washington is 19 to 1; Univ. of Wisconsin is 18 to 1: SMU reports a ratio of 11 to 1.
@twnz19 Any premed req with grade below C must be retaken. All grades, including retakes, get calculated into GPAs. A grade of less than an A in a retake of a premed req will be viewed negatively. If you get a poor grade in a non premed req (eg D or F), I’d just move on. A D or an F in a non premed req, while certainly not ideal, would probably not be fatal to one’s chances in an overall very strong application.
Can anybody comment specifically on how well pre-med at SMU prepares the student for the MCAT compared to larger public universities? Also, the ease (or difficulty) of finding EC opportunities?
It’s been difficult for me to find recent examples online of past students that have direct experience with SMU for pre-med. I’m sure being a smaller school has something to do with it, but I’d like to hear about some success stories.
A school doesn’t prepare a student for the MCAT. They offer the pre reqs courses and it is up to the student to prepare themselves for the MCAT. As far as EC opportunities, a small school has less students vying for the EC’s, and there won’t be a lack of opportunities in Dallas.
You will probably do better asking your question about EC opportunities in the SMU specific forum.
The ECs most valued by med school adomms are community service, physician shadowing, clinical volunteering and leadership. I’m sure they’re available in the area around SMU. Note that universities and their advising offices do not place student in shadowing and clinical volunteering positions. Students must seek out opportunities themselves and med schools expect students to do this as a demonstration of their sincere interest in a medicine as a career. Also note that clinical volunteering/employment does not necessarily mean in a hospital. Clinical exposure can happen at nursing homes, public health clinics, private physician offices, hospice or dialysis centers, camps for disabled children, homeless healthcare clinics, Planned Parenthood clinics, suicide assistance centers, etc.
As for preparing a student for the MCAT–no undergrad at any university does that. There is not a huge congruence between what’s taught in the pre-reqs classes and what’s asked on the MCAT. Instead what happens is coursework offers the students the basic background information needed for the MCAT, but MCAT prep is solely on the shoulders of the student.
There are 3 elements to MCAT prep: 1) a in-depth knowledge of the subject matter; 2) the ability to apply this knowledge to novel problems and situations and 3) understanding the structure, format and timing of the exam.
At best, a student’s coursework teaches only about #1.
