How is the premed at this school? Are there opportunities to shadow physicians, volunteer at hospital etc.?
Yes, of course. There is a medical center on the same street.
What else do you want to know.
@mom2collegekids thanks!
What Would you recommend I do since I’m going to be premed?
A. Attend a top 20 university like Cornell with no scholarships.
B. Or attend a school like the University of Alabama where I receive full tuition.
I think the pros for Cornell would be more prestige and the fact that I really love the campus.
For Alabama I would pay no tuition which would help save money for med school. Also I think it would be easier to maintain a higher GPA at UA than Cornell.
Finally can you just tell me some more about Alabama’s premed program? Percentage into med school, advising etc. ?
Keep debt load down to the absolute minimal you can.
@VANURSEPRAC yeah I’ll probably go to Alabama.
The school website says if you’re a National Merit Finalist you get 5 years of tuition which includes the first year of graduate school. Does anyone know if you can use this for for the first year of medical school if you decide to go to Alabama for it?
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I think the pros for Cornell would be more prestige and the fact that I really love the campus.
For Alabama I would pay no tuition which would help save money for med school. Also I think it would be easier to maintain a higher GPA at UA than Cornell.
Finally can you just tell me some more about Alabama’s premed program? Percentage into med school, advising etc. ?>>>
Prestige means nothing to med schools.
You’ll really love Bama’s campus…it’s gorgeous. When will you visit?
you can save money for med school.
Universities don’t have “premed programs”. Premed is a path. Required premed prereqs.
Bama has very good advising and it does do Committee Letters, which are very important for admissions.
Bama premeds have a very high admissions into med schools (about 80-85%), but really that means NOTHING to any high school senior. Admissions to med school is up to the STUDENT. He/she must get the great grades, MCAT score, and do the medically related ECs to be a med-school-worthy applicant. A student who doesn’t do/have those things will not get admitted to med school no matter what a school’s acceptance rate is.
The 5th year for NMFs is for use at The University of Alabama only.
Are you a likely NMF? What is your PSAT? What is your home state?
@mom2collegekids ok thanks that helps a lot. I’ll be visiting the campus this summer and it does look beautiful online. I’m from Texas and got a 220.
^ #5, above: “Bama premeds have a very high admissions into med schools (about 80-85%), but really that means NOTHING to any high school senior. Admissions to med school is up to the STUDENT. He/she must get the great grades, MCAT score, and do the medically related ECs to be a med-school-worthy applicant. A student who doesn’t do/have those things will not get admitted to med school no matter what a school’s acceptance rate is.”
Well said. That goes for a lot of things in life. If you compare yourself to #s or stats of others, you often miss what YOU need to do to be successful.
Whichever med school you graduated, and whichever undergrad you finished, it doesn’t matter.
Honestly, I doubt that I will ever see a dying patient who wouldn’t get surgery from me because I didn’t go to Harvard or Cornell, yada yada.
Pre med, as m2ck has already mentioned, is not a major. You will need to major in something, right? You can major in anything because med schools really don’t give a tinker’s toot to what you major in.
Also, keep in mind that LOTS AND LOTS of med students go to med school with loans; they don’t have financial aid like other professional schools, IIRC. By the time you graduate med schools, you will have graduated with significant amount of student debt. That gives another reason why you would choose Bama with NMF scholarship
Is UA the undergrad program for a plurality of the students enrolling at UA School of Medicine each year? Some people.assume UAB is the main feeder undergrad program.
http://www.uab.edu/medicine/home/welcome/facts-figures/welcome/facts-figures
The link suggest that majority of the students are from Alabama but doesn’t say which school the students are from…
In the recent debate surrounding UAB and the end of its football program, many argued that the Board was plotting to downsize UAB’s undergrad program, and they were worried about where UA School of Medicine would get students, as if UAB was the main feeder program. Of course there is no such plan, but the uab folks really seem to believe it.
It’s not like that UAB-SOM HAS to prioritize UAB students over other Alabama resident students…or does it?
Anyway, that sounds plain ridiculous.
The SOM in Birmingham does not and isn’t permitted to favor UAB students for the med school. The only “preference” that exists is the early admission program for (I think) 10 UAB students.
Typically state SOMs can’t favor their own undergrad students since the state controls which campuses will have the med school(s), the law school(s), etc.
The med school technically is not UAB’s med school. It’s The University of Alabama School of Medicine at UAB…simply because it’s in Birmingham.
It doesn’t matter if you go to UA, Auburn, UAH, or another Alabama public, you’ll be equally considered.
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Whichever med school you graduated, and whichever undergrad you finished, it doesn’t matter.
Honestly, I doubt that I will ever see a dying patient who wouldn’t get surgery from me because I didn’t go to Harvard or Cornell, yada yada.
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Not only do most people not know where their doctors went to med school, but they more often don’t know where they went for undergrad. As for specialties, it really doesn’t matter which med school since that isn’t done in med school.
and unfortunately a high percentage of folks who start the pre med track don’t finish it and migrate to other majors and then don’t get into med school…another thing to think about if you go for prestige and then have mountains of debt and no prospect of med school.
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Is UA the undergrad program for a plurality of the students enrolling at UA School of Medicine each year? Some people.assume UAB is the main feeder undergrad program.
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I doubt that UAB supplies more students to the med school than Bama. Bama is larger, for one thing, and Bama has a LOT more high stats students.
I’ll ask my son if he has noticed anything in particular.
This is the latest data published online. This is my son’s class - he began in July 2013
UAB SOM CLASS PROFILES 2013/2014 2013 Entering Class Profile
Total Number of Applications: 2,866
Alabama: 463;
Out-of-State: 2,403
Undergraduate Colleges Represented: 55 <= the MS1’s came from 55 different undergrads
Degrees of Study: 33 <= 33 different majors
Applicants Accepted: 267 (about 9% of applicants accepted)
Alabama: 199; (about 43% of instate applicants accepted)
Out-of-State: 68 (this is a low %, but very likely a good number of these had a tie to the state, such as having attended an AL undergrad)
Entering Class: 185
Alabama Residents: 157;
Out-of-State Residents: 28
Age Range: 22-43
Women: 79
American Indian or Alaska Native: 1
Asian: 23; Black or African American: 11 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin: 6 White: 131; Other: 3
Multiple Race/Ethnicity: 4; No Response: 6
Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D./Ph.D.) Students Applied: 277
Offered: 23; Accepted: 7 <= many of these will be OOS students.
To get into medical school the two most important things are GPA and MCAT scores. The name of the school is not. Things like research, volunteering, etc are somewhere in the middle.
Taking on tons of debt is stupid and actually kind of funny in an ironic way. Smart enough to get into Cornell, but stupid enough to have six-figure debt for a Bachelor’s degree.
For physicians it really doesn’t matter where they got any of their degrees. I have known MDs who went to Yale/Harvard/Stanford medical school and do the same job/take the same salary as MDs who went to Iowa/UAB/Oklahoma.