I know this topic has been raised in many college forums. Any fresh perspectives, opinions and suggestions are welcome. Responses from students who have gone through pre-med degree in undergrad will be greatly appreciated.
My understanding is that med schools value undergrad GPA and research opportunities way more than the ranking and prestige of the undergrad university.
If finances are not an issue, would you choose private or public college to maximize your chances of getting into Med school. What are the pros and cons of each?
The following are the private colleges my child is applying to:
Baylor/Tulane/U Miami/CWRU/Northeastern/Santa Clara University/Boston University
3.67 (UW) / 1420 SAT / Research experience / Decent ECs and Recommendations
Medical schools look at grades and MCAT scores. Research opportunities arenât part of the equation, because schools donât offer such opportunities to the vast majority of premed applicants. Thereâs no correlation with research opportunity and medical school performance.
Also, if youâre looking at medicine, finances are ALWAYS an issue when considering an undergraduate school. Medical school is absurdly expensive, so you would really need to keep the debt down. An in-state school is the best place to be. First, itâs affordable. Second, state medical schools give preference to state residents, making that your single best chance for medical school.
Unless you expect to qualify for a lot of need-based aid, Iâd go where the cost is the least, meaning flagship state U. Med school is very expensive. You want to keep the cost low. Theyâre gonna look at his GPA overall (so he should major in whatever he loves, and not necessarily science), and at his grades in his premed courses. And high MCATs. Then theyâll also look at whatever he may have done to demonstrate interest in medicine, be it research, volunteering, whatever. Sure, if youâre coming from an Ivy, or Ivy equivalent, theyâll like that, but is it worth the price?
Also, if it were at all possible, I would seriously consider studentâs becoming in-state resident in one of the states where med schools are many, and cheap. I think the best deal is Texas. That means license, voting, part time job, taxes, paying a utility bill, and eventually filing own tax return, not as your dependent (depending upon how it affects financial aid).
Outside of CWRU and Boston U, I dont know if it is worth spending 70k+ per year for doing premed from your list. Both those schools have premed focused programs feeding into their own and other medical schools (combined programs) and so they may be worthwhile for the focus part of it. I would send a kid to any of the others if they give a large enough scholarship to make them comparable to instate.
@texaspg Tulane has a combined program as well from HS (I interviewed for it earlier this year,) but they recommend an ACT above 35. Most BS/MDs look for extremely high ACT/SAT test scores and GPAs.
One D went to the state U; one D went to a top 30 private research U.
Both had nearly identical opportunities: both worked as TAs and tutors at their respective universities, both made strong connections with professors (and got great LORs), both got personal mentoring from professors, both had research opportunities (and both had paid research positions), both had challenging classes. Both had some excellent and some not-so-good professors.
Both applied to med school and both received multiple med school acceptances.
Itâs the student, not the school the student attend that makes for strong med school applicant.
tldr: I didnât see much difference in opportunity between private and public colleges with my daughtersâŠ
And cost always needs to be consideration for pre-med.
case in point
D got in a T10 Research University, she wanted to be a Bio researcher. For the first two years, she had been to all sorts of research projects. But she changed her mind after two years and turned into a premed. Those two years of research experiences had almost zero impact on her med school applications. In the end, since her concentration was on research, her first two years GPA was not steller, even with high Mcat, she did not get into any MD schools and ended up with DO acceptances.
@PikachuRocks15 I donât hear much about Tulane being a well known premed school, may be i donât know the right people!
Temple is usually off peopleâs radar but they give nice scholarships and people seem to do well coming out of there getting into medical schools after having saved money in undergrad.
Based on my review of postings on SDN, a research project to be noticeable in a med school application will have the following traits:
You are applying for top tier medical school research-oriented.
The research project, no matter the size, is initiated by the student and completed by the student from soup to nuts.
The research projects D was in involves some time 30-50 people, including most, PHDs, postdocs and medical doctors.
Dâs GPA was bearly qualified for the lower tier med schools. For those schools, they want clinical experiences in UG, they have little research, their goal is to train doctors that work in a clinical environment.
@texaspg Tulaneâs well-known for being generous with partial-tuition merit scholarships like CWRU. The med school is well-known for primary care, but isnât a research powerhouse like CWRU or most of the top med schools. IIRC ~40 of the 190 med students were from Tulane undergrad, as there are 3 BS/MD programs (TPM which is for HS and recommends ACT 35+ and then 2 others for current undergrads.)
@norcalfre Make sure to apply EA for Tulane and interview, if possible, as they heavily consider demonstrated interest. The merit scholarships have earlier deadlines (December IIRC) as well, and some require you to apply EA.
@norcalfre
{quote]My understanding is that med schools value undergrad GPA and research opportunities way more than the ranking and prestige of the undergrad university.
[/quote]
GPA is used to help with the initial screening of applicants. (The exact cut off is proprietary and varies among schools, but generally a 3.2-3.5 will get human eyes on an application.)
Research experience really isnât all that critical unless the student is applying to research intensive med schools.
A survey of adcomm officers ranked research as being of âmedium importanceâ when deciding which applicants to interview and admit. Clinical exposure, community service, physician shadowing and leadershipâall ranked as being of the âhighest importanceâ.
Thanks for the insights. Bottom line is to be cost conscious when choosing the undergrad college as Med school is going to be crazy expensive. I have heard of doctors taking 10+ years to pay off their med school loans in-spite of their huge salaries!
I have talked about the cost of education with my daughter. We may not qualify for need based scholarship but still may end up taking educational loans.
@PikachuRocks15 Yes, daughter applied for Tulane EA and did the interview! Also, planning to apply for UMiami HPM program. Are you at Tulane? Are you doing Pre-med?
UCs have gotten so competitive that one needs a UC gpa of 4.0+ for most of the UCs now. My daughterâs UC GPA is 3.84 and she is not so keen on UCR or UCM. UCSC may be a possibility but Iâve heard that they dont have a great pre-med track. So, that doesnât leave us with a good chance for the UCs.
@WayOutWestMom Thanks for your response. From this thread, now I get it that research is of medium importance and there are other things like clinical experience, physician shadowing, comm service etc which are of higher importance.
I got an impression that research was extremely important from my neighbor who took a gap year after her undergrad and spent a year doing research under a professor. She told me that her research helped her get into Med school. That could very well be a one-off situation and not necessarily accurately describes the med school admission criteria.
@norcalfre I believe UMiamiâs HPM program is not guaranteed, so keep that in mind. Tulaneâs BS/MD applications open in January, so itâs worth letting the Admissions Officer in charge know if you are admitted to Tulane Honors.
Iâm actually at Brown, not Tulane! I ended up withdrawing my BS/MD application at Tulane post-interview, since Brown had been my dream school throughout HS. Tulaneâs an amazing school, however, and it was a tough decision to choose not to pursue BS/MD admission further there.
Has your daughter consider applying to Cal Poly SLO? The regionâs gorgeous and I believe they use a formula to at least partially review applicants (IIRC itâs the MCA.)
UCR has an early assurance program for its students where pre meds can receive a guaranteed early admission to UCRâs med school. No MCAT needed. 3.4 GPA required.
Since a single round of med school applications costs in the neighborhood of $4-10K, the savings could be significant. Also the student being able to avoid the roller coaster emotions and stress of applying to med school is another big plus.
RE: your neighbor, if she did clinical research, then her experience checked multiple boxesâincluding boosting her clinical hours.
Pure lab researchâunless she got publications out of it-- isnât the much of a boost to an application. Except at research intensive med schools.
Yes, UCR is an upcoming medical college for sure. Will keep that in mind. I think she has a decent chance of getting admitted to UCR for her undergraduate degree.
That said, when a student goes out of state for undergrad, does she become that stateâs resident by the time she completes her undergrad?
For example, if my daughter goes to a college in Texas, is she considered a Texas resident at the end of 4 years? Can she apply to Medical schools in Texas as a âresidentâ or will she still be considered a California resident (which is where we are from)?
@norcalfre For most states, your residency is dependent on your parentsâ residenceâyou cannot qualify for residency by attending school in the state. There are some states (Ohio is one) that offer in-state tuition for high school graduates of the state. In-order to declare residency, your daughterâs primary purpose for being in the state cannot be for education (IIRC less than half-time) and you need to hold a job, pay taxes, register for a driverâs license etc.
I personally would choose a small liberal arts college where the child is > 75th percentile in terms of GPA/SAT. Especially if the student can get a scholarship to keep costs low.
A health professions committee letter will be required for med school admissions, and getting a more personalized letter will be easier at a smaller college. The liberal arts colleges also generally have fewer premeds to compete against. Although the name brand of the college generally doesnât matter, med schools also like to have a wide variety of colleges represented in each incoming class. So going to big state U with 1000 other premeds is going to be harder to standout as compared to small liberal college with only 10 premeds per graduating class.