Hkim I would also wait to hear from CWRU EA tomorrow night before you make any decisions…that could be a very good pre-med situation for you. Good luck.
^ UChicago in the past has indeed allowed deferred candidates to switch to EDII. This year, their admissions page includes the following information:
“Please note that our deadline for decision plan change from Early Action to Early Decision I is November 15th. Our deadline for deferred Early Action candidates or students who previously selected Regular Decision as their decision to change to Early Decision II is January 15.”
@Mwfan1921 As for Case Western, I wasn’t able to apply EA because of Questbridge’s policy. Definitely would’ve done EA there. How soon would our UChicago AO call my counselor if it was the case?
“It has to be a relatively new policy to permit deferred EA applicants to move over their apps to ED2.”
-UChicago has allowed deferred EA’s to switch to ED2 since the first year they implemented the new admission plan. My D - now a third year - was one such admit. The ED2 round typically sees deferred candidates from many top schools, so why not UChicago as well? You don’t have to re-apply but you should probably send in first term grades.
Last year they seemed to reject a whole lot of ED1’s and invited those ED1’s who were deferred to switch to ED2. I believe that may have been a new thing. Most of those who switched and posted such on the UChicago forum seem to have been waitlisted.
Not sure this was disclosed last year, but the prior two years before that the percentage of deferreds who were admitted from RD round was something like half of a percent. Very very low. Best to switch to binding if UChicago is on the top of your list.
I don’t think the AO is going to call your GC. That AO has a lot of applications to juggle and its holiday time. Your GC would likely contact that AO and have a discussion on the applicants from your school. Not necessary just you. So you need to ask your GC how s/he is proceeding with this.
It seems to me that you want to stay local, so with the great deal you have with UIUC , this might be it for you. Give Chicago a try and if it doesn’t work out, leave it as is. Wash U and CWRU, unlikely to give as generous of award as you have in hand. Most of these PROFILE schools have a required Student contribution, and some have loans in their packages. Bowdoin, Amherst, Swarthmore, most selective Ivies are a whole Other story in financial aid packages.
Just saw the update. Congratulations on UIUC!
I am not sure what you mean. Regarding rolling to ED2 for UChicago, I would hesitate to do that unless the UC AO gives your GC a strong signal that your app would have a positive result.
I struggle with your case because I do still think you are blinded by prestige. People experienced in admissions know something is amiss when a student tells us that NU and UChicago are both good fits…those schools are so very different and attract such different students that it’s difficult to understand how someone could perceive they are both good fits. You have had a lot of time to think about these things, and have received great feedback on your threads. Yet in some ways you seem reticent to embrace some of the advice and figure out what schools would see you as a fit…because in the end it’s about what they want, not what you want.
Adding pre-med into the mix complicates things. Generally a student wants to be in the top 25% of their class academically speaking to have the best shot at a high GPA…you probably aren’t in the top 25% at UChicago and there, the road to pre-med plus core curriculum and needing to maintain a high GPA is hard. So hard. SO MUCH harder than high school AP and level 4 classes.
My point in a previous post above is that if going to med school is your goal…you need to be strategic and set yourself up for academic success. Med schools do not take into account the prestige of an undergrad school when assessing applicants. It’s GPA plus MCAT and if you don’t make that cut, you are done.
Take some time to think about this, and unfortunately I don’t think your GC can really help with the pre-med strategy. Maybe @WayOutWestMom would add some words of wisdom.
UIUC with a full ride will still be tough to beat IMO…that would be doable for pre-med. If you want better for pre-med I would focus on LACs…but I know their vibe does not seem to be what you want.
@HKimPOSSIBLE
I was very surprised to see that you ended up applying to Chicago after reading your response to my last question to you. I completely get your explanation a few posts ago though, and I still wish you great success. In the event you end up at UC, I’d like to meet you sometime!
Last year at a local UofC reception my daughter and I met a handful of deferred EA applicants who had switched to ED2 and were subsequently admitted.
Nope, not a new policy, been in place for several years. And they don’t need to increase yield, since it is already above 80%. Last year was 83%. Sounds like it’s been a while since you were around UChicago - things have changed rapidly in the last 5-10 years.
And as you’ve seen from the rejected applicants (and I keep repeating over and over and over to others who might be reading this), stats aren’t the primary driver for acceptance. The primary driver is fit. Fit, fit, fit. UChicago regularly turns away kids with perfect scores to take ones with imperfect scores that they feel are a great fit. Yes, you have to show you can do the work - and premed there is especially brutal - but once you’ve cleared that bar, they’re all about fit. There are very few “strong accepts” we can predict on this forum because we don’t see some of the most important info as far as UChicago is concerned - the essays, the LORs and the description of ECs.
My choices for Northwestern were really tied to my research + proximity + neuro/psych powerhouse. UChicago was 100% their atmosphere and academic curriculum (which was why Swarthmore’s atmosphere appealed highly along with Carleton).
It’s kind of tricky with LAC because there are some LAC that very much interest me like Swarthmore, Colorado College, Carleton, and Bowdoin - all ones that have solid Psychology and Neuroscience interdisciplinaries…and a MARINE BIO program.
But again, UIUC is such a great school that I have in my deck that it’s hard to justify a smaller LAC that may not have a a better program but will be easier to do for Pre-Med.
I don’t think the LACs will be easier for premed. What they’ll offer that UIUC can’t is what top private schools that focus on undergraduates do best: resources, attention, support, opportunities.
(Keep in mind there’s a reason they’re called “Little Ivies”: they’re like Ivies, but with fewer people; the quality of education is just as high, peers just as strong academically. You and your family may not be very familiar with them, but movers&shakers in the country, people in the know, know that top LACs are not “less” hard or “less” good and gladly send their kids there from prep school.)
Some differences:
At UIUC, everything is topnotch, but you’ll be one among many, and the professors aren’t likely to have much time for you. You may well share office hours with 400 undergraduates and hope they don’t show up v. a “large class” of 30 at a LAC.
Another difference resources make is that you’re left to fend for yourself or not. Being a first gen student means you just don’t know what you don’t know until you hit a wall or discover others knew something you didn’t that advantaged them over you. The likelihood of this happening at a well-resourced private school is much lower.
Another difference is not “easy v.hard” but learning style: some students like sitting in a lecture hall with 350 people, especially if they plan on not attending them all or like to hide and listen. Other students like to grapple with the material, ask questions, discuss issues, and thus do better in a seminar format.
Anyway, I’d be wary of wasting ED2 at Chicago. Call your GC and have a frank talk: where does that suggestion you apply ED2 come from - usual suggestion to all who are deferred from your school (and has it worked before for students with your GPA)? Specific recommendation based on a discussion they had with someone at UChicago?
I agree with everything @MYOS1634 has said.
It seems to me that you are set with the local area schools because they are what are familiar. If you truly feel that way and do not want to look into some of these highly recommended LACs , then you are set.
I forget, but did you consider some strong LACs that are closer to home? Lawrence in WI? Depauw in IN? Carleton in Minn? Wheaton in IL? Grinnell in IA?
Yes, I know UChicago is still a long shot. But the LACs I have in mind (Carleton and Grinnell that OHMomof2 has mentioned) along with many other are places I’m applying to for Regular Decision. They’re places I’d like to be able to compare with UIUC, but not 100% sure if I want to commit to there.
Bit late to this thread but im entering RD with similar results, Rejected ED Cornell but in UIUC OOS for MechE. Currently working hard on my list of 20 reaches. Good to know someone is in (or was in) such a situation 
@HKimPOSSIBLE before committing yourself ED2 to UChicago, I urge you to find out as much information as you can about:
1- how is preMed there? Do they wash a lot of kids out of the program? Is there grade deflation? How many kids start off as pre-meds, and how many ultimately get to med school (this is hard to find out!)? One unfortunate trick a friend found out about at their school “100 percent of the kids we recommend for med school get in” is a meaningless statistic, because you don’t know how many kids the school refused to recommend. And you don’t know how many kids washed out before even getting to the recommendation stage.
2- how proactive the school is with advising first gen students? Compare what U Chicago says with what some other schools say so you can start to hear the differences. I can’t emphasize enough how important advising is.
Going back to pre-med, you should try to get behind the information that the school will tout about its pre-med advising program. Are you entitled to meet with them individually in your freshman year? Or is Freshman pre-med advising only one group lecture? When do they really start to interact with you? If you want to go straight from college to med school, you need to be on the ball from the minute you step foot on your college campus as a freshman. My D made a course sequence mistake her first semester freshman year, and that is throwing her into having to take a gap year. Besides course sequences, there are all sorts of boxes you need to check, and starting in on them immediately is very helpful, both in terms of med school admissions and in terms of seeing whether you actually really want to be a doctor.
Some of my comments are coming from the perspective of seeing a couple of kids in my sphere going off to prestigious schools and getting de-railed from their career goals. Premed at Johns Hopkins was “soul-crushing” for a girl who in HS would study all hours, so she switched. She had perfect grades in HS and very strong SATs. I’m convinced that if this same girl had gone to any college except for maybe 5 other colleges in the country, she would still be in pre-med and doing very well. Or another kid who wanted to major in math and went to Princeton. That kid realized within weeks that although he had perfect math grades in HS and is strong in math, this program was beyond him and he was grateful he switched to pass/fail for that semester and avoided math classes thereafter. Yet that kid’s relative who was going to a state U and had about the same strong intellectual capability for math has now graduated with a math degree and has an excellent job in the field and is doing well.
My point, like others, is that prestige isn’t always better. Education is a tool, and you need to pick out the tool that is best for YOU. Since going ED2 will commit you if accepted, you need to do your research now about whether this school is the best fit for you. Of course U Chicago is an amazing school and can springboard you into many different fields and give you excellent opportunities. But is it the BEST school for YOU? Dig in and try to find out before you commit.
There are colleges, like Amherst, that will recommend every student, no matter what gpa and mcat, as long as they go to all the meetings and fill out the forms - follow the process. Schools should be upfront about that.
Again going to use Amherst because I’m familiar. Regular advising for premed before classes even start.
These are great and important questions to ask.
Some kids say they want to be premed because everyone knows what a doctor is, but as they go through college they find out about other careers that may suit them better.
My D was never very hot on pre-med (epidemiology was her interest, and she recognized that having an MD would be one type of epidemiological work) but she put pre-med on her app, went to the health adviser one-on-one meetings and made sure her classes were fulfilling the med school pre-reqs anyway, until she was sure she didn’t want it - sophomore year as I recall. I wouldn’t count her as “washing out” and her school had zero weed-out culture anyway, but on paper she said pre-med and didn’t apply to med school.
So keep in mind that the stats are hard to pin down, and that you, yourself, may change your mind - even with a perfect gpa and high mcat.
Even though the college pre med committee will recommend any student who follows the process, the process presumably includes advisory meetings where the committee gives the student a realistic evaluation of his/her medical school chances. This probably causes at least some no-hopers to abandon pre-med before applying and focus on other plans (a good thing, no sense in wasting time and money on futile applications).
Right, you can’t count on every letter being a full, true endorsement. There are many ways recommenders can pull for some kids, but definitely not for all.
I’m concerned OP isn’t getting a sense of where his best shots are, to both get admitted and aim for his med school goals. Weeding can be brutal. Nothing says one sort of college is a better evironment for future med school. It needs to be explored.
My anecdote. Brilliant and disciplined young friend (unquestionably so) went to a top 20 LAC, struggled with premed courses, failed orgo. Based on her history, not only was this a shock, but she couldn’t figure what was responsible.
For financial aid reasons, transferred to another top 30, also well known. And in her first orgo class there, the prof announced if all work together to gain mastery, all should do well. She did. And landed at a coveted medical school.
This has next to nothing to do with prestige or college rankings. And Bowdoin (mentioned here) is fair about some of their wording. But when you read, “In recent years almost nine out of ten who have applied [to med school] have been admitted. Last year it was 97 percent.” it leads to the impression this is easy. That it’s something special about Bowdoin, a reason to get very excited about applying. It’s not the whole story.
Yes. And Amherst is also very pro gap year and applying after graduation. More maturity, more grades, another shot at the test, more time to beef up medical volunteering and shadowing and so on.