This not hard to find out. This IMPOSSIBLE to find out.
Since pre-med is an intention and not a specific major, there is no universally accepted definition of exactly who/what a pre-med is. Is every bio major a potential pre-med? Is anyone who has contact with the health profession office a pre-med? (There are many, many pre-meds who have zero contact with the pre-med advising office prior to applying for a committee letter.)
Instead I would at look at grade distributions for key pre-req classes (gen chem, bio, ochem, physics) What percentage of the class earns As in these key weeder classes? Many schools have this information publicly available. No As in the weeders means you’re on the way to not having the GPA needed for med school.
I also thinking you’re being long term foolish by being fixated on prestige schools like UChicago and Northwestern. Med schools don’t care about the name of your undergrad. They look at individual achievements. GPA and MCAT to start, then at your ECs (community service, clinical experiences, leaderships roles, physician shadowing).
Except for a handful of research intensive med schools, most med schools aren’t going to care about your research credentials so the idea that you need to go to undergrad that is good match for your research interests is just plain wrong-headed. (MSQ says more than 40% of all med school applicants were accepted with ZERO research experience. And annual survey of med school admission offices found that adcomms ranked research as being only of low-middle importance.)
Seriously, the majority of med schools don’t care about your undergrad research.
At most undergrads, committee letters stratify pre-med applicants into one of 4 groups:
1) strongly recommend/highest recommendation
2 recommend
3) recommend with reservations
4) not recommended
Most pre-meds will not earn a place in the #1 group. This Isi usually reserved for the top 15-25% of applicants from this undergrad during the cycle. Anyone who applies with a committee letter in the #3 or #4 category is likely wasting their money even applying.
This mean any school that offers a committee to letter to every med school applicant is fudging their truths. Every student may get a letter, but every students may not get recommended.
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LACs can be a good place for pre-meds. The classes are smaller (though it's foolish to believe the competition will be easier..) and you're likely to get more one-on-one attention from your professors. However, the downside to LACs can be their locations which are typically in smaller towns and far away from clinical volunteering sites. Rural LACs may require having a car on campus to get to volunteer locations or may require a gap year to buff your ECs so they support a strong application. (Not that there's anything wrong with that....the majority of med school matriculants have taken one or more gap years. One-fifth have taken 3+ gaps years.)
I also forgot to mention (I think!) that I am submitting majors not for bio/biochem but for Psych/Neuroscience or a possible Anthropology/Environmental Science depending on the school.
Life Update: I also received my PHYSICAL Green Card in the mail. So that’s really it with my status - for the next four years at least (fingers crossed I can remember my APUSH studies to cruise through the citizenship test).
Total Schools Applied to 33 Schools
Schools that rolled over from the Match: 10 (Northwestern rejection)
Schools w/o a supplement: 7
Non-Questbridge: 6
Accepted: 2 (UIC Honors and UIUC w/ Full Ride…except the official award letter hasn’t been posted yet)
Questbridge, from speaking to those on the Discord server, helped many students who needed it, but wow the time crunch was real for sure.
Feels good to start 2020 all done and knowing I’ll have “at least” UIUC to go to.
I hope you mean 23 (as the breakdown seems to suggest) and not really 33!
Congrats on being DONE! And whatever happens, you are heading for a fully-funded undergrad education at an excellent school. I look forward to hearing how decision season goes.
Congrats on having the green card in hand! (Not going to get political here but I’m really hurting for everyone whose hopes are depending on DACA at this time.)
You’re on your way! Kudos for your tenacity and transparency thus far; good to know that you already have an ace in the hole but hope for some exciting additional rewards for all your hard work.
@aquapt Phew indeed! But that 33 is NOT a typo (I had around 15-16 schools to write supplements for during the RD round)!
Yeah, as happy as I am to be a USPR, it does feel weird when I see news regarding DACA individuals knowing that it doesn’t apply to me anymore. A big sigh of relief regardless as my next step is to become a citizen.
Honestly, I have done a LOT of convincing over the holidays and my family is very very interested in Bowdoin College :[ should’ve ranked them for QB Match.
Having both a physical green card and the UIUC acceptance is certainly good news.
I did notice that @HKimPOSSIBLE has WashU on the list. The school is also pretty well known for deflating grades and it’s difficult for a premed to have a ~3.7 GPA. Again it’s Chemistry (General and Organic) which is a weeder, even though the Chemistry classes are taught well there. WashU is also one of the few schools that requires premeds to take Multivariable Calculus as a graduation requirement.
I have seen some literature that claims of a ‘WashU boost’ for their med school applicants, but I would tend not to believe it.
When OP gets his acceptances and aid packages, he can weigh what the best deal is for him. All things equal, I’m sure some other things go into preferences, not the least being vicinity and accessibility to him and family. But until offers are on the table, makes no sense advocating for this school or the other.
Being from the Chicagoland area, it’s typical that Wash U, Northwestern and UChicago are right up top, and schools like Bowdoin, Pomona etc are not.
Congratulations in getting all those applications out ! Hoping for a good return in effort, though, really, you already have that with your UI acceptances.
Is UIC affordable? Have you received their fin aid package? I don’t think they offer the same Promise program as UIUC does, but I am not sure. Would you commute to UIC?
https://biology.wustl.edu/major-requirements-related-programs mentions that multivariable calculus is required for biology majors who take physical chemistry, rather than pre-meds specifically. Or is there some other page saying that it is required for pre-med biology majors?
But a pre-med in a major not requiring multivariable calculus would not have to take it, right?
Agreed UIUC>UIC. But, I think hkim’s application to UIC GPPA (guaranteed med school program) is still outstanding, and in the unlikely event (because the admit rate is very low) he is admitted, wanted to understand UIC’s FA
“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.”
That yield rate is very misleading given Chicago has four admission plans and they don’t release information via CDS. If they take half the class ED, the RD yield rate goes down to 67%.
“I also thinking you’re being long term foolish by being fixated on prestige schools like UChicago and Northwestern.”
It’s not at all foolish, remember we’re dealing with teenagers here who are going to fixate on prestige, or schools their peers are considering, or both. For a strong applicant in the midwest to apply to Chicago, NU, Michigan, UIUC, and a couple of matches and safeties is not foolish, in fact it’s the right strategy.
I grew up in upstate NY where it was common for the best students to apply to a whole bunch of ivies. Nobody said you are foolish or clueless for applying to Columbia and Cornell or Brown and Dartmouth. We supported each other instead of judging. full disclosure, - I didn’t apply to any ivies since my grades and rank were not good enough, but the people that did turned out fine.
A 67% RD yield rate is pretty good when you consider that 1) it’s the last non-binding admission plan and basically includes everything but the kitchen sink, and 2) the last cycle before introducing ED had an OVERALL yield (so including EA and RD) of only 64%.
We do now say that it’s crazy to appply to all the Ivies, as if they were identical. The competition is far fiercer than a generation ago and the expectations higher. Can a kid id what makes each unique and write the right Why Us?
It’s not just how many you try for, but the wisdom of the choices and your knowledge of your ability to succeed there, if chosen. That’s more than dreaming. (It’s true adcoms pick kids they beleve can succeed. But it doesn’t mean you just float a bunch of apps out there.)
Agree 67% is very good but it’s not 83%, that would imply Chicago in RD was winning cross-admits vs HYP on the non-stem side (econ, govt, english) and stanford, mit, cal tech on the stem side (CS, physics), which I don’t think is happening.
"The competition is far fiercer than a generation ago and the expectations higher. "
Agree, but imo, Cornell and Columbia are far more similar than they are different. And I’m very familiar with both campuses, almost intimately if I may say.
Maybe. The differences are significant, too, and do contribute to the experiences.
Imo, now that the apps are in, OP should continue to research those schools. Because he should be prepared to make the best, most informed decision among those that offer an admit. Many of our kids can thrive in all sorts of environments. But the possible goal of med school puts more pressure on semester to semester performance. Regardless of whatever general stats about the number who get into med school from various colleges, the spotlight will be on him, his record.
Congrats HKim! I’ve been following your thread and have read every post. Phew!
One thing to consider that has not been mentioned yet. Proximity to a major airport and ease of transportation thereto are important not just for routine travel, but for medical school interviewing. If you end up applying to med school while a college senior, you’ll (hopefully) have a lot of traveling for interviews.
