Hi! I’m considering the following schools for Pre-Med:
Washington University in St. Louis
Johns Hopkins
Williams College
UCLA
UC Berkeley
I fit into the academic profile for students at the school, and plan on applying to each of these schools. If you have information on social life, workload, and maybe a daily schedule of a student at the schools, I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you so much!
What is your home state?
Those are reach schools for virtually everyone
Will your parents pay all costs or will you need aid?
@justhaveonequestion Penn is another place you could consider. It has a great social life (known as the social ivy), one of the very top medical schools and hospitals right on campus with many research opportunities (important for recommendation letters and resume building for med school admission). Another great place fro pre-med is Brown due to its big grade inflation and flexible curriculum. Brown also has a good social life.
In general Hopkins is said to be very intense for pre-med and the social life is more limited. I have heard WUSTL is a great place for pre-med.
Whenever I’ve seen one of these posts that asks in various ways if premeds can have a good time in college and the poster sticks around, a later post is “I’m off to a bad start, can I make it up?” and if they’re still around after that they’re no longer premed. I don’t know why this is, but expressing worries about social life seem to be a marker for someone that isn’t willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices that succeeding in a competitive career choice entails. I hope it is different for this OP.
I am sure you can party all day and all night once you get into any one of those schools. But whether you can have a med school worthy GPA is going to be the question.
One can go to Penn, be very social, and maintain a very high GPA that is med school worthy? I am sure there are a few who do that, but my guess is that most can’t. The one girl I currently know at Penn graduated HS #2 with an almost perfect SAT … and got her first C.
OP you have a list of reaches- you need some other schools. And…if you are seriously considering medical school I would look at schools where you can get a high GPA. Not saying you won’t at your current list- I don’t know you. What will your parents pay?
Being premed is an intention. Basically it means you decide to compete against everyone else and be top 10-20% in every class you take. In order to maximize your odds, you should be at a collaborative school that offers plenty of support to students.
UCLA and UCB are bloodbaths for premeds, simply because there are so many brilliant students with excellent high school preparation at these universities, and so few med school spots in California - so you have to be at the top of your game all the time. Forget social life.
At all the schools listed, prioritizing anything beside studying means your GPA is no longer med school worthy in a semester or two.
Do people have fun? Sure, on weekends. But each class may generate as many as ten to twelve hours of work- and remember, it’s not enough to do the work, you also have to be better than 80-90% students at the university.
What state are you a resident of?
What’s your EFC?
How much can your parents pay?