<p>My daughter wants to be a doctor (not sure what type yet) and so we are looking into undergraduate colleges that are strong in science that have a great reputation for preparing kids for top medical schools. She wants either east or west coast schools. </p>
<p>As far as campuses go, she has fallen in love with UC Santa Barbara. We live in California. She has a 4.3 GPA so we're thinking UC Santa Barbara is likely to accept her. But what colleges are good for biology or pre-med that can help her get into a good med school?</p>
<p>Jane, there are many, many choices for colleges that have good sciences and send their graduates to top medical schools. Pre-med isn’t a common major, but biology is so she’ll need to narrow her preferences a bit.</p>
<p>First, what’s your financial expectation? Do you want or need financial aid? If yes, do you qualify for need based aid or do you need merit aid? The answer to that question would have a huge impact on your daughter’s list.</p>
<p>Is that 4.3 out of 4.0? What are your daughter’s extracurriculars and scores? The most selective colleges consider all of these factors?</p>
<p>We do have financial need and will be able to qualify for financial aid. She does have a somewhat good chance to get into very selective schools, considering everything. We are creating a list of “reach” schools, “maybe” schools, and “safety” schools. She’s taking AP courses and also some college courses this year as a senior in H.S.</p>
<p>hands down
hendrix college a true hidden gem and muhlenberg college a semi hidden gem!
both great all around schools …happy students , great learning environments, awesome campus settings. supportive staff. tolerant students and on and on at both ! flip a coin!</p>
<p>Keep in mind that “qualifying” for FA is different than getting it. Most schools don’t meet need, so even if you qualify for aid, you may get gapped.</p>
<p>Is there a Non-custodial parent? if so, the top schools will use the NCP’s financial info as well.</p>
<p>Pre-med is not a major at all. One can major in virtually any arts & science or engineering field and still satisfy requirements for medical school. If your daughter loves one of your in-state public universities, count yourself lucky. That should be a fine (and relatively affordable) choice.</p>
<p>I’m a big fan of LACs; Hendrix, Muhlenberg and Gettysburg are good schools. However, if your D loves UCSB, they might not be her cup of tea. Anyway, at full sticker price, most private LACs are nearly double UCSB’s in-state rates. If you want to consider private schools, look at need-blind colleges that commit to meeting 100% of demonstrated need. Generally, the more selective the college, the more generous the need-based aid. </p>
<ul>
<li>Low net cost after non-loan financial aid and scholarships.</li>
<li>Pre-med courses that prepare the student well for the MCAT. (Note: no specific major is required – the pre-med courses can be taken alongside any major.)</li>
<li>High grade inflation relative to student competitiveness.</li>
<li>Convenient pre-med extracurricular opportunities (shadowing and volunteering).</li>
</ul>
<p>For cost, try the net price calculators at college web sites to see what kind of need-based aid they may come up with. Then check the merit scholarship sections.</p>
<p>She should note the following (ask on the pre-med forum for more details):</p>
<ul>
<li>Many medical schools do not accept AP credit for the pre-med requirements, so she may have to either retake the pre-med courses or take an equivalent number of more advanced courses in the pre-med subjects.</li>
<li>College courses taken while in high school do count in calculating GPA for pre-med purposes. So she needs to get A or A+ grades in these courses now.</li>
<li>Biology majors do not have very good job and career prospects at the bachelor’s degree level, due to the major’s popularity.</li>
</ul>
<p>If LACs are under consideration, there are a few public LACs like Truman State and Minnesota - Morris whose non-resident costs are lower than UC resident costs at list price, though UC may give more resident financial aid than the others give non-resident financial aid. California also has what some consider a public LAC in the lower cost (and less selective) CSU system, Humboldt State. However, the accessibility of pre-med extracurriculars may need to be checked for out of the way schools like these.</p>
<p>I would have said that too, except that I saw on another thread (I don’t remember which one) an example of a college that does offer pre-med as a major. But your point is well taken: you can get into medical school with just about any major as long as you fulfill the prerequisites and have the grades and scores.</p>
<p>Jane, if you’ve used financial aid calculators and the estimated family contribution works for you, then your daughter could look at any of the academically rigorous schools that offer strong sciences. Ironically, some of the most selective are also the most generous with need based aid.</p>
<p>In order to make a list would need to know more about her profile – grades, ECs, interests and preferences in size and environment. </p>
<p>If what she likes about Santa Barbara is the lively small town atmosphere, she might look at Weslyean, Smith, Amherst, Dartmouth. More rural, but excellent track record for medical school admissions, Williams, Grinnell.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for all your feedback and suggestions. </p>
<p>In answer to your questions, her grades are good, 4.3 GPA, AP courses and college courses. She excels in math and science and gets pretty much all As. She took the SAT 3 times and her highest score was 1710. She just doesn’t do well on tests. She is going to take the ACT next month and thinks she will do a lot better on that. She wants a school on either coast, not in the middle of the country. She loves New England and wants to go far away, but since visiting UC Santa Barbara she would love to go there. We’re in CA. We haven’t had a chance to visit many schools, so far just Berkeley and Santa Barbara. She likes both of these campuses.</p>
<p>Here is a list we put together so far. I added some from the posts here. It seems a lot of these are very selective “reach” colleges, so we need more “safety” schools that we know she can get into. I’m getting the numbers run on financial aid and it seems we’ll qualify for most if not all at some of these colleges.</p>
<p>Colleges
UC Santa Barbara
UC Berkeley
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Hendrix College, Conway, AR
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA
Wesleyan University Middletown, CT
Dartmouth
Williams College Williamstown, Ma
Amherst College
Bowdoin, Maine
Vassar College
Boston College
Stanford</p>
<p>While improving test scores to match a high GPA is easier done than the opposite, she should be aware that a huge gateway to medical school admission is the MCAT. She needs to improve her test taking skills in order to do well on the MCAT to avoid being eliminated immediately by medical school admissions committees.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t discount the middle of the country. We are also in CA, and getting to schools like Williams and Bowdoin isn’t easy or cheap. To go far away, I’d check out schools in places with lots of non-stop flights. She should look WashU in St. Louis and Northwestern in Chicago. Also Bryn Mawr in Philly has great med school success.</p>
<p>Looking at past posts, there is a NCP. That will be an issue at some schools.</p>
<p>As a Calif resident, only the custodial parent’s income is counted for its public schools. Calif also has Blue and Gold promise for those earning $80k and attending UCs. It also has Cal Grants. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry so much about getting into medical school just now. A lot can change over the next few years and the immediate task at hand is finding a balanced list of schools that are a good fit for your daughter’s personality and learning style.</p>
<p>If you’re sure that need based aid is workable for you, she can proceed researching a wide range of schools. What she needs to do now is make a wishlist of the attributes that she wants in a college – small/medium/large, urban/rural/suburban, sporty/political/artsy, sororities or no, coed or all womens – and put together schools in various levels of selectivity that have similar characteristics. </p>
<p>UCBerkeley and UCSB have distinctive personalities. If she wants big and diverse she may not like small LACs. Try to visit some nearby smaller colleges – like Pomona and the Claremont group – to get an idea of how size factors into her preferences.</p>
<p>My son visited large, medium and small colleges but settled on a small LAC. This was the right decision for him, but it took some exposure to the choices to come to that conclusion.</p>
<p>Scores are important but not necessarily deal breakers if the other elements are strong. Your daughter has the grades and I assume the recommendations to demonstrate academic excellence. The determining factor in admissions will be her extracurricular activities. What she does with her free time will be immensely important if she goes the LAC route.</p>
<p>For safeties that are also academically strong, I would take another look at the all women’s colleges, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Scripps. Smith offers especially good financial aid for women in the sciences.</p>
<p>Might look at Holy Cross-has one of the better pre-med programs on the east coast. hc is very similar to Boston College-both Jesuit schools. Holy Cross is also one of few schools that is need-blind for admissions. The HC website is informative.</p>
<p>If your daughter is feeling UCSB, then that U would be great for her. Happiness is a big determinant of success as a student. </p>
<p>SB isn’t a great pre-med factory as Cal or UCLA would be (these two tend to trade off for [top no. of applicants to m-school / year](<a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html</a>) in the country), it wouldn’t even register within all of the UC’s – SD and Davis are third and fourth, resp, but your daughter would have just as good a chance at SB as any of the other UC’s because of the previously stated happiness factor along with a self-selection-to-a-certain-U factor (wrt the professions) that your daughter seems to want to ignore – happily for her. ;)</p>
<p>At Bowdoin, the number of students entering in 2011-2012 with SAT scores below 600 was 6% for CR, 4% for M, and 7% for Writing. Expect similar patterns for Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Vassar, or almost any other top-20 school. These are percentages of admitted applicants, not admit rates for applicants with those scores. I’d be surprised to see a student admitted to these schools with scores much below 650 who did not have some exceptional talent or “hook” to compensate. </p>
<p>Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Vassar, Williams, and Wesleyan all use the Non-Custodial Parent Profile. Somewhat less selective private schools that do not use it include Bucknell, Case Western, Colby, College of Wooster, Gettysburg, Lewis & Clark, Oberlin, and Ursinus. Gettysburg is an SAT-optional college that claims to meet 100% of determined need for those students who get it. Lewis & Clark and Ursinus also are test-optional; they meet ~80%-90% of determined need. Colby is test-flexible; it claims to meet 100% of determined need.</p>
<p>I would have said that too, except that I saw on another thread (I don’t remember which one) an example of a college that does offer pre-med as a major. But your point is well taken: you can get into medical school with just about any major as long as you fulfill the prerequisites and have the grades and scores.*</p>
<p>Yes, there are a couple of schools that offer a “pre-med major”. However, since those are, by far, the exceptions and not the rule, the fact is that at nearly all schools there isn’t a “pre-med major”. </p>
<p>I think it’s a little crazy to have a pre-med major, UNLESS…the student isn’t permitted to declare it until sophomore year and has strong Bio, Gen Chem, and Orgo grades. The thought of someone graduating with a Pre-med major degree without the grades to go to med school seems silly.</p>
<p>As far as campuses go, she has fallen in love with UC Santa Barbara. We live in California. She has a 4.3 GPA so we’re thinking UC Santa Barbara is likely to accept her. But what colleges are good for biology or pre-med that can help her get into a good med school?</p>
<p>She has a great GPA, which is super for admittance into Calif publics. However, other schools (that give great aid) will expect HIGH test scores. What are her test scores???</p>
<p>The “pre-med major” at Notre Dame is actually a major in “Preprofessional Studies”, which one can taylor into a “premedical science sequence”. It looks like little more than a way to re-brand a conventional Physics, Bio, Chemistry or Math major. There does not appear to be anything specifically medical (like dissection labs or hospital internships) integrated into the program. </p>