<p>mamom - Brandeis does not offer merit for incoming freshmen. Those are for rising juniors and the amount is about $5K. We would love it there since we have many friends with lovely kids there but the cost is prohibitive and we will not qualify for need based aid.</p>
<p>blossom–and I know several kids that went to these so called “3rd tier”, whatever that means, and ALL have gotten into Medical school and are practicing doctors today. I don’t know of one single kid that has graduated from the many schools I have in mind that you probably have never heard of that hasn’t gotten into medical school. I don’t know what your “marginal” 3rd tier schools are but there is a lot of excellent, smaller, regional schools with med school acceptance rates in the 95+% rate. I also disagree that “rigor suffers” at these schools.</p>
<p>Also, the OP knows and understands this. Again, please go check out the information on the pre-med pages here or the student-doctor forums because your assumptions just are not correct. This is all information learned right here on CC and it’s “my opinion”, just the results of my research because we have a child considering pre-med as well. Her #1 school had 100% acceptance rate into medical school last year. I’m not worried at all and that school isn’t on any “list” you might have.</p>
<p>SteveMA- I don’t read the pre-med boards and have no interest. Already spend too much time on CC already. If the “general consensus” is the same student going to tier 1 college and getting a 3.7 GPA could drop to a tier 3 college and get a 3.9 GPA and increase his chances of getting into medical school, then the med school adcoms know this too and account for this in admissions decisions. As a med school adcom do I want to fill my class with kids who surrounded themselves with mediocre students and looked great or with someone who is a credible contender with the best?</p>
<p>Each metro region has top high schools that send a large number of kids to top colleges. Do you think the college adcoms think 10th in the class at Scarsdale High School is less worthy than 1st in the class at Podunk High School? There is a context to these kids with the school report and reputation matters. Scarsdale may get 15+ into HYP and Podunk gets none and yet they each had only one top student. Why would any reasonable person think the same would not apply in medical school?</p>
<p>My top tier medical school was more than half filled with top 20 college undergraduates. Without debating causation with correlation, that just does not make sense given the “general consensus” you describe. If they only wanted the highest GPAs and MCATs, they would have needed to fill the class from a much broader base.</p>
<p>I suspect that much of this pre-med “UG school doesn’t matter” derives from the fact that many make an effort to spend as little as possible before medical school to decrease educational debt. This mantra then gives comfort to parents who trade sending their kids from an institution of their peers to one where they will always be the big fish and are induced to attend with merit money. It may make financial sense and is undoubtedly a reasonable financial choice but lets not call it an educational bonus to achieve a higher GPA.</p>
<p>UMD-College Park offers merit scholarships and has a very large and active Jewish student population.</p>
<p>Emory, Vanderbilt, BU, NYU offer merit aid - not sure how your daughter’s stats will look to these places, but it’s worth considering. They all have large Jewish pops, and are medium-to-very active.</p>
<p>Among LACs, Oberlin, Muhlenberg, Clark, F&M are all fairly high-percent-Jewish and have pretty active Jewish life (considering their numbers) and give merit awards.</p>
<p>I second memake’s suggestion of Clark.</p>
<p>Just to note a famous case in the news last year in regard to med school admissions: The Craig’s List Killer went to SUNY Albany for undergrad before going to BU for med school. SUNY Albany isn’t even the top school in the SUNY system so a cheaper state school with strong grades and MCATS can work. Another anecdote: my family doctor sent his first son to an ivy and the kid had trouble with organic chem and needed to take a fifth year to bring up grades. My doctor said that he will be sending his next 4 kids to a state school if they want to be a doctor to improve their grades and chances for med school admission. The competition at some of the top schools is so fierce that the kids are weeded out before they get a chance to apply to med school perhaps if they had gone to a less competitive school where they were nurtured they would still be in “the game” at application time.</p>
<p>We heard that F&M is no longer giving merit aid and NYU is on the stingy side. Emory, BU, and Vanderbilt (one or more will be added to our list) will be competitive but we’ll most likely throw our hat in the ring and give it a try. </p>
<p>LAC - We heard Denison was good also, anyone with personal experience, please share.</p>
<p>Because I was curious and have never looked into this-quick Google search:</p>
<p>[W&L</a> trying to attract more Jewish students - Roanoke.com](<a href=“http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/261744]W&L”>http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/261744)</p>
<p>[Small</a> Colleges Reach Out To Expand Their Jewish Student Communities ? Forward.com](<a href=“http://forward.com/articles/130140/small-colleges-reach-out-to-expand-their-jewish-st/]Small”>Small Colleges Reach Out To Expand Their Jewish Student Communities – The Forward)</p>
<p>I would “think” that if they are trying to attract more Jewish students that those acceptances would come with some $$$…but, maybe not? :D.</p>
<p>OP, what’s your budget? If the school offers merit but not enough of it to bring down the cost to what you can afford, it’s not much help.</p>
<p>Concur on all the recommendations so far except for Brandeis, which offers little merit money. For UMD-CP, be sure to apply by the early deadline for merit aid consideration. Pitt is rolling admissions, so have that app up and ready to go by the end of August. </p>
<p>Muhlenberg does indeed have a Jewish population over 30% and a wonderful Hillel. They also have a strong reputation for sending students on to med school, and a well-deserved reputation for friendly students. They want to be shown love, so visiting and interviewing is a good idea. </p>
<p>Not as safety-ish but strong merit aid at GWU and American. Goucher, while you’re in the area. Rochester. All of these have strong Jewish communities. Your kid’s stats look very in range for merit aid at BU. How about U Denver? More of a party reputation, but there’s money to be had for high stats kids. </p>
<p>In California, perhaps Chapman. </p>
<p>D1 went on Hillel Alternative spring break to Tucson, and told me she really enjoyed the Hillels at UA.</p>
<p>Steve- so often posters here write “third tier” when referring to places like Beloit, Lawrence, Skidmore-- i.e. fine institutions with lots of strong students. I’m talking about schools with close to open admissions where virtually anyone with a HS diploma is in. No big trick for a good HS student to maintain a 3.9 GPA at a place like that, and no, med school admissions committees are not falling over themselves to admit those students. I’d really love to see actual data-- since when you look at the list of new residents and interns every year for both big and small teaching hospitals, sure looks like the flagship state U’s and the private top 50 U’s really dominate the “newly minted doctor” population.</p>
<p>Can a kid attend University of New Haven or Lynn University and get to Med school? Sure. I bet it happens every year. But should a kid who gets into U Michigan or Northwestern or Brandeis who might be interested in medicine trade down to UNH in order to assure a 4.0? Bad idea IMHO.</p>
<p>But I’m thrilled that you know so many doctors who graduated from third tier colleges. America is indeed a land of opportunity.</p>
<p>University of Denver. I believe they and Tulane both sent emails with links to fast apps.</p>
<p>On the subject of MED school, like parenting, there are different routes and the process is complex so it’s difficult to tell which route is best. For us, for this child, she only wants to go to a private school that will give her enough merit to bring the cost down to instate and she rather saves the $$ we saved for her for graduate/professional school. All the schools mentioned are not PODUNK school and they’ll work for us. CC parents, are always so very helpful, we’ve learned a lot through the years.</p>
<p>One college to consider is Muehlenberg in PA. I’m not too certain about Merit aid, but they have good placements to med schools and a nice Jewish population. I have a D in med school, and at her white coat ceremony, I listened to where most of the kids had attended schools. Michigan (where she attended) had a high representation, as did Wash U in St. Louis and the CA schools, Berkeley/Stanford. The rest were from a variety of small private schools and other universities. Her best friend from high school went to Wisconsin and is attending med school at our local flagship university. We discovered that this med school had a definite preference for kids who had attended the flagship. The flagship medical school wants to keep kids in the state, and preferably in rural areas, so they look for students who are likely to work in the state. As you can see, factors other than GPA/MCAT scores are considered in admissions. I would recommend that the original poster seriously consider their flagship university. Granted, none of my three kids listened to that advice and chose schools out-of-state (one went to Tulane), but a large Jewish population was very important to us (not available at our flagship.) Lastly, my D often mentions how well UM prepared her for her classes, and no, she did not have a super-high GPA, but man, she killed it on interviews and had an impressive research resume. Like normal college admissions, med schools look beyond the stats. Yes, you have to make the cut when you submit yours secondaries, so those stats are important, but after that many things are considered in the final acceptance.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, we did not find with our son, that Emory was good with merit aid. My husband was so put off by their total refusal to offer any merit aid or to discuss matching other scholarships offers our son had been offered, that he did not push going there. The definite message he got was, you should just be happy he was accepted.</p>
<p>FYI, the MCAT will go through a major revision starting in 2015 and this NYT had two articles in their Sunday, April 15, 2012 Education section that has some interesting information about med school placements (open the charts/illustrations on the left.) It is easier to read in the print version.</p>
<p><a href=“Pre-Med’s New Priorities: Heart and Soul and Social Science - The New York Times”>Pre-Med’s New Priorities: Heart and Soul and Social Science - The New York Times;
<p><a href=“A Second Opinion: The Post-Baccalaureate - The New York Times”>A Second Opinion: The Post-Baccalaureate - The New York Times;
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<p>My recollection is that religion is NOT a question that appears on the applications…so how would they KNOW?</p>
<p>thumper, when your list of ECs includes a long list of activities with your synagogue’s USY, the schools can kinda figure it out. 
:D</p>
<p>Seriously, yes, schools do offer things like “heritage” awards to entice more diversity. It was USC and Vandy not so long ago. Different schools now; I remember that one poster on the Jewish B student thread said her D got some heritage money from Juniata. The tradeoff is that when you’re getting big bucks to add diversity, it means that you’re something of an ethnic pioneer. 
Some people are fine with that. Others, especially if they’re looking for an established Hillel or a kosher program, not so much.</p>
<p>Thumper1, it’s on the Common App now under Optional. Applicants can include it.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012AppFY_download.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2012/2012AppFY_download.pdf</a></p>
<p>It may have been asked when kids registered for the SAT? Maybe?</p>
<p>As an aside, one man’s podunk is another man’s home…</p>
<p>thumper-if a school is trying to attract a certain kind of student, I am sure there is a supplemental app or something to find that information, wouldn’t you think?</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, Does that mean USC and Vandy are no longer “looking to entice” Jewish kids? I have heard that they have an active Hillel at both (hearsay).</p>
<p>Well, if those are your idea of 3rd tier, the schools I am talking about must be about 5th tier. They are not “open enrollment” schools but still accept 75% of applicants or so. They are very strong, regional, LAC with excellent reputations regionally, for the medical schools VERY well known. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know about these schools, but since the medical schools do, that is what really counts. However, I just don’t know what the Jewish population is at these schools.</p>