This whole motion that “parents involvement is bad”, is not 100% truth teller. What it fails to highlight is where parents involvement is good vs bad? No one wants a parent like dictator. At the same time it is fool to believe that ‘Doctor is born by birth’.
I can see that when kids are indecisive to jump into BS/MD, they throw the wider net, engineering, UG and few selective BS/MD and then ultimately pick one path. That indecisiveness is a certainly a factor that you are not applying to each and every BS/MD program out there. We had that dilemma last year too.
Also little culture perspective, it is common in ORM families to make big decisions as family not as a lone ranger, it doesn’t mean that Trump daddy is overruling for son-in-law security clearance, just my 2 cents.
@Smilescreen…it is not tough to maintain 3.7 as per the interview…
Yes it is a guaranteed 7yrs BS/MD program…
Florida Atlantic University - MedPiplines 7-8yrs BS/MD Program with Charles Smith School of Medicine.
FAU -BS/MD
8 - spots MedDirect ( Boca Raton Campus)
8 - spots Wilkes Honors College ( Jupiter Campus)
Total 16 spots.
Interview Day:
9.00am meeting with Director : He talks about the program and how medical students should be.
9.45am tour of the FAU campus
10.45-11.00am FAU Charles Schmidt SOM tour.
11.15-12.30pm Lunch only for Students, Parents on own
12.30pm -2.00pm you will get a 30min slot to interview with a faculty member.
By 2.00pm you are done.
FAU - Charles Smith School of Medicine
64 Med Students a year
16 BS/MD spots
Was a part Univ of Miami from 2004-2011, after 2011 independent and a part of FAU.
2015 first Med Students - all 100% matched into residencies.
2016-2018 - all med students 100% match rate into residencies. ( I know for sure as they gave us the copy of the match list from 2015-2018)
Research opportunities with Neuroscience lab at Jupiter Campus, FAU Campus in Boca Raton Biomedical Research.
Affiliated with 9 regional hospitals and lot of good clinical exposure, Boca Raton Regional Hospital near to Medical School and lot of clinical exposure there too.
MCAT required, GPA 3.7
FAU Undergraduate give 100% scholarship for NMF finalist ( Except R+B, some of it covered by other scholarships) and most scholarship for higher ACT Scores for non NMF.
Campus is good and living dorms are apartment style. Safe and in nice neighborhood.
FAU Campus very close to Boca Raton Beach.
From Fort Lauderdale Airport 20-30min car ride to FAU.
@CurleyFries i think we have beaten this horse to death… you are not going to achieve by pointing me wrong… lets leave it at that…
@sajju786 , thanks for sharing the detailed info, very helpful. We are looking at the BS/MD schools in and around Georgia and this is one of them we would consider applying.
Many kids matriculated into BS/MD programs have top traditional UG acceptance, but forfeited those opportunities for the other path. There are many reasons for that and they are all personal. One of those reasons are the guarantees the programs offer: if your top notch high school GPA, SAT and ECs can not guarantee you into HYMPS, how can you be sure you can get into top Med School with the similar undergraduate stellar GPA, MCAT and ECs? Most will not get stellar GPA/MCAT/ECs, and at the same time, there are a LOT of other stellar college kids in your pool.
@ sajju786,
FAU -BS/MD
8 - spots MedDirect ( Boca Raton Campus)
8 - spots Wilkes Honors College ( Jupiter Campus)
Do you have the choice to pick location after you are selected or do you have to mention it in the app itself when you apply.
@sajju786 I thought FAU covers Cost of attendance for all NMF ( Benacquisto scholarship program - that covers cost of attendance, Tuition/Boarding/Dinning/Books/Transportation etc.
that argument is flawed due to fact that underline assumption is number of seats in Med School (After UG) is same as BS/MD (After high school). Agree with overall sentiment that BS/MD vs UG is boils down to more personal choices, preferences and circumstances.
students who advance to finalist status and designate FAU as their first choice by the deadline will receive an increased scholarship award, which will cover up to the cost-of-attendance, regardless of residency status. If you are a Florida resident, this will include the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, Benacquisto Scholarship, and the National Merit Florida Atlantic University Scholarship.
This is a concern I truly understand. My older D accepted a spot in a much lower ranked college over some more prestigious options - she is not in the science field. The lower ranked school was much more financially affordable AND offered some benefits. I gave her the choice and let her make her own decision. However, I know she knew what I was hoping for, even if I didn’t say it out loud…kids know. She visited both programs and decided that the lower ranked school was better for her in many ways, not only financially. However, I still worried that I had pushed or persuaded her and that somehow I was denying her something. Luckily, for both of us, it turned out wonderfully. She is thriving at her “lower” ranked school and has had internship and other opportunities that she may not have had anywhere else. It turned out to be the best choice in every way, but I couldn’t know that in advance.
I think what all of us parents need to remember is that there are no guarantees. We can’t know in advance what kind of experience a kid is going to have in any college. Also, there is no law that says a kid can go further in life from a high ranked school. Our kids will probably thrive wherever they land. They made it this far, after all. If you have the finances to allow it, I would let this decision be guided by your child. Its OK to let her know your preference. She’ll probably know anyway, but give her the choice and step back. There really isn’t anything else we can do.
HYMPS UG admissions are more holistic than MD admissions. MD admissions are driven by GPA, MCAT, ECs (medical and non-medical) and research. Usually you hear few high GPA/MCAT not getting admissions but you don’t about about their ECs. All the kids I know (from Norcal) locally took traditional path and got into good medical schools. Again it comes do staying focused and planning well. Also, how challenging HS was. Those with easier HS tend to slip more. Other situations are going deflation schools like Cornell or JHU and getting into party mode in first year (sudden freedom).
@gallentjill well said, as a parents you provide your thoughts and concerns, pros and cons, whatever life experience you can bring on table, but let kid be decision maker, and whatever decision kids make, be on board as a family. My both sons are rebellion in that sense, both made their choice other than parents choice, we are full on board with them. One is already thriving and other one, time will prove.
I wish there is an AP Decision Making exam/subject in high schools. I firmly believe decision making experience is a strong pillar for ones maturity and confidence building.
@rk2017 – I hear you, and I respect all of @NoviceDad’s posts, but anecdotal outliers shouldn’t drive decisions, otherwise they would lead to absurd results. I’m sure candidates with 4.0 GPAs and 528 MCATs have been denied admission to medical school. Does that mean no one should even bother applying, because it’s obviously impossible to be accepted? I’m also sure somewhere, someone with a 3.0 GPA and a 500 MCAT has been accepted. Does that mean grades and MCAT scores don’t matter?
So yes, the kids @NoviceDad was talking about would have been better off in a BS/MD program. It’s probably also true that some kid in the Drexel BS/MD program who decides halfway through that medicine is not for him would have been better off at Princeton. Does that mean BS/MD programs are terrible because some kids don’t see it through, and they end up stuck with bachelor’s degrees from schools they never would have attended but for the BS/MD opportunity?
As I said before, BS/MD programs are not public services offered by the schools to make the path to med school easier. They are brilliant marketing programs, primarily by schools below the upper echelon, to attract super-stat kids who would never otherwise look at them. They offer some admissions stress relief for the more risk averse among us, but in the end, they really are not a back door entry for kids to med school, since most kids who are successful in the programs would be successful without them, as are the other 95% of med school matriculants who didn’t have to spend 3 or 4 years at Temple, or Union, or Drexel, or UMKC, or (fill in the blank) in order to go to med school.
@GreenPoison – your points are very well taken, particularly the one about some unqualified kids applying to BS/MD programs. I also agree with you 1,000% about high achieving kids not having a better chance to go to a better medical school by taking the traditional route. All US medical schools are so hard to get into that no one should take anything for granted. The brilliance of these programs from the institution’s standpoint is NOT about filling its med school with high achieving kids – they all do that without the BS/MD programs. It’s about attracting these kids to the UG part of the program, where these kids are so far above the institutional mean. These kids raise the profile of the whole UG school merely by their presence, and they’d never look at the school without the program.
BS/MD isn’t a great choice or a terrible choice; it’s simply a choice. You trade some prestige and whatever subjective benefit is derived from being at a highly ranked UG for a conditional safety net. That safety net could end up making all the difference in the world if you would do all the right things and still fall through the cracks and not get into a med school regular way, or could be worthless if you lose focus and get kicked out of the program, or just change your mind about wanting to be a doctor. As I said before, without a crystal ball, you can’t know ahead of time which applies to you. If the possibility of a safety net is worth more than a subjective “experience,” you know which to choose. On the other hand, if you’re a rational decision maker playing the odds, you realize that if you’re one of the select few being accepted to a BS/MD program, you’ll probably be accepted to a med school regular way if that’s what you want in 4 years.
Like everything else in life (like banks only lending money to people who don’t need it :)), the great irony here is that the kids who really need the conditional guarantee aren’t offered it, and the vast majority of kids in the BS/MD programs would be fine without the guarantee.
I think this is a very telling statement. If your child is going to think of the undergrad years as hell or something painful to get through in order to be an MD, its probably a bad choice. In my mind, that kind of unhappiness is just as bad as any stress from a high ranked UG pre-med program. My D didn’t apply to any BSMD programs with undergrad schools she would hate. We took some off the list where she felt she would be miserable. She liked every school she applied to and would be perfectly happy to go.
My only suggestion is to make sure the preference against schools like Drexel, Union, etc. is your daughter’s and not just a parent’s desire for rank or prestige.
@gallentjill — I totally agree with you. If it’s not the kid’s ultimate decision, you are setting up for failure.
@NJDad00 @rk2017 @GoldenRock @PPofEngrDr @gallentjill @GreenPoison @DSOF20192023 @OldSchoolMD
@CurleyFries @akacollege23
I am a firm believer in statistics and I very much understand outliers. In my profession, one of the things we worry about are fat-tail events.
The question at hand - if you are sure about Medicine, should you opt for BS/MD or the traditional route?
What we are sharing are the RISKS involved in the traditional route:
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Gap year(s): Even if you are from an Ivy league with great MCAT scores, we have numerous number (not outliers) of cases where students have had to take a gap year to strength their application. My guesstimate is it is upwards of 50%. In fact, in my post #1759, I had taken that estimate to calculate expected value of the cost between BS/MD and traditional route. TO me, this represents a VERY HUGE risk as there is >50% change, your DS/ DD may be hit with a gap year. Yes, if you get an admission after a gap year, you will be counted in the ~95% of the matriculants to a medical school via the traditional route.
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Low GPA: For traditional route, numerous posts above had indicated the impact of grade deflation or student not able to cope up with college due to bad selection of courses or other distractions. FOR BS/MD, most colleges are flexible and supportive of their students. For example, at NU, you can take an extra-year in undergrad to pull-up your GPA to meet the HPME requirements. You do NOT have that luxury in a traditional route.
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The Myth that “since I can into Ivy league undergrad, I can definitely get into “Ivy league” medical school”: This myth has been broken so many times that there are “skeletons of students aspirations” lying around.
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ORM bias: In case you do NOT know, there is a lawsuit against Harvard on bias against ORMs. If you think this bias does NOT exists at medical school admissions, then I do not know what to say. Another data point: There has been a shift to select East European physicians over Asian physicians from international students for residencies. Not widely known.
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Quality of undergrad: Quality of undergrad matters - fully agree. Getting a good undergrad helps you prepare for medical school. For this specific reason only, we did NOT apply to W&J/Temple, Baylior/Baylor, SBU/GW and we went south on Hofstra undergrad.
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Plan B: In addition, I fully agree selecting a “proper” undergrad is important - many kids take biology as their undergrad for both BS/MD and traditional route. If you look at career prospects for biology majors, you will quickly come to a conclusion, they are extremely limited. So it would not have mattered if you did biology major at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other hand, if a student has interest in mathematics or computer science, doing that minor / double major would open up many options - even if you did that at Rutgers. So, undergrad college + major are both important.
In that case, one has to plan for Plan B in the first year of college itself. That means - more work because you may have to load yourself with more coursework to do a meaningful minor or double major. How may parents/ kids are thinking about this?
Question of ask ourselves - is a bird-in hand is worth two in the bush?
It boils down to that.
Congratulations @sajju786 , @GoldenRock and others
All
As and when you are comfortable, please share your stats/ experiences in the RESULTS thread: