Top Undergrads to Pursue Pre-med?

<p>Can somebody make a list of excellent schools for pre-med?</p>

<p>Ask your own heart, the best place for YOUR pre-med is where YOU want to spend YOUR UG years. </p>

<p>There isn’t such a list. Premed is just regular bio, chem, etc, classes, nothing special. Schools do not get students into med school. That is all up to the student.</p>

<p>Any good school is fine for premed.</p>

<p>Tell us more about you…your home state, your stats, how much your family will pay each year for college, etc.</p>

<p>What will your major be?</p>

<p>Would be better to go to the school at which you can get the highest GPA possible and make yourself stand out while the school has the best research opportunities as possible. However, in regards to medical school admissions and ultimately specializing HYP schools will be the best because they feed into highly competitive med schools, and resultantly highly competitive specialties, although princeton is notorious for grade deflation so watch out for that one</p>

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<p>I think the word “feed” is too strong here. These schools do not place their students into top med schools.</p>

<p>you need to hang out in the SDN forums and see how many ivy premeds are sweating it out every winter wondering if any MD school will accept them. Many are thrilled when they get accepted to their state SOM or elsewhere. </p>

<p>top students at any med school are more likely going to be competitive for competitive specialties. </p>

<p>While I will agree that is the quality of the student, medschool adcoms have certain “realtionships” with certain schools. No different than certain prep schools, Exeter, Andover, Brearley have “relationships” with Ivy and other elite schools. Because of that, some schools can be called feeder schools. Two students with identical apps applying to highly ranked medschool…one went to Yale and the other to east directional midwest U, who is getting in? Prob the Yale grad…the medschool adcom knows the track record of Yale grads…prob has never had a student from east directional U. So to some extent, yes the name of your UG can come into play when applying to medschool.</p>

<p>I’ll put in another recommendation for Yale. It’s easy to do research and the curves are great. </p>

<p>“specializing HYP schools will be the best because they feed into highly competitive med schools” - D. has lots of Ivy / Elite students in her Medical School class, they are just like everybody else, nothing special about them, unless we are talking about certain highly intense group and these students are at disadvantage, they come accross as “albowy” with the substandard “human” skills. But overall, since Med. School selects students so carefully, everybody is prepared at about the same level, no matter where they cam from.</p>

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“specializing HYP schools will be the best because they feed into highly competitive med schools” -</p>

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<p>That is a misleading statement. Sure, the top premed grads from HYPs are likely getting accepted into highly competitive med schools, but they weren’t “fed into” those schools. </p>

<p>So, for instance, if “Ivy X” has 100 grads applying to SOMs, maybe 10-20 will head to top SOMs. Those kids “rose to the top” at their ivies, and were selected by their top SOMs. However, many/most of the premed applicants from ivies will not likely be attending top SOMs. Many will get into their state SOMs, or other SOMs. The idea that ivy premeds are on some kind of conveyor belt to top SOMs is just not true. </p>

<p>AND…more importantly…none of this considers all the incoming premeds that were weeded out during their frosh and soph years. If a school ends up having 100 med school applicants, likely it had 400 premeds as incoming frosh.</p>

<p>…I also a commnet in regard to easy to do research at Yale…well, it is easy to do at ANY UG, including the colleges that do not even have a Medical School. Just email person in charge. All colleges are interested in providing an opportunites to their own students. For comparison, D. actually could NOT obtain any positions in any ECs OUTSIDE of her UG (in-sate public) and had no problem whatsoever obtaining everything her heart desired at her UG with minimum effort and they were long term (several years) commitments.
I am not trying to advocate one way or another. I believe that it is a personal decision and many variables are involved in this decision. However, thinking that your UG will give you an advantage getting accepted to or being successful at Med. School is very misleading. </p>

<p>“AND…more importantly…none of this considers all the incoming premeds that were weeded out during their frosh and soph years. If a school ends up having 100 med school applicants, likely it had 400 premeds as incoming frosh.” </p>

<p>So at Yale kids aren’t weeded out at all really, of course people take a couple premed classes and decide it’s not for them but that happens at any university and is a natural process.</p>

<p>Anyone who gets into Yale and is motivated to complete premed can totally do it.</p>

<p>"Anyone who gets into Yale and is motivated to complete premed can totally do it. "

  • Yesm just like at ANY UG, including the lowest of the lowest un-known places. this is the point that should be understood by ANY pre-med at absolutely ANY place. Anybody who is " motivated to complete premed can totally do it." at absolutely any place, no high price tag or any prestige is required, they will not save you, they will not place you into Medical school, it is entirely up to you!!!</p>

<p>@litotes‌ </p>

<p>When my son was a frosh premed, a friend of mine’s son was a frosh premed at Yale. She was worried that he didn’t seem to be taking his classes very seriously. He told her not to worry because (something like) 75% of the class will get A’s. </p>

<p>now, I have heard that sort of thing before about Yale, but I’m not sure it applies to premed prereqs. Maybe only 50% get A’s…I don’t know. </p>

<p>What I do know is that at the end of his soph year, he was no longer premed because his GPA was no longer med school worthy. </p>

<p>Not listenning to anybody and do your absolutely best will ALWAYS work at any place with anybody. what else can one do. And when my D. gets into worrying state of mind, that is exactly what I tell her. If you put YOUR best effort, there is nothing else in a world you could do, so just be happy and see what happens. I am sure that pre-med crowd (which is typically veryt top caliber students) is academically up to it. It just some cannot see themselves work as hard as needed. Aside from few giniuses out there, hard work is an absolute requirement for every pre-med at any place and from every Med. student at any Med. School. </p>

<p>@MiamiDAP‌ I certainly never said or even implied that one needs to go to Yale to get into med school. I just said that the premed climate is nice here. Also, Yale is actually a pretty cheap option for most folk since there’s such generous financial aid. thanks to that 23 billion endowment</p>

<p>@mom2collegekids‌ I mean I appreciate your insights from your son’s conversation with his friend, but I’ve made it through most of the premed coursework at Yale and I know that about 50% of any given class gets an A or A-. So it’s really not THAT hard to get a good enough GPA.</p>

<p>Apply where you feel fit. We were looking for free tuition UG, you do whatever fits your goals the best. Pre-med situation is great for everybody who works hard at any UG, there are certainly much more pre-med opportunities at attendig UG than outside of it. There is also definitely weed out process everywhere, no way that every single original pre-med will end up applying to Med. School, cannot be true. No easy time for pre-meds anywhere, they have to be “toughened up” for Med. Schoo"l at some degree, but melt down at Med. School is almost inevitable at one point or another anyway, it is better to go thru some degree of “roughened” process at UG.</p>

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<p>Anyone who gets into Yale and is motivated to complete premed can totally do it.</p>

<p>but I’ve made it through most of the premed coursework at Yale and I know that about 50% of any given class gets an A or A-. So it’s really not THAT hard to get a good enough GPA.</p>

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<p>while it can be argued that Yale is full of “smarty-pants” kids, the truth is that not everyone’s strengths are the same. Some students may not be as strong in science, so those students (although motivated) may end up with the B’s in the prereqs.</p>

<p>congrats on making it nearly thru all of your prereqs! It may not be have been that hard for you to get a med-school worthy GPA, but for the other 50% of your class, it hasn’t been a cake-walk. </p>

<p>I imagine that Yale is like any other school in that there is self-selection going on when it comes to who is in those pre-reqs…likely STEM and premed students mostly. Someone who has no interest in STEM or a health career is probably selecting other classes to fulfill any Core/GenEd or whatever Y requires. So, when you consider that 50% of Y students with STEM or health aspirations end up with B’s or less, then I would say that there is some weeding going on.</p>

<p>If the goal is to be at Yale, why not? Attend Yale and be happy, no sure why you need to ask anybody’s permission.</p>

<p>Re: elite college and the chances of getting into a “top research ranked” med school:</p>

<p>Anecdotal examples/experience: At the end of the day, the rank (however implicit the rank may be), not the GPA itself, may likely have more to do with your chance of getting into a “top research ranked” (a mouthful to say this) med school - no matter what college you come from.</p>

<p>At least 2 kids at DS’s med school classes, and several other students at a comparable med school that I happen to be aware of, are ranked roughly top 5% (i.e., being one of the PBKs) of his graduating class (maybe top 8-10% of the premeds who actually applied to med school because premeds are just more grade-centric as a student group.</p>

<p>One benefit of attending an elite college, IMHO, is actually that the student body may include a higher percentage of high achieving students OUTSIDE of the academics. This is likely a consequence of how these colleges recruit their students.</p>

<p>But the academic preparation of a premed student there should be good enough to be not overwhelmed by the academic demand of the student life in order to enjoy the EC-aspect of the student’s life. Otherwise, he or she may not receive this kind of benefit because he or she needs to devote too much of the time to receive a good, premed-worthy rank (not just the GPA) for a "top research med school.</p>

<p>A potential downside may be that a higher percentage of students are so overly ambitious or future-career oriented that the dating life tends to take the back seat and to be of a lower priority among many students - after all, the relationship is not easy to maintain after graduation because most students will spread all over the geographical regions after graduation, just like where they come from originally. (Also, the distribution of 1300+ students into 100-120 per RC does not help the situation either.)</p>

<p>(BTW, my impression from DS years ago was that the percentage of straight A for a hardcore premed class is unlikely 50%. In two consecutive graduating classes, not a single student has the 4.0 GPA at graduation. This is very unlike some large flagship college where there are multiple or even a dozen of students who are graduated with a 4.0. The GPA competition game is actually played by premed students within the GPA range, say, 3.72 to 3.96. So a 3.75 GPA is actually ranked toward the bottom of this competitive premed pool, if the student is trying to get into a “top research rank” med school. I have the impression that the average GPA of DS’s admitted class is likely ~3.8; this average GPA includes the GPAs of some students excelling in the non-GPA area.</p>