<p>DC,</p>
<p>UofC’s genetics and evolution department is rather classical in its approach.</p>
<p>Mainstream biology has become rather molecular in its approach, to say the least, so departments like Chicago’s Human Genetics and Ecology Evolution are not always “hot”. At the same time, there are some interesting folks there, like Bruce Lahn.</p>
<p>Hey newmass, could give your judgment on how willing professors are to letting undergraduates participate in graduate level research, given that, of course, you’re extremely devoted, able to keep high grades and maintain good personal relationships? Do they tend to reserve the spots for actual graduate students or is there enough to do for everyone devoted?</p>
<p>seadog,</p>
<p>If the experience of my D and her friends is any indication, it is no problem getting into a lab.</p>
<p>There are even quite a few paid positions. These run the gamut from “washing bottles” to doing serious research. </p>
<p>In general, UofC has lots of room in its labs. And because the med school is “right there” you have a pretty broad range of choices. </p>
<p>One other thing to be aware of is that it is not that hard for UofC students to take grad level courses. The grad students don’t particularly like this because the undergrads are tough competition, but the profs do. </p>
<p>There are even opportunities to TA. D was a TA for an upper division immunology course her senior year.</p>
<p>Yeah pre-med isn’t a major. I guess what I meant is that: do I need to take the med school route to do research in the medical sciences? I don’t want to be a practicing professional, but a researcher instead.</p>
<p>feathers,</p>
<p>most researchers who do biomedical research have a PhD, not an MD, if they do research in the basic medical sciences. This is true even for basic research at top medical schools like UofC or Harvard, where I worked. </p>
<p>A MD is useful if you want to do clinical research (that is, research on human subjects). </p>
<p>Keep in mind that undergrad years are for exploring. You don’t need to have your mind made up your first or even second year. </p>
<p>Heck, my own D is two years out of UofC and still does not have her mind made up!</p>
<p>If you so wish I think once you have a PhD there are programs where you can get an MD in two years, regardless of your undergraduate prerequisite fulfillment. In any case, the only real doctors are the PhDs, the rest are traditionally called doctors but academically they are not. (as students, we went on strike about this, but that’s a long story that you don’t want to hear).</p>
<p>You don’t need an MD to do medical research, but having an MD (as well as a PhD) can put you in line for more money and more positions. And lots of medical research happens at medical schools, which are run by MDs. I have a good friend who has spent his career as a non-MD researcher doing fundamental biophysics research. He has always been on the faculty of medical schools, and he has always been something of a disaffected outsider at each of them. My MD/PhD friends seem happier, and to have more job choices. But I’m not talking about any kind of scientific sample here.</p>
<p>My impression from talking to people who are applying to such programs is that getting into medical school is somewhat less competitive than getting into a good PhD program. At the end of the day, there are a lot of med school places open every year, and someone with a track record that makes him a legitimate PhD program candidate probably stands out as a medical school candidate, regardless of GPA.</p>
<p>Newmassdad </p>
<p>Well, I don’t know what to tell you. If my comments are so overly negative and merely constitute “bashing” (which implies they have very little truth to them), why are current students at Chicago and in this thread agreeing with me? </p>
<p>My takeaway from Chicago was that its superb for PhD preparation and placement, and not as good for pre-professional placement. So, as I said above, “if you really want a great liberal arts education and you want a school with a good medical school placement record, then yes, Chicago is a good choice.” There are students nowadays, however, who view college as a gateway to a top medical/law/etc. school. For those students, Chicago doesn’t really facilitate this process. </p>
<p>Also, maybe you’re right - my friends just happened to be the dumb Chicago kids who couldn’t get into HMS, Hopkins Med, etc. </p>
<p>At the same time, all I’ve said is I don’t know if I would prefer Chicago to its immediate peers for pre-med placement. Again, this doesn’t seem like bashing to me. To turn the argument, I would readily state, I don’t know if I’d prefer Brown/Dart/etc. over Chicago for PhD placement. Does that mean I’m “bashing” Brown and Dartmouth? I don’t think so - certain schools do exceptionally well in certain areas. </p>
<p>Put another way, I could state that I’d prefer Chicago over Penn for preparation to win great fellowships/scholarships. I’m not Penn bashing here, it’s just that Chicago’s track record (especially per capita) has been stronger. Penn still does great. </p>
<p>If you really think stating that Brown/Dartmouth etc. has a better pre-med atmosphere than Chicago is “bashing” I think you’re being overly sensitive. You’ve put children through Chicago though, so maybe there’s a reason for this being an inflammatory issue for you. From my perspective, I’m providing an account of the Chicago experience with the understanding that an institution changes its mission very slowly. Some current students agree, others disagree, but it’s not like I’ve been wholly off base, as you seem to imply continually. </p>
<p>Interestingly, I’d love to hear opinions from Chicago pre-meds that fly completely in the face of what I just said. I.e., they feel the support structure and classes are built to allow Chicago to be a feeder to the top medical schools, and that the Chicago pre-med experience is much happier and smoother than anything they know of going on at Dart or Brown or Harvard. So far, I just haven’t heard much argumentation that follows this path. </p>
<p>Pre-med anywhere is hard, and I don’t think taking the view that Chicago can make the environment even more challenging is even that controversial. If saying that schools that grade-inflate even more probably place better than Chicago is “bashing,” I just don’t know what else to tell ya.</p>
<p>Thanks so much newmassdad, JHS and Cue7 for your inputs.</p>
<p>So from my understanding, top top medical schools such as JHSM and Harvard provide both a path for an MD and a PhD right? As far as admission goes, do you apply to the medical school as a whole or to a specific program for a specific degree? Are there common courses to both degrees for all medical students? </p>
<p>Also, I am just about committed to UChicago (over Yale, Caltech, WashU, among others) because I believe the school undisputedly provides the best learning environment possible. Do you have general advice for succeeding at UChicago, and for entering a top top medical school program geared toward research afterwards? I have complete faith in UChicago’s education and research; the only reservation I still have about the school is its seemingly lack of history of students admitted to top medical programs. Is there a statistic out there for percentage of admission to medical programs, particularly for schools like JHSM and Harvard Med.?</p>
<p>I come from a small town in Washington State (never been to the East Coast) so anything would great. Thanks so much! This thread has been such a great help!</p>
<p>So Cue7, you said: </p>
<p>“So, as I said above, ‘if you really want a great liberal arts education and you want a school with a good medical school placement record, then yes, Chicago is a good choice.’”</p>
<p>Does that mean UChicago actually has a good placement history for Harvard or Hopkins Med. PhD programs? If so, what are these students majoring in to get to these programs? Don’t they have to take closely related pre-med path in order to get into the medical school in the first place? I’m not challenging you here 
It’s a sincere question.</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice everyone
and seadog, seems like we have similar questions! hope to see you at UChicago (I’ve already committed :))</p>
<p>seadog.overseas: UChicago has an amazing placement history for (top) PhD programs, which are not that GPA-obsessive. If you want to go on to PhD programs, UChicago is the right place to be. UChicago has an amazing placement for medical schools (on average 85% who apply receive admissions), just not necessarily the very top medical schools. If you want to go on to medical schools, you can major in anything you want as long as you fulfill the prerequisite courses that medical schools want. If you want to go on to science PhD programs, you must major in the sciences. It is stated on Harvard Medical School that they “do occasionally interview non-science students for MD/PhD programs, but not surprisingly, they are not competitive”.</p>
<p>This shows that majors do matter for PhD programs. (I have asked my adviser and CCIHP and both parties have underscored the importance your major plays in PhD admissions.)</p>
<p>There are always exceptions. Let’s say you are applying for a graduate program in neuroscience, but your school does not have a neuroscience major, then you can apply to that program with any major you want (though preferably biology, chemistry, biochemistry or physics), but you are expected to take advantage of all the high-level neuroscience courses at your undergraduate institute.</p>
<p>Also, I do not understand some of the CCIHP-bashing on this forum. CCIHP has been very, very encouraging to me. It doesn’t push me to decide my future immediately and it offers a lot of the support I need. I don’t understand why so many students on here despise CCIHP.</p>
<p>Thanks DC. I suppose no college can say they have good placement to the very top medical programs. Except for the slight advantage of, say, Harvard undergraduates to Harvard Med., I suppose everywhere else faces the similar struggles. Have you known anyone, DC, that did get into one of those top program while at UChicago?</p>
<p>Thanks again guys! Maybe I will see you two, DC and feathers on campus and we won’t even know it ;)</p>
<p>DC,</p>
<p>Actually, for PhD admissions, academic majors do not matter. What matters is demonstration that you can do the work. IOW, an english major that took relevant science courses and excelled to the point that a faculty member will go to bat for them will do well.</p>
<p>To give you some reference points, in my molecular biology PhD cohort, of 18 people, we had one chem major (me), one english major, two with masters in Physics. </p>
<p>It is also true that PhD program applicants with broader backgrounds are often attractive precisely because of the new perspectives they bring to a discipline. </p>
<p>There is lots of overlap among the natural sciences these days, so it is often true that any nat sci major will work for grad school admissions in many disciplines. Exceptions might be a bio major with little math that wanted to do grad school in a math intensive physics program (so see above - show you can do the work…). Social sciences are curious. Many these days are borrowing techniques from the natural sciences (DNA profiling in anthropology for example) so again, a multidisciplinary background can be a plus in either direction.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that it is difficult to generalize. Keep in mind that no one does a “chemistry” PhD. One will do a PhD in a subdiscipline that is amazingly narrow in the end.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I do know quite a few students who got in top medical schools, and they do have super awesome bestest GPA (while in really difficult majors like biochemistry)! They don’t take the easy route out by taking supposedly “easy classes” either. It’s absolutely doable.</p>
<p>Lots of discussion and disagreement here. Maybe UChicago isn’t the friendliest to pre-meds but more info from the OP would help narrow the discussion. What are your future plans? Medical research, medical teaching, or clinical medicine? A high class pedigree is not necessary for clinical medicine. Maybe for teaching or research. Where you went to undergrad or medical school doesn’t guarentee you’ll be a good physician. Many excellent physicians went to state schools for all of their education. Some went to overseas medical schools and did US residencies are are great docs. So, as in many things in this life high priced doesn’t mean better. Medical schools don’t know what makes a good physician. They don’t know what or how to measure for it. They don’t have a metric for it! The only thing they can do is assume that if you have high greades in difficult subjects, you be able to handle to work in med school and that work is mostly one of volume NOT difficulty. So if you can afford both UChicago and med school, then do both.</p>
<p>newmassdad:</p>
<p>Your observation actually proves my point. Majors do matter. Non-science majors are normally not competitive when applying for PhD programs, but that does not mean they will be automatically rejected. My point was that the vast majority of science PhD programs accept students that major in the sciences. So yes, majors do matter to a certain extent. Math, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology are all acceptable majors for any science PhD programs. You can attempt to apply for PhD programs while majoring in English, but it is substantially more difficult because now you have to fulfill the English major requirements and take challenging science courses at the same time. Not surprisingly, this is normally not desirable.</p>
<p>DC,</p>
<p>Please re-read my post. Again, the major is irrelevant. The skills and knowledge one brings to the table are what matter.</p>
<p>My own D is a good example. She majored at UofC in Immunology and Spanish. She is now a PhD student in medical anthropology. How many anthro courses did she take as an undergrad? One. She proved to the admissions folks in other ways that she could do the work. </p>
<p>FWIW, UofC has all sorts of interesting combinations undertaken by its students.</p>
<p>What sorts of courses are considered to incorporate “expository writing” at UChicago? It seems like most courses are analytical or persuasive in nature. Some medical schools now require a full year in expository writing. Does the social science requirement or some other courses count for this?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>