UC Berkeley or CMU for pre med

Parents Forum
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<p>DS went to CMU, albeit in an area far removed from medicine, while DD1 was a “classic” pre-med student, so knowing what they and their peers did gives us some anecdotal info of both pre-meds and CMU. DD had a direct track to med school but decided to choose the traditional 4+4 route primarily because she wanted to go to a higher ranked undergrad and med school. While she accomplished the former, it ultimately got her admissions to 3rd/4th tier med schools, and she wasn’t an outlier in this phenomenon. </p>

<p>So based on how her premed friends from HS and college did, the one clear message we got is that the student and their credentials - GPA/MCAT in particular are far more important than the ranking of the undergrad institution. Her school apparently has a good reputation for pre-med, but we didn’t see any boost in the actual placement when compared to lesser rated schools with students who were comparable to her. In fact the majority of her close friends who started as premeds either changed/deferred the application to boost credentials/got rejected. Further, we thought the support she got to pursue her stated objective was far less than at some of the other schools.</p>

<p>As far as CMU, based on how DS’s seniors and contemporaries fared in the medical arena, the few that we heard of didn’t do any better than similar kids at places like U-Pitt. In fact we know of more kids who got accepted to better med schools from the latter than from CMU. (Now if you talk about an entirely different major, my head still reels listening to the type of internships and job placements the grads there got, but that has nothing to do with medicine).</p>

<p>To summarize, my opinion would be that the schools themselves don’t give much of a boost - it’s a lot more about the student and not the school.</p>

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<p>Berkeley has grade deflation and most classes are curved to a B minus outside of the liberal arts. About 10 percent of the class gets a C or lower. That said, Regents is hard to turn down. If you were looking for an easy way into med school, go to a community college and transfer or low ranked 4 year. There’s little to no competition at the latter and it’s much easier to get good grades. Med schools do not really care about your ugrad, just your GPA. There is self-selection but most of my premeds I knew at Cal got into a US med school. The ones who did not get in did horribly in most of the prereqs (think Cs and B minuses) and probably shouldn’t have applied in the first place. Still, it’s probably much easier to go to another school without a B minus curve. My friends who went to low ranked undergrads had better results since they were easily in the top of the class, and went to similar, if not higher, ranked med schools as those from Berkeley. It’s much easier to do well at a low ranked undergrad since they have easier curves and far less competition.</p>

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<p>The OP started this thread in March. One would hope the student chose a college and is happily there already.</p>

<p>To the above poster…it is Washington University in St Louis…not
University of Washington. And it’s a bit too late for a student who was selecting colleges in March of this year.</p>