<p>As a prospective premed student, I'm choosing between two schools of similar caliber, one of which has a med school and one of which doesn't. Is there any advantage to going to a school with a med school? Will that med school favor or disfavor students from "its own school"?</p>
<p>Specifically, the schools in question are UC Berkeley and UCLA.</p>
<p>Also, in terms of undergraduate preparation, how are these schools for premed compared with Northwestern and WUSTL?</p>
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<p>they are all excellent schools in my opinion, although with very different students bodies. Personally, I would fit at Northwestern and not at any of the other three. You need to decide that on your own of course.</p>
<p>Princeton does not have a med school and it is one of the top 5 schools in the country placing premeds into med school. Whether the school has a med school or not, is not significant.</p>
<p>Myopinion is slightly incorrect.</p>
<p>There are some schools out there which very clearly look out for their own. On the other hand there are also schools which penalize their own students. This bias can very significantly affect med school admissions.</p>
<p>That said, I’ve never heard of state schools favoring their own students beyond just favoring in-state residents in general. Specifically for UCB and UCLA I’d be shocked to find any sort of bias related to where you went.</p>
<p>Bigredmeat is doing no more than expressing his opinion. I fail to see any meaningful argument that would weaken my statement.</p>
<p>Whether the school has a med school or not, is not that relevant. Just keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Bigredmed – I’m not sure whether you’re being inattentive or insulting – is doing more than expressing his own private opinion,: he is stating a well-known fact: some medical schools favor their own undergraduates, and some penalize them. This can matter a great deal.</p>
<p>Princeton is excellent (although I have no idea what metric you could possibly be using to classify it as top-five) despite its lack of a medical school. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, just that other things can compensate for it.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it would be a lot harder to find the necessary EC’s if a school didn’t have an affiliated hospital. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Berkeley’s higher-statistic incoming classes don’t perform better than UCLA’s on the outgoing end.</p>
<p>Again, I’ll emphasize the “slightly” part. </p>
<p>I agree with MO’s assessment fit is more important.</p>
<p>I’ll also agree with the idea that med school or not, is not a sufficient reason to choose one school over another.</p>
<p>BDM - It’s really not that big of a deal. Obviously there are tons of private schools which don’t have affiliated hospitals and there are lots of schools that have affiliated hospitals which are in different cities than the flagship state U - Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, Arkansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas (UT-Austin) come to mind.</p>
<p>I’m also of the belief that an affiliated med school/hospital provides few advantages. There should be a hospital nearby so that any premeds can do volunteering during the school year but what college isn’t close to a hospital?</p>
<p>The one big advantage I see to having a med school nearby is the opportunity to do clinical research. However, few premeds get involved in clinical research anyway and even with colleges that have med schools, the med school is often far away from the undergrad campus.</p>