Hi, right now my rankings for these colleges and the opportunities they give me have TAMU and UH tied for 1st with UT Austin right below those two.
Texas A&M
Here I get the $40k National Merit Scholarship and will do the Biomedical Engineering with honors. If I go here, at the end of my freshman year, I plan to apply for the Engineering 2 Medicine program which gives conditional acceptance to Texas A&M’s medical school. It started this school year, so no one has gone through the whole program just yet. Also, if I go to TAMU and apply for this, I will be one of few people competing for this, so less competition. When I called them up, they said that 17 people applied last spring and they interviewed 11 and 6 people ended up joining. The problem is that this medical program just gives some extra advising and conditional acceptance, there’s not much else to it, at least from what I’ve heard. The UH program I’m interested in has much more in it, but no conditional acceptance. I’ll talk about the UH program in the next section. I feel that I’ll like the campus life at TAMU and the National Merit program because of its community feel. Also, the school spends so much money on research, it’s crazy.
University of Texas at Austin
Here I’ve not received an scholarships from the university. The only scholarships would be some small amounts from outside. There is no medical program like TAMU’s E2M or UH’s HBS (which I’ll talk about later). However, I’ll be doing Biomedical Engineering here (which is pretty great) and have long thought of this school as the one I’ll be going to. The new medical school on campus and the big school feel would definitely give me a lot opportunities. I also loved the campus and like the feel of living away from home in Austin (I’m from Houston). There’s not much I know about premed here, so I’d like to hear some input.
University of Houston
Here I will receive a full ride from the National Merit Scholarship and will pursue a degree in Honors Biomedical Sciences with a minor in Medicine in Society. All my outside scholarships and my extra Honors College scholarships will be returned to me by the university through semesterly checks. Basically, my financial situation is the best at UH. Honors Biomedical Sciences is rigorous degree program which requires students to take the minor Medicine in Society and is partnered with the UT Houston Medical School and UTMB Galveston because of its accelerated medical program. I was originally just interested in the accelerated program, but after reaching the finalist stage and not making it 
, I’ve become more interested thanks in part to their recruiting and me learning more about becoming a doctor. With this program, all your classes have been chosen for you and there’s almost no flexibility in what classes you get until your third year. I don’t mind this at all because the degree plan is pretty great. They do this because the first two years are supposed to help prepare students for the MCAT, DAT, PCAT, etc. At the surface, this could be called a simple premed degree, but it is not. It’s way more than that mainly in the way it prepares you for a lot of extra science material and exposes you a lot to the humanities. Also, the director is very close with the students that if their grades drop, he makes sure to help out. He also has so many connections that you can ask to be hooked up with a doctor to shadow or for an internship.
Honestly, I like both the medical programs at TAMU and UH. I just wish UH had a better National Merit program. And I wish the medical program at TAMU was a bit more like a community like HBS. The thing that is holding me back from giving UH an edge in my rankings is the fact I never saw myself going there. Up until last spring when I found out about the accelerated medical program, I did not even plan to apply to UH. Since finding out about HBS, I’ve visited the campus for so many things not just for college matters and I’ve grown to like it. I’ve grown to like the Honors program and Science department, but saying “I go to UH” still gives me a little problem. Not to bash on UH or anyone who goes to UH, I just always thought of it as the local university that is where most people go. But now, that stigma has mainly gone away from my mind because in the end, as a doctor, it doesn’t really matter which college I did my Bachelor’s at because I’ll be a doctor. However. there is still something that has me stuck between these three schools.