<p>i have been looking high and low and cannot find a placement percentage of u.wa's pre-med graduates into med school. could someone please help! id also like to see a what schools are represented in UW's med school more than others. for example, pacific lutheran university boast a pretty high placement rate of pre-meds and quite a few make it into UW's med school (relative to other schools). but this is just from word of mouth and i would like to see some numbers. it would be much appreciated if someone could direct me to a page with this data. also the same data from USC and occidental would be nice as well. thanks.</p>
<p>Try contacting the career counseling offices at UW. They may be able to help you out.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that for many small schools they will have a pre-med committee. At some schools, this committee will review your academic record when it is time for you to apply, and if they dont' think you have a VERY good chance of getting accepted will actually prevent you from applying. They do this by denying to write a committee letter on your behalf. By only allowing the "best" applicants from their school to apply and then writing a glowing letter of reccommendation, they artificially inflate their pre-med placement rates. There are definitely cases in which the students they dont' help would be competitive - just not "sure bets", but they put these students at such a disadvantage, that these students get discouraged and don't even apply.</p>
<p>The biggest thing I can say, being a first year med student, is that you should go to the place that you will fit in at the best, not the place where you feel your odds of getting into medical school are helped the most. Undergrad should not be flippantly dismissed as only a stepping stone to your career. Go to the place in which you will have the most fun and accomplish the most and if you do the work (at any school!) you will get in to med school. And on the chance that you realize that med school isn't for you, then you're at a school that you love and aren't miserable.</p>
<p>wow, thanks for the input. i did not even realize that about small schools but some of the numbers i have seen do seem unreal. </p>
<p>bigredmed, when you say to chose the school that i fit in at best, is this mainly socially or academically? let me see if i got what your saying right. i would not fit in at harvard acadmically thus, harvard would not be a good choice. also, looking at USC and the some what stuck up reputation the students have, i would not be a great fit in the SoCal surfer boy image and thus making my social life more difficult to cope with. i dont know as much about the USC image, but i am headed down there in 2 days so ill check it out then, but would you suggest letting my friends' decisions play a role in where i go to school? many of my friends are UW bound and this could either keep me sane, or distract me, none the less, i would have fun so does UW seem like a logical choice?</p>
<p>the only thing keeping me from UW is that i would like to play football in college, but i think that i ought to focus on my education now and let football go. also, my mom insist that the small class sizes are a necessity to good learning, however thousands of students nation wide make it fine in hugh public classes. does anyone have any support, suggestions or objections to these claims? thanks for the help</p>
<p>Yes, there are social and academic sides to the decision, but those are simply broad general areas. Academics you probably have a good idea about how well you would fit in.</p>
<p>As for social, there are a lot of things that go into it such as: Greek life, big time sports, the party atmosphere, weather, the city, friends, and probably a lot of things.</p>
<p>Sometimes it's just a feeling like that's where you belong - you can't explain it. Or maybe one school may come across as actually wanting you to come there. </p>
<p>As for friends, I went out of state (to Nebraska from Kansas City). The one thing that I really appreciated was that I got a whole bunch of new friends from Nebraska, but got to keep my old friends from HS b/c I would travel to see them or they would come up and visit me, and we would of course see each other on breaks. I also saw a lot of them who went to the same schools stop being friends with each other, or limiting themselves to only those same people they knew from HS. So that is really hit or miss and dependent on a lot of things like if some of you go greek and others don't, or just who is more outgoing, or even who get's a cool girlfriend first...So it's hard to say what friends bring to the equation.</p>