University Scholars vs Honors for Pre Med

Any experience on how difficult it is for Pre Med’s to do University Scholars or Honors Biology at Baylor? My son may attend there in the fall and he is trying to choose which program to do or none and just do regular Bio. He knows he needs to keep his GPA up to be competitive for med school. In High School he was a football/baseball player and maintained good grades in 4 AP classes. Can pre meds also have a life i.e. participate in Intramural sports etc at Baylor? Thanks for your help.

My son is pre-med. He is in Teal dorm because he is bioinformatics/pre-med. Their dorm does a lot of intramurals and fun stuff. He is in a bible study, sings in the Baylor Men’s Choir and has fun. He was in AP stuff in high school and said it really prepared him. Baylor did not want him to take the place out in chemistry and calc. 1 and 2 but he did it anyway and is in Organic 2 now as a freshman. Most of the engineering and CS advisors sort of gear them to NOT be in university scholars because it is a lot of writing and additional homework on kids that are already in really hard classes. (this is the impression I got) According to my son, Bio lab is a killer. It is harder than the actual biology class. He had to take linear algebra and said it was not difficult. I guess it just depends on your son. There is a pre-med dorm that my son would have lived in had he not gotten into Teal. He said it is easier to be around other kids who are studying a ton.

I agree with @woodlandsmom. My son is pre-med and in Earle Hall (pre-med dorm mentioned above). Being in Earle has been ideal - the activities, the social environment and the academic support are a perfect mix. Highly recommend the Science & Health LLC. My son decided not to do Honors/Scholars but did sign up for a Freshman Academic Seminar (FAS) last semester and the class had a lot of writing. It was do-able and interesting but took a lot of time away from his Science classes. He had time though for some fun like intramurals and the SLC (which is very close to Earle). Prepare your son - Pre-Med is rewarding but intense and time consuming. Studying a ton is the norm.

Thanks for your help. My son couldn’t get into Earle as it was full early. He is looking forward to a great Baylor experience.

Interesting. My daughter is pre-med and deciding between the University Scholars at Baylor or going to Rice. She specifically wants to be around students who are doing reading/writing and discussing things outside of her major, so for her situation it seems like the Honors Dorm and US program might be right, based on the experiences of the students above. With the Rice residential college system, she would get that without the special program, but at Baylor she wants to be around “diverse nerds”, not just “science nerds”. Sound like a case of lots of good choices at Baylor making the decision hard.