<p>I've been fortunate enough to be accepted both to the dual degree Jerome Fisher M&T Program (Engineering + Wharton) and the Northwestern HPME (7-year B.S./M.D.) program. Currently, I'm set on medicine and clinical research as my future career, but I can't guarantee that my choices will not change during my undergraduate years. Considering also that I am an international student (thus making it more difficult to get jobs, apply to medical school, etc), and considering that HPME basically guarantees entrance to the Feinberg medical school (no MCATs, 3.5 GPA to maintain), do any of you have advice on which I should choose?</p>
<p>I’m Penn person but this is no decision. Go to NW. No brainer. </p>
<p>Medical school interviews etc. are torture; my brother just went through it (succesfully thank God). It’s another random process and another chance to get hosed by an admissions cmte. If you cannot keep up a 3.5 at NWU you probably will not get in to any good med school anyway. so it’s no real risk.</p>
<p>WOW -tough one and a hard choice for an 18 year old. If you go to M&T there’s a really strong chance you’ll head to Wall Street or go into finance. Does working in New York finance appeal to you? Or do you want to be a physician. The financial upside will be much higher in business (income), on the other hand its can be a hard lifestyle and there’s a good chance you’ll have to spend a lot of your life in New York, Hong Kong, or London which are all very expensive cities and not for everyone.</p>
<p>If you want to go to medical school I’d absolutely go to HPME. You will have a much more relaxed time not dealing with Interviews, and on the Med school scale NW is pretty high up there. </p>
<p>Its much more a choice about what you want to do in your life than which school you want to attend because they are both top-notch choices, the best 7-yr program and the best undergrad business school. Do you want to be a doctor or Gordon Gekko?</p>
<p>paradocs is right, just make sure that medicine is what you want to do. This doesn’t mean that you’re so set that you could never change your mind, no one can guarantee that, just that this is something you feel strongly is your calling. The only reason is that if you don’t go to medical school, the M&T dual-degree will give you more opportunities after graduation, and also you’d hate to have taken a spot at HPME away from someone who did really want to go. If you’re sure medical school is for you, and no one can make that call except you, then, as much as I love Penn, HPME is clearly the better choice.</p>
<p>I’m a Penn kid too and this is a no brainer–go to Northwestern. If you want to do medicine and you’re pretty sure about it, you have to take this opportunity. Congrats man very impressive</p>
<p>I’d pick HPME because it allows you to go both ways without tons of stress. You can still major in econ/management sciences + Kellogg certificate (if I am not mistaken, you can stay for 4 years as an undergraduate if you want) [Kellogg</a> School Certificate Program for Undergraduates - Kellogg School of Management - Northwestern University](<a href=“http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/certificate/index.htm]Kellogg”>http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/certificate/index.htm)</p>
<p>I am not positive but it seems to me it’d be logistically difficult to full-fill requirements for M&T while trying to be a pre-med in a semester system. Not to mention all the stress associated with it.</p>
<p>The down-side with HPME/NU is that if you decide to give up medicine and pursue finance/business, Wharton is supposed to have superior job placement. But Kellogg certficate kids seem to be doing pretty good so far even though the program is less than four years old. Students in the program have been doing well in various external competitions. For example, a team of them recently finished 4th out of 50 at the Rotman International Trading Competition, in which most teams were from graduate/MBA programs.</p>
<p>I agree with all of the above Penn kids.</p>
<p>Doing premed w/ M&T is extremely difficult, and you will probably hate yourself if you go down that route.</p>
<p>That being said, if you think you might want to work on Wall Street making $100,000+ in your first year out of college, go M&T. lol</p>
<p>Basically, I think if you are truly passionate about medicine and becoming a doctor, HPME will allow you to do so with 10X less stress than doing M&T with premed.</p>
<p>No question here at all. Do HPME. M&T premed just is not that do-able. Ya, I know there is a student they show on their website who is premed. But trust me, even if you manage to find a way to squeeze in your med prereqs AND all the classes required for your two majors (something that is not really possible for LSM let alone M&T), the engineering AND wharton classes would likely take their toll on your GPA. While top banks are often rumored to have like a 3.6/3.7 GPA threshold for interviews, most (top 30) med schools would view that kind of GPA as a negative. So, if you know you want medicine, run to Northwestern as that program is simply stellar (as is M&T if you want banking). Congrats…you must be a really smart kid.</p>
<p>I think it’s really narrowing your options to commit to going to medical school at age 18. I find that many people who start out as pre-med seem to want to go into medicine because they have an idealistic perception that being doctor as glorified and prestigious. However, many of these students later realize that is not what medicine is actually about. It’s a lot of hard work, and even though you may be able to earn a substantial living, you will more than compensate for that in other ways. Being a doctor is very stressful and often requires very long hours. It is by no means an easy way to make money.</p>
<p>People end up happy and successful in medicine when they have a true passion and interest in it that comes from within. These are the doctors who end up doing great things in the field and pave the way for scientific innovation. That being said, I would pick where you go to school based on your academic interests (I assume that you applied for bioengineering) than grad school. If you are truly determined and meant to be a doctor, you will be able to get into medical school, and hopefully even a better one that Northwestern. While Northwestern is a good medical school, it is not at the same level as places like Harvard, Penn, Hopkins, UCSF, and Stanford. Taking shortcuts will not benefit you in becoming a doctor, the difficult process of getting into medical school admissions will prepare you for getting through medical school, and ultimately through residency (this is the really the most important learning period in your career!).</p>
<p>Also, my uncle attended Northwestern HPME, and while the program has changed since he attended (it used to be 6 years with less structured undergraduate requirements), my relatives think that my other relative who went through pre med as an undergrad and ended up at a top 5 med school at the time got a much better education. Also this same person later encountered a resident a year or two behind him who had actually entered HPME in the same year he entered college. So even though that person should have been two years ahead, the person who went the standard route ended up ahead.</p>
<p>So honestly, I would choose where to go based on the school as a whole, not the specific program. This way you will have more options to explore and will not be bound to one thing if you decide HPME or M&T is not right for you.</p>
<p>Andy, I agree with everyone else above in that HPME will probably be your strongest choice, if med is truly, truly your destined path in life. I speak with conviction, though, when I say that you will find a way to exceed expectations wherever you go.
(Congratulations on Yale, btw, even though I know it’s not suitable for premed. Whatever happened to Cambridge?)</p>
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It’s no more narrowing to commit to investment banking/business curriculum. Picking HPME does not mean you commit to medicine. You can major in anything with NU medical school as the fallback. There’s no contract here. But picking M&T pretty much mean you’d rule out medicine. Contrary to your view, M&T is the more narrowing option.
I think you have a few misconceptions about HPME/medical school admission:
- You do not have to take the shortcut. It’s just an option. You can stay at the college for 4 years if you want. Most HPMEs, however, take the advantage of the 1-yr savings. But again, that’s all about personal choice and HPME simply gives you just that.
- Most premeds at even the top schools do not get into top-20, let alone top-5 med schools. At Penn and many peer schools, ~20% of them do not get into <em>any</em> med school. The days your uncle was HPME was the days HPME enrolled 60 students who performed better than their counterparts through traditional route. It was much easier to get in back then. The situation has reversed in the last decade. Northwestern med school is now one of the most competitve to get into and HPME now admits only 25 students (for a target size of 20). NU med school could care less about getting HPMEs; the program benefits ony the college and it’s against the odds to get into a school better than Feinberg.
- You can apply to other higher ranked med schools if you want. But the fact that I don’t know even one HPME doing that suggest one of two things: 1. HPMEs are pretty content with NU med school or 2. the odds of getting into higher ranked med school is so slim that they don’t think it’s worth the effort.
- I am not convinced that getting through a difficult process makes one better prepared. Some of the most successful people I’ve met were party animals in colleges. One can argue people could get burned out by the time they enter medical schools.
That’s like 40 years ago. Things have changed A LOT.</p>
<p>I have a tie w/ Northwestern as I’m from chicago. NW is a great school, great med school. However as an M&T, I can speak from my experience. pre-med M&T is not easy, I can tell you that. I would just like to emphasize the infinite amount of doors that M&T has opened up. Trust me I wanted to do bioengineering & pre-med, go to med school etc. But the opportunities and experiences I’ve been exposed to have revolutionized everything. Come to M&T day so you can see for yourself! It’s a fantastic opportunity.</p>
<p>Penn kid too. GO to NW HPME. You have gotten a great opportunity go to HPME</p>
<p>Yes, I agree M&T would be a very limiting program too, which is why I think that toughdecision should make their choice over the school, not the program. At M&T it seems like people enter wanting to do engineering but often shift farther to the business side and end up doing computer science. I hear this can limit people to working in finance, although I personally don’t really know. What I do know is that in order to graduate, people take 6 classes in a semester and there is not much freedom as to what they take. I personally would never even thought of doing a dual degree here at Penn, while I am pretty sure about what I want to do in the future, I wanted to have options which is why I chose a pure science major in the college. Even if you think you don’t like a subject based on your high school experience doesn’t mean you may not like it in college. I think it’s always good to have one class every semester in a field outside of your major, just to have the opportunity to learn something completely different. It sounds like toughdecision would be best off doing biomedical engineering because although engineering is tough, it does provide more options to explore other things.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, I am aware of the medical school admissions process, through family I know several doctors who have actually been on medical school admissions committees, including places like Hopkins and Penn. When I was referring to “shortcuts” I was not referring to the length of the program (I know that HPME is now between 7-8 years for students and that your undergraduate career is pretty much the same as everyone else’s and it is much better than when my uncle went) I was referring to getting into medical school. I’m not sure how HPME thinks they can identify 18 year olds to admit to medical school. They haven’t even started college yet! But my point is, if you can’t stand the thought of the medical school admissions process you should probably reevaluate your desire to be a doctor. I’ve seen from much observation how stressful it is. It is not an easy way to make a living. The people who get through and end up happy are those who are truly passionate about what they are doing. I don’t know, but it seems to me that the ones who burn out in life are the people who do things for the wrong reasons, those who only care about test scores and GPA, and getting into programs. I see a lot of that in both pre-meds and business students, and I think it’s silly because if you aren’t doing something you have some passion for, you won’t be happy even if you are successful.</p>
<p>So I would say go to whichever school you like better, Northwestern or Penn. The program is just an added benefit. But I would think it unwise to choose the school because of the program, you may change your mind.</p>
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In just about every other country, people go into med schools when they are 19/20 yrs old. I don’t know if there’s any evidence that shows our doctors are more mature, passionate, or better than those in other developed world. As for identifying the admits, med school admission is a lot about numbers; there’s interview process but so is HPME. I don’t think there’s a huge difference between interviewing a 21yo instead of a 18yo. At the end of the day, neither one of them has gone through med school. I don’t see how going through the admission process/acing a standardized test (MCAT) would necessarily make you a better future doctor than the one that went through college admission. A CC parent has a D at NU and she’s in the danger of not getting into any med school just because of the 8 on MCAT verbal (total = 30). It was likely a fluke because that’s supposed to be her strength and she had about 2250 on SAT. Also, the stress of getting high GPA/MCAT is not the same kind of work-related stress at hospitals. They are very different things. While all these are debatable, the HPME has one indisputable advantage. Students have more freedom to pursue anything they enjoy in college; if medicine is not for them, they find out because they find something else they feel passionate about, not because they get a C on an orgo exam.</p>