Hi! I am a high school student from SoCal with acceptances to WashU and USC. I plan on being a pre-med student at both these institutions and majoring in Philosophy, Neuroscience, & Psychology at WashU and Neuroscience at USC. I also want to minor in either a language (French or Spanish) or business. I want a social life, but I’m not very interested in Greek Life. I would really like to know the pro’s and con’s of attending these schools. Which pre-med program/advising is better? Do either have a lot of classes that weed out students? Are students more collaborative or competitive with one another? Whose has a better reputation with medical schools? I know pre-med is very challenging at any school, but which one prepares student better for med school and, by extension, life as a physician.
P.S. Money is about the same at both schools for me, so not a huge deal.
Each state is different, but have to disagree with post #3 which states “Reputation–whatever you mean by that–is irrelevant to med school admission officers.”
My state has a single state run medical school, part of the state flagship. A co-worker of mine is on the admissions committee and has been a member of that committee for over a decade, and as she explained to me the process in my state involves each applicant being scored numerically. Under the scoring system used by her committee, additional points may be given based on the school attended. In other words, the school attended may be of assistance in the application process. It may only be a couple of points, but with things so competitive, every point counts. Please note that in my discussion with her, the hypothetical applicant attended the University of Chicago(as neither of us knows anyone at that school). As the rigorous reputation of that school is well-known to her admissions committee, and as previous medical school attendees from that university had done well in medical school, being an applicant from that university would be of benefit in the admissions process.
Suffice to say that where you attend college, at least for our state’s medical school, can make a difference, however minimal, in chances of acceptance.
However, the only way to determine for yourself is to contact the medical schools to which you plan to apply directly. They may or may not give you an answer, and yes it would be a time consuming process, but that’s really the only way to get an answer.
I was just talking to a friend of mine about problem medical students and residents last night when the discussion turned to medical admissions. My friend is currently on a committee of a medical school different than Alfred’s but uses the same basic procedure in evaluating applicants. I do not know why people say that undergraduate school does not matter. The AAMC has stated that for private medical schools it is quite important. i think this is also true for the top public medical schools as well. Most of the students at UCLA and UCSF for example are from UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford and schools like the Ivy’s. Wash U and USC are both good schools. Go to the one that fits you best.
No one is saying the med school attended doesn’t matter. It does have weight. But it’s the other facets of an application (GPAs, MCAT, etc, etc) that are going to get you past initial screenings, get people believing you have the qualities the school believes an applicant should have, fit their mission statement, have the research background they look for, etc that gain you an interview. And then be rude, arrogant, etc, on an interview and there is no college’s name that will save you, you’ll be toast. Basically you got into UCB, UCLA, etc because of your excellent high school record. If your college record has much more of the same stuff, great. It really helps confirm you’ve got a long record of high accomplishment and will probably be an excellent med school student as well, the kind that UCLA, UCSF looks for. But being accepted to UCB, UCLA undergrad doesn’t guarantee that one will turn out to be a excellent med school candidate, sometimes kids dont do so well in college.They flame out, or are good, but not CA good which is why so many CA grads apply to med schools OOS.
The AAMC has interviewed medical school deans (both private and public) and name of medical school doesn’t appear as a factor, and post interview, the interview itself is far and away most important: https://www.aamc.org/download/261106/data/aibvol11_no6.pdf
I don’t think it says anything that schools that reject 90-95% of applicants and do everything in their power to attract the best students end up with lots of kids in medical school. I think it speaks much more to the caliber of the students entering these institutions rather than medical schools perceiving the schools as being the reason the kids are so good.
Selectivity of undergrad was ranked as a “somewhat important” at private med schools --or a 3.0 on 4 point scale. However, if you look at the data table, you’ll note that no item was ranked lower than 2.0 on the scale–meaning the survey was poorly designed and did a terrible job of discriminating among various items.
I concede. the AAMC certainly said it is of highest importance* to private medical schools.
I hate, hate, hate that they don’t ever include the deviations on these things (same criticism applies to my own link). Given the scale was 1 - Not Important, 2 - Somewhat Important, 3 - Important, 4 - Very Important, I really want to know what the SD was of that score, especially since from the table’s footnotes, we know it’s mean is the lowest of the variables with a mean of 3.0 or greater.
While I think that’s a safe assumption given the row title <2.5 is the lowest group, I don’t see anywhere that actually says nothing scored below a 2, but I agree, even the 5 point scale in the 2011 report wasn’t enough stratification, 4 is of course even worse.
*After BCPM UG GPA, MCAT score, Upward or Downward GPA trend (that’s a big surprise to me), Total UG GPA, and post-bacc GPA