I’m a high school senior and deciding between UT Austin and UT Dallas as a Biochemistry major on a pre-med track. I’ve been accepted into both schools through automatic admission and have been awarded a full tuition paid for UT Dallas plus $1000 every year to pay for Room and Board and books. I am still waiting on my scholarship info for UT Austin though I know it won’t be much as well as my natural sciences honors college result. I know UT Austin will cost me a lot more and the debt will add up as I intend to go to med school. But I’ve always wanted to go to UTA and I was not impressed by the campus at UTD or the fact that it appears to be a commuter school. But will the resources of UT Austin outweigh the cons or should I go to UT Dallas? And which school will better prepare me for the MCAT and get me into a good medical school?
I am biased, but I myself went to UT undergrad and UT med school and I think the best resources at UT Austin are the student body, the city, and the diversity (the school experience). Both campuses you mentioned will adequately prepare you for the MCAT and med school assuming you apply yourself and don’t get lost in the crowd or fun of college. Of course, UT Austin knows it has plenty to offer so tuition assistance often isn’t one of its pulls. Hard to balance the value of the experience at UT Austin vs the cost savings at a solid school like UT Dallas. Good luck you can’t really go wrong here. IMO tho the UT Austin route is just more traveled for a reason.
Could you tell me a bit more about your experience? like how difficult did you find it to get research opportunities and internships in such a big school and get good rec letters for med school? and I know a major complaint people have of UT is the large class sizes. Did you find that a big hindrance and how much smaller did they get once you got into the more advance courses?
The class sizes are very large in introductory classes like Chem 1 and 2 and English etc. There is a weed out factor I suppose, but I did not see any classmates that were applying themselves struggle to stay at the top of the heap. In your Junior year there are plenty of classes that have around 40-60 depending on your particular interests and letters of recommendation come easily. As I recall (and it has been years) my letters came from Organic Chemistry teacher (class size around 150), a Spanish for Medical Professionals prof (class size 30ish), and a Biology prof (class size 100 or so). They had tons of students, but all knew the drill and if you went to office hours and sat down with them one or two times for 45 minutes and presented a CV / Transcript and answered a few questions they were happy to write recommendations. Recs for med school are generally not like your high school teachers that know you in and out of the classroom. The profs at UT know that they are teaching the masses and they know that they have the responsibility to provide recs for the qualified candidates. It really is not difficult at all assuming you are performing well in their class, they see you attending the lectures, and often a TA can vouch for you. As for research - that wasn’t a part of my UT experience. I did not choose to explore that aspect, but it is there and if you are interested in MD-Phd I suppose you should look for this. Even though pre-med is not a major - the health professions office at UT was very helpful to get your schedule straight, meet the needed requirements, and help those who would like to do more (i.e. research).
Thank you for your replies. I really appreciate you helping me out and I have learned a lot.
Was there a reason why you decided to get your rec letters from your professors that had bigger classes rather than the classes with 40-60 students? Even with the one or two interviews, did you ever worry that the recs would not be personal enough? How big did your lab classes tend to be? And I also hear people say that students often ended up getting taught by the TAs rather than the professors, how true did you find that?
Back to med school preparation, what kind of programs or advising to help you be successful at the MCAT and apply to med school did they offer? And how personal were they like was it one-on-one and reviewing your individual application or just like a group seminar?
The smaller classes that I took in college were not science based so my recs were from core type classes which are large at UT. MCAT prep is up to you. UT does not have any prep set up to my knowledge. Personally I did go through a prep book and went to Kaplan lab back at home in Ft. Worth during the summer before my MCAT. The health professions office was one on one advising - may be different today, but I had the same advisor my 4 years at school. As for personal letters - I think many people do not ask the lead profs for recs as they are afraid to approach them - I think that is a mistake - the lead profs know what to say and if you perform well in their class they will not sabotage you - of course I opted out of seeing my rec letters but obviously they were personal and influential enough to get the job done. The labs are taught by TAs and they were around 30-50 as I recall. Any study or help sessions were also taught by TAs. The classes were taught by professors.