My daughter has been accepted into UVA, VCU Honors College, and College of William and Mary. I think she is trying to decide between UVA or VCU Honors College.
Her plan is to go to med school but we are not sure how much role the “prestige” of undergrad counts in the admission process for Med school.
She is going into undergrad with an Associates degree that the took along side her High School. VCU Honors will take all her credits for her Associates Degree so she could finish her undergrad in 2 years if she plans it well. She will get some credits accepted at UVA and could possible finish her undergrad in 3 years if she works hard.
The advantage of doing VCU Honors College is that they get first selection of classes before everyone else and her classes would be much smaller in size than at UVA.
Would she be better off spending less money and less time on undergrad before going to Med school or does it “look better” to go to a more prestige school?
Med school doesn’t care about prestige of the undergrad degree. But consider that most kids (let’s say probably not your daughter, but most kids!) wash out of premed. Would you rather she be a premed washout with a UVA degree, or a premed washout with a VCU degree?
These are all instate options it sounds like? Hopefully, you set a budget for undergrad going in. She may or may not go to med school. Maybe consider letting her decide based on fit and budget.
A bit of a disagreement; some schools do give some weight, although very little, to the UG attended. Specifically, our state med school ranks applicants by points, and a couple of points can be added based on school attended and/or UG major.
Both VCU and UVA have medical schools attached, which can be of assistance as an instate applicant to those schools,
And generally, it’s not a good idea to finish UG early for medical school acceptance. In addition to course work, there are various other components that go into a successful medical school application-e.g. physician shadowing, volunteer work, etc. And regarding course work, the medical school want to see science coursework at the university level.
Some not so light reading regarding the med school application process:
Thank you for your reply. She has studied a lot what goes into applying to Med school. She has been volunteering at a local hospital for the last 2 years. She also took EMT classes this Fall/Winter and just has to finish her final test for that since it has been postponed because of COVID-19.
Her senior project in her High School is about Health Care and for that she shadowed with a PCP and volunteered at a nursing home.
By finishing UG early she could take a gap year and study for the MCAT and work as EMT and possibly do some other things like scribing.
Well, there are many paths to a successful application, but finishing early has its risks. I’d recommend that you visit student doctor network and run this past them; they’ve got several adcoms/faculty who routinely offer opinions.
Medical schools are largely stats driven. You have to have a high GPA and MCAT to be admitted. The real reason “prestige” schools have more students admitted to medical school is they have a higher percentage of kids that can produce high GPAs and MCATs (SAT/ACT scores likely have significant correlation to MCAT scores). That said, many who start as pre-med majors do not end up going to medical school. For this reason, I’d typically recommend the better overall school.
Honors programs can be enticing because of their fringe benefits (e.g. choosing classes first), but the college name is what is seen first on the resume. Also, your educational experience is shaped by all of the educational community (students, faculty, administrators), not just your honors college cohorts. For this reason, I would probably recommend UVA over VCU all other things being equal.
I’d also recommend giving William & Mary another look as it is known for having excellent teaching, including in science fields. This may be valuable for medical school. I believe it produces more STEM Doctorates per capita than any other national public university other than UC Berkeley.