I got into both Cornell and Bryn mawr for undergrad and a bit confused on which to choose.My main focus is to enter med school after undergrad.Which of these schools will prepare me adequately and which has more accepted students in med scholl?Please help
Bryn Mawr will have smaller more personalized classes, which means more support (a key element for premeds) and will be able to write you good letters. In addition, because there aren’t any graduate students, you’ll have first dibs at being a research assistant.
So, if med school is your goal, I’d pick BMC.
Thanks.
Considering the fact that Cornell has a graduate medical college,doesn’t it serve at an advantage?
You will have better chance for clinical exposures and shadowing at Cornell, but the competition is fierce at Cornell as well. The highest priority of getting into a medical school is to obtain high GPA and MCAT with a committee letter. If you do well at BMC you will be better off. OTOH, you will be competing lot more pre-meds at Cornell for GPA.
Regarding clinical opportunities, you can get it in anywhere, local clinics and hospitals will do.
There’s no advantage to going to college for undergraduate at the same place as the medical school. (In fact some Medical schools are prohibited from advantaging their own college graduates in admissions.)
No advantage, especially when Cornell’s medical school is in NYC and the undergrad in Ithaca (~4 hour drive) so it’s not even like you can volunteer at the hospitals or interact with those faculty. In fact Bryn Mawr is only 20 minutes from Philly which would certainly have a much larger biomedical community than Ithaca.
^That’s the post-bacc pre-med program, not the undergrad degree.
The two schools are very different. Cornell has the reputation as having a very intense, competitive large school pre med atmosphere whereas BMC is very small liberal college with a much more collegial atmosphere. Both schools are demanding in their own way. Taking classes at Penn can give one some of the Cornell flavor if you want. Classes at Swarthmore and Haverford are also available and Bryn Mawr hospital is a short walk away from the campus. Both are very good schools and will prepare you well for medical school. Have you visited both?
Plenty of research opportunities for Bryn Mawr students in Philly as well.
“Which of these schools will prepare me adequately and which has more accepted students in med scholl?”
Based on the #s that go on to med school, one can obviously get appropriate preparation at Cornell. I have to imagine you can get this at Bryn Mawr too. Cornell obviously has more accepted students in med school. It is may times the size of Bryn Mawr.
But what’s important is that you make it through.
As I understand it, what one needs is good enough grades and opportunities for shadowing & research.
The threshold issue is the grades. At Cornell this can be tough. But, after visiting Bryn Mawr with my D1, I’m not convinced it would be much easier, on that front. Our tour guide (not premed) seemed pretty academically stressed and implied that people there worked really hard.
As for the other things, I’m no expert. I’ve read on CC that a number of Cornell pre-med students get value out of Cayuga Medical Center, and some do stuff in the med school in NYC in the summers.
On another thread, I just referred someone to search for posts of former CC poster/ Cornell premed/eventual med student Norcalguy. You might want to do this too.He posted at substantial lengths about the med school application process in general, and how this is tackled at Cornell specifically.
I know nothing about Bryn Mawr and medical school. D1 decided not to apply because she found it too small, and the social scene. Combined with Haverford it was about 70% women, and an alum friend of my wife’s gave a not stirring endorsement in that regard. On the other hand she didn’t apply to Cornell either (because they had D! sports and fraternities there IIRC).
As it turned out she would have been better off at Cornell, but who knew. And you are not her anyway.
The other thing I would encourage you to consider is what school has more of what could potentially interest you if you decide to change from premed. Which is not uncommon. Whether due to different developed interests, or insufficiently stellar grades in pre-med courses.