<p>I'm posting this on behalf of my friend because he doesn't have an account, and he doesn't want to make one for w/e reason. </p>
<p>HE WILL GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL AFTER HE GETS A BS. KEEP THIS IN MIND!!</p>
<p>Acceptance to ONLY 2 schools: MIT [EE/CS, but can do w/e once he meets with advisor or w/e] or JHU [BME--has been accepted BME to Hopkins, but can change if he feels like it later]</p>
<p>Which school is the better bang for the buck? He's REALLY interested in EECS, BUT at Hopkins he can apply his EECS skills to Medicine [BME], which in turn he likes a lot too because its related to his passion--Medicine. </p>
<p>Terribly confused! Which is a better "deal" for his $200K by the time he graduates and applies to Med School? Also which college will give him more prestige for Med Schools like Harvard, JHU, Penn, etc?</p>
<p>Where you go for undergrad does not matter for med school. JHU and MIT will be about the same in my book for med school admissions (unless you become BFFs with the med school dean at Hopkins somehow). Both are difficult academically. Both have successful premeds. Both have lots of research going on. Both are close enough to major hospitals for volunteering. You can get into Harvard med school from either or you could flunk out after a year from either.</p>
<p>JHU med school might give you a marginal bump because you went there for undergrad, but there is a very low probability that you will have the stats as an undergrad to even think about JHU med school, so that really shouldn’t factor into your decision on where to go for undergrad.</p>
<p>Sure, he wants an MD now, but he will change over the course of 4 years in college. Even if he is deadset on an MD when he graduates, he might still want a job as an engineer or something else for a few years before settling down as a doctor. MIT is arguably the best school for engineering in the country and has some of the most amazing opportunities after graduation. Hopkins is great too, but MIT has more clout in engineering, on Wall Street, and elsewhere. I would say your best exit opportunities (assuming all else is equal) would be from MIT.</p>
<p>Both are bad options if they put you $200,000 in the hole before medical school. He could be looking at $500,000 in debt by the time he graduates medical school if he does that. Go to a state school, or a private school that will give a lot of aid. </p>
<p>Also, doing engineering as a backup to premed tends to become self-fulfilling prophecy because engineering is a very grade-deflated major. Sure, the engineer may score a 36 on the MCAT, but if his GPA is a 2.8 from all those engineering classes, he will get filtered out before a human looks at his app in a lot of places.</p>
<p>Going to Hopkins or MIT isn’t going to give him significantly more pull with adcoms at Penn, Harvard, or JHU. Even the guy with a 3.8/36 from HYPS would need a bit of luck to get into those schools. Keep in mind that getting into medical school is much different than getting into undergrad. Most acceptance rates to med school range from 2%-15%, whereas for undergrad, acceptance rates range from ~10% all the way up to 90%+.</p>
<p>Oh, and your friend will probably end up changing his mind once he gets to school. I went into undergrad as premed, and still am premed; but I am keeping my mind open to other options as well.</p>
<p>Oh, and I hear JHU Med doesn’t like taking its premeds…something about academic incest. That’s just the word on the street. Take it with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Where does this stuff come from? In any given year, between 10 to 15% of Hopkins Med students come from Hopkins’ undergraduates. This makes JHU the number 1 school at JHU Med (although Harvard is a close second). </p>
<p>As an aside, if the OP’s friend’s goal is medical school—Does he understand that engineering (at either school) is a difficult and indirect route toward becoming a physician. Get an engineering degree is you want to be an engineer. Many medical schools would prefer someone with a degree in humanities, who also did well in the required pre-med courses.</p>
<p>I’m not knowledgeable enough about pre-med majors to reply to this thread, but I believe it would be difficult to fulfill Med School course requirements as an EECS major. </p>
<p>General institute requirements for an EECS major at MIT include only one semester of chemistry and one semester of biology (both intro courses), which is much less than what is required for med school application. I guess you could still fulfill the requirements though if you used all your free electives (approximately 4 classes) to take further chemistry and biology, but it would be a bit of a stretch IMHO, especially considering how demanding the EECS curriculum alone already is. Besides, MIT’s grade deflation won’t help you.</p>
<p>All things considered, BME at JHU might be a better deal. In any case, there are several threads on CC concerning MIT for pre-med. You should check them first for other opinions.</p>
<p>There’s a thread somewhere here with med school stats from MIT. The result isn’t pretty. Having said that, your friend is better off at MIT. He can recouperate the 200k investment with an EECS degree from MIT faster and easier if the medical school doesn’t work out.</p>
<p>This. BME is the toughest major there is - you need to take physics classes, chemistry classes, biology classes, math classes, in addition to engineering classes. JHU BME happens to be the top BME program in the United States, if not the world. Trying to get into JHU for med school with BME as your major will be difficult. Extremely so.</p>
<p>JHU paints a 2003-2008 picture (for the 88% number). The 2008 number is most likely higher.
MIT is 2008 only.</p>
<p>But of course, as a whole, MIT is harder, more cutthroat, and more rigorous than Hopkins, so of course a 3.3 GPA out of MIT will be harder to come by than a 3.3 at Hopkins. Albeit, Hopkins is tough too.</p>
<p>If anything, the 2008 number would be lower. With the state of the economy in the last couple years (48% of Princetonians graduated unemployed last year), students are applying to graduate/professional school in droves.</p>
<p>I have to ask though, why is he even worrying about which is the better bang for the buck? I understand he hasn’t been accepted to either yet…right? If you can get into either or both, THEN you can talk. Until then, the odds are still against any average person getting into either or.</p>
<p>Because the SAT scores and GPAs of students at both MIT and JHU and virtually every elite school in the nation has been rising higher and higher, meaning higher quality students and higher quality med school applicants. Back in 2003, Hopkins still had something like a 35% acceptance rate (or even more) and now it is 25-26% and will likely drop lower still (due to the substantial increase in Yield this year, which was unforeseen).</p>
<p>edit 2: ALSO as 2008 applicants are from class of 2004/5 (High school) and class of 2003 applicants from class of 1999/2000, the jump for JHU is even more significant. JHU and other schools like it (i.e. UChicago, Northwestern, etc) have really raised their selectivity and SAT scores more recently than schools like HYPMS. I’m willing to venture that while MIT students on average are probably still better than JHU students academically, the gap is FAR smaller now than it was back then. I’m willing to say that there is very little of a gap at all. </p>
<p>edit: and I HIGHLY doubt your “droves” sentiment. At best, it can be called exaggerrated. I don’t know how long it has been since you have been in college, but students right now are still flunking out of pre-med classes left and right. Of course, the INTEREST is there, but by the end of junior year, the pre-med students is usualy between 25-50% less than what had originally come in, depending on the institution. Most students are too ignorant or idealistic to realize how tough pre-med classes REALLY are.</p>
<p>Like I said, it wasn’t like 10% go to Harvard, 10% go to Penn, 10% go to JHU. It was just 10% of the kids got into ALL of these schools. The other 90% are kept out. </p>
<p>Anyway, I still think it’s better to go to MIT for EECS in case the med school doesn’t work out in the end.</p>
<p>I’m curious though. What was the most common major of those MIT students who were accepted into med school ? I assume not many EECS majors would apply to med school, but, out of those who applied, how many were accepted ?</p>
<p>I guess that is what the OP really wants to know.</p>
<p>i am willing to bet my life that the average humanities pre-med major has a MUCH easier time getting into medical school and being successful in pre-med than the average engineering major.</p>
<p>seriously.</p>
<p>OP, your friend would either have to be really smart(like-graduate level smart), really hard working, never need to sleep, or just really persistent.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, most MIT premeds are bio majors and most have GPAs over 3.6. EECS and premed at MIT will be tough, but so is BME at Hopkins. I said it before and I stand by the fact that MIT has slightly better exit opportunities than Hopkins for non premeds.</p>
Harder and more rigorous, perhaps. Cutthroat, however, is not a word anybody would use to describe MIT. MIT’s an extremely collaborative place, and students work together on problem sets and to study for tests. Actually, MIT’s difficulty is the source of the collaborative nature – people band together because it’s much easier to get through together than to get through individually. So MIT is not a great place for the stereotypical grade-obsessed, competitive premed, but could be a great place for someone interested in learning a ton, getting a great science education, and going to medical school afterward.</p>
<p>Anyway, the average GPA of graduating students is a 3.2. So 95% of premeds who are only marginally above average GPA-wise get into medical school.</p>