hey guys! I have another page for my college search but I made a list of colleges so I thought this would be easier!
what I want in a college:
medium size (4,000-15,000) undergrads; give or take
acceptance rate: under 60%
great pre-med/biology
strong athletics is a plus
within 1,000 miles of Tallahassee FL
BONUS: I’m very conservative so a not (too) liberal or conservative school is a plus but I know that’s basically impossible!
I haven’t taken the SAT or ACT yet so I don’t know my testing scores yet but I have done pretty well on standardized testing in the past
this past year I had a 4.0 GPA out of 4.33
4 year public or private
suburban or urban
we have already figured out how we are going to afford college so that will not play a factor in my search and decision
my list of schools:
Baylor
duke
Emory
furman
George Washington
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins
Lehigh
North Carolina state
northwestern
rice
southern Methodist
Texas Christian
university of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
university of Arkansas
university of Chicago
university of Florida
university of Georgia
university of Houston
university of North Carolina chapel hill
university of South Carolina
university of Texas Austin
university of Virginia
Vanderbilt
wake forest
Washington university in St. Louis
so, Which college (s) do you think I will like the best based on my criteria?
thank you so much!!!
Some of your choices appear within an online list, “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges with Great Pre-med Programs,” which may be an indication in their favor.
These schools are also on that list. They meet all of your criteria, except being sporty.
-College of William & Mary
-Saint Louis University
-University of Pennsylvania
Hi there! I immediately thought of GW before I read your list. I also think Northwestern and Johns Hopkins would be good fits - though I don’t know about their “sportiness”, they both have top-ranked pre-med programs, and you have the stats to get in.
I think your best bet is to divide your list into safeties, targets, and reaches, and try to evenly disperse which schools you decide to apply to. We can cut down the list, but you don’t want to end up with all reaches.
It’ll be hard to tell what falls into what category before you get your standardized scores, though - have you scheduled a time to take these? What grade will you be going into next year?
thank you everyone! I visited college of William and mary with my sister and we liked everything about it besides the fact that it was basically in the touristy historic Williamsburg. we really didn’t like that the tourists from Williamsburg were flowing into the college campus.
A number of those out of state public flagships are going to be tough admission for an out of state student, including U VA, UNC, UT Austin, as well as Michigan. I don’t see University of Chicago meeting many of your criteria at all, it is D3 sports, not a sport-y environment at all and not particularly known as a school with a more conservative social environment.
If you stay on the med school track, minimizing debt as an undergrad and conserving available funding to cover med schools are important financial strategies. Therefore, instate publics with special access as an honors student to research, as well as out of state publics which will give merit awards for high achieving students and give special perks, are important on a pre-med list. Also, you want schools where you can be in the top percentages of high achievers on campus since so much about med school admission is gpa-based (and MCAT score). So, unless your family can comfortably write checks for $250,000 for undergrad, and then write more checks for med-school – minimizing debt in undergrad is a necessary strategy.
Start with your instate publics, then look at automatic merit awards at out of state publics like Alabama, South Carolina. Rhodes, in Memphis, is smaller than your student population preference, but does very well with med school admissions, and is a more balanced/conservative student body. You might consider Tulane as well.