Hey all,
Long story short, I have a fantastic sat score and great extracurriculars. However, my weighted GPA on a 4.0 scale is 4.01 due to some issues I had earlier in high school (sickness in the family, had to work a job, grades fell). A little about me: Indian student, first-gen applicant, can write a good essay, perform very well in interviews.
SAT: 1540(superscored), 1520(unsuperscored), 800 math subject test, 720 chem test, 700 bio test. 7 AP takes so far, all 4 & 5 scores.
Extracurriculars: Volunteer at the fire department as a certified EMT, Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts), Math National and Science Honor Society, volunteer at local ER, volunteer tutor
I want to apply to an elite pre-med school, but it seems that my SAT fits but my GPA does not. What tier school should I be applying to? Any examples would be great!
What is your unweighted GPA? Weighted GPA is meaningless since there is no uniformity to all the HS weighting scales.
You do not need an elite school for Pre-Med. You want a school where you have the best chance for a high GPA 3.7+, access to Medically related EC’s, good Pre-Med advising and help in preparing for the MCAT. You want to keep Undergrad costs low since Medical school is very expensive. Basically you want to be a Big fish in a small pond at an affordable college/university.
finance: can your parents fund your UG or you plan to apply for loans?
have you prepared a short list of schools to apply based on whatever criteria important to you (any restriction on school location, distance from home etc)
how sure are you about to medicine career? Not a yes or no answer. How much you know about the medicine career? Does it provide flexibility, routine job or stressful or provides good compensation, family balance or whatever reason? What interests you about medicine? Do you like to work with people who are not healthy and work in an environment which smells?
what is your plan B?
All are loaded questions to help you and will help others to respond.
I do have a shortlist of schools, but its mostly just in-state schools and a google search of “best pre-med schools”
I am 100% sure about going into medicine. I have had over 500 hours of direct patient contact and have a great idea of what it means to be a doctor (volunteered at fire dept., ER, and shadowed doctors)
6)Plan B would be PA school, I would eventually apply to med school again
By elite, I mean a prestigious school that is known for having a lot of pre-med opportunities and a high med school acceptance rate like Harvard or Duke.
There’s not really any such thing as “best pre-med.” Medical schools are interested in 2 things, top grades and a high MCAT score. They get applicants coming from hundreds of schools all over the country, so the school brand name doesn’t factor into anything.
Here’s my advice. DON’T choose a school based on pre-med prestige. That’s the fastest way to find a school mismatch. Doctor is a popular dream for smart kids out of high school, but the vast majority of them don’t go to medical school. As they mature, these students find that they have other interests. Instead, choose a good affordable school that has flexibility to change majors. Most college students change their major at least 2 times. If you do decide medical school, having minimal debt will serve you well, because medical school is very expensive.
That being said, check out scholarships at University of Alabama and University of AZ. You’re qualified for for some decent merit scholarships at those places. A lot of the scholarship money can be found in the deep south like AL, MS, KY, and LA. Also, Texas State University offers good merit scholarships as well.
Consider Virginia public universities for in state costs and closer travel to Virginia public medical school interviews.
For medical school application, first cut is MCAT and GPA. Then applications are read to determine who gets an interview. Then interviews determine who gets admission. Most applicants get no admissions and need to find some other career path.
The OP says his family can pay for undergrad school. Why are you all suggesting he apply only to places where he can get scholarship money. I would suggest this if his parents will then fund grad or Med school with the money saved.
How much are your parents willing to fund annually @FirstGenStud ? Some of the privates you have listed cost in excess of $70,000 a year. Will they fund that?
Re: medical school…I hope you realize that students can get accepted to medical school after completing a bachelors at any college. They need a high GPA and MCAT score. I would suggest you look for undergrad schools with good premed advising, and opportunities to shadow, and do meaningful medically related work.
It seems that you are caught up with going to a prestige name school…and I’m not sure why that is the case. Do you think it will be easier to get accepted to Harvard Med school if you attend Harvard as an undergrad? It won’t help.
What’s the matter with UVA? Or William and Mary? Both excellent public universities In your state. You could attend either and save money for future medical school costs…should you actually apply to and get accepted to medical school.
I agree with thumper1 that UVA and William and Mary are great choices that you have a much better chance of getting into b/c in-state.
Honestly, if you explain why your grades dropped in the extra information section and colleges see that your grades faltered during only that period, your GPA is not going to hurt you too much. If you are thinking about 7 year programs however, GPA matters a ton so it’ll be difficult (my sis applied to dental programs). From what I see in Naviance, you can get into some pretty nice schools without the grades.
Idk what are good medical schools, but I’d aim for schools like Emory, Notre Dame, and Boston College. I know Vandy is good for medical, but its a little bit of a reach.
Top med schools are usually associated with top undergrad schools which take far more of their own undergrads college then any from any other university.,
For example from UMich med school website for 2019 admits.
NSTITUTIONS WITH HIGHEST NUMBERS OF STUDENTS
University of Michigan, Wash U, Harvard, UCLA, Wayne State, U Southern CA, Cornell, Duke, Hope, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, U Chicago, Notre Dame, U Penn, Yale
Minus the outlier (Wayne State) tell me again how it doesn’t matter. Do the other universities names seem familiar?
OP - what you said “elite pre-med school” does NOT exist. Prestigious schools with a high med school acceptance rate simply don’t go together. Not sure why you think Harvard or Duke is being associated with “high med school acceptance rate”. They are not. If what you mean “high med school acceptance rate” is the acceptance rate published on their college web site, then you’re seriously being mis-led. There have been many discussions/debates here on CC that how those acceptance data is being “manipulated”.
JHU or UPenn have lots of pre-med opportunities but they also have harsh grading with cut-throat competition (probably true every college for pre-med but some are notoriously worse).
^^^^Actually’ that would be a total fallacy, if a university get the top students across the nation it follows VERY logically that it will have high acceptance rates at graduate schools. We’ve hashed through that med school steering committees steer applicants to med schools that will likely admit them, thereby increasing there chances of admission, not to filter them out from applying at all.
OP is a high school senior with not-so-great stats, the chance of getting into elite colleges is a question by itself.
Even if you’re the top student from your HS, elite college admits top students from everywhere, so your chance of surviving the harsh pre-med courses diminishes when your peers are smarter or simply genius (getting A’s without much effort), and elite college has way more of those genius than your typical state schools.
Each college pre-health committee does the screening part before issuing committee letter, but that’s about the last hurdle a pre-med before the app cycle.
Before that, a pre-med needs to achieve (1) high GPA, (2) high MCAT score, (3) great EC’s. Each of those 3 hurdles is not easy with many get washed out in the first two. By the time you reach the app cycle with good-enough stats to get your committee letter, you’re still facing the brutal 40% success but 60% no acceptance part.
you are obviously smart but a bit too caught up in the prestige game. the tippy top schools are going ot be hard to get into for you and aren’t necessary for your career path, but you belong at a strong academic place.
I would look at Brandeis, Rochester, Case Western.
Every smart high school student that dreams of being a doctor is always 100% sure about it. The reality is that almost none of them actually go. That’s because as you mature, you learn that you have passions in other things.
My advice…DON’T choose a school based on “premed prestige.” There’s no such thing. Medical schools look at grades and MCAT scores. Instead, choose a school that offers flexibility, because most college students change their major at least twice before settling on something.
It’s very clear what you want, which is the same thing a lot of people want: You want the most selective school that will select you. It has nothing to do with medical school. You want the highest rated college out there.
And that’s fine. But you are not the highest rated student out there. Your UW GPA and class rank is what top schools examine when they assess applicants. Your Test scores might make the cut, and then maybe not. Depends on where these colleges draw the line for BEST. Maybe second highest category so say 4/5 for test scores. Your grades are no better than 3/5, maybe 2.5/5 . Everyone in your situation writes a greatvesssy and I see nothing insightful in your sample here, so 3/5 there LORs from the GC and teachers— I doubt they’re going to gush that you are the best ever so probably 3/5 there. ECs again, typical of your crowd-the kids applying to top schools, so 3/5 there. That doesn’t look good for the most selective schools.
Stil. This is just s forum. Give them a try as lottery tickets. Then look for schools that will assuage the name dropping vanity that some people have,. How do you stand at your high school for UVA and W&M? They are pretty selective and focus a lot in that gpa . You need to talk to your GC about whether you are even competitive for your own top state schools.
Given the above, if money is of no concern, Id look for a very good LAC that can help you through the college years where you will need to get top grades to get into med school. Denison, Dickinson, Hobart/William Smith, Gettysburg, Bucknell are all good choices.
You could probably get into CMU HSS and JHU as a humanities or SS major, but their grading scales are tough and if Hopkins sniffs you out as a Premed in your app, you’d likely be rejected. That is my take on what you have presented