<p>BDM, It all depends on your motivation. Some HPME students I have talked to are extremely motivate and have 3.9 GPAs. If you have enough motivation, you can try for any dual degree that you want. You may add a little more pressure, but no where near the amount for a normal premed because you have already completed a major step: getting into Medical School.</p>
<p>Of course you can try for any dual degree you want - plenty of normal premeds do. Obviously HPME doesn't hurt you in the pursuit of a dual degree.</p>
<p>My point is that:
1.) The major advantage to HPME is that you don't HAVE to play the grad school admissions game.
2.) For other grad schools, since you don't have that guarantee, you have to play the game again.
3.) The two games overlap enough (high grades, tough coursework, leadership EC's), especially for the most common MD/PhD track, that point #2 pretty much nullifies point 1.
4.) So not only are HPME's not at an advantage for dual degrees, the dual degree actually removes much of the point of being an HPME.</p>
<p>bluedevilmike,</p>
<p>Given your knowledge, I am surprised you'd oversimplify the way you did.</p>
<p>If a HPME is interested in, say, prelaw, then he/she can focus on getting good grades in other classes or taking a legal studies minor...etc without having the pressure to do bio research (and no MCAT) AT THE SAME TIME. The fact that he/she doesn't <em>have</em> to do these two (along with others in the whole premed process) already give him/her more time to prepare for (e.g. LSAT) or ENJOY others. You make it sound like the game for others is the exact same game for med school. It's not. You don't need bio-research/mcat/getting A in chem/bio/orgos for law school admission. For med school, you need high overall GPA AND science GPA. The fact is a regular premed without the guarantee to any med school often just don't have time to do dual-major while doing med-related ECs and trying to ace the MCAT. I don't know why you seem to pretend that's not the case.</p>
<p>Perhaps if it were some hypothetical Duke's HPME, you would be writing things differently.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1.) Northwestern is a good undergraduate school. No argument here.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>By the way, Northwestern a GREAT undergraduate school (not just a good one), just like your school, Duke, is.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/424?badlink=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/424?badlink=1</a>
it seems like Yale premeds really enjoy their undergrad experience.</p>
<p>1.) Prelaw students need excellent grades in all their classes. Since HPME's have to take medical school prerequisites, then MD/JD students need excellent grades in their premed classes. It's not like law school will ignore science classes. Nor will future employers for a pre-MBA track.</p>
<p>2.) Law schools don't care about your EC's anyway, so what else would you use the summers for? BioSci grad schools will look for research over the summers, which is what premeds do anyway. And the business world wants full-time, year-round work experience -- so since premeds can do work in, say, health care consulting, then an HPME's summer isn't a replacement anyway.</p>
<p>3.) I suppose the time off from the MCAT could buy you some more LSAT/GRE/GMAT prep time. Okay. But GMATs and GRE's are a joke anyway -- and GMATs don't matter all that much -- and even the LSAT should take an HPME-caliber student about three weeks anyway.</p>
<p>4.) Again, I have to emphasize. I'm not arguing that HPME harms you for a dual degree. It certainly doesn't. I just mean to say that your pursuit of the second degree nullifies much of the advantage of HPME in the first place, and that HPME's advantage in such a situation is quite minor.</p>
<p>5.) I don't know that I'd call any school in the country "great", simply because then I have to nitpick about where the difference between good and great is. Certainly I don't think there's a large difference between Duke and NU, if that's what you're accusing me of.</p>
<p>6.) Accusing me of a lack of objectivity was unnecessarily rude. I don't like joint BS/MD programs in general, and one offered by Duke would be no exception.</p>
<p>1) Law schools care about the overall GPA--one GPA; I doubt law school adcom pay particular attention to bio/chem grades. A person with 3.4 (or whatever relatively low) in sciences but 3.6-3.7 overall is still very competitive for law school admission, even the top ones. I doubt that's the case for med school. There's no such thing as "science GPA" to them.</p>
<p>2) You list bunch of things that are related to the very game regular premeds play. HPMEs can do things that seem totally unrelevant to or "useless" for the game. How about taking a language program in Italy? That's the choice they can enjoy.</p>
<p>3) I am not even gonna argue if LSAT is really that piece of cake since I don't know anything about it. But why narrowly focus on test prep? There are many many other things students can do. How about sailing class at NU? ;) How I wish I had done that when I were there!</p>
<p>4) see 1) through 3)...</p>
<p>5) & 6). Sorry, the reason I felt I had to put it out there was that I recalled how you wrote "don't give up the excellent education at Yale or Princeton"..."Yale gives you the premeir undergrad education...". It just gave me the feeling you were implying the education at NU was subpar. If you were just telling the OP to go to Yale/Princeton because how they were their "dream" schools without reference to quality of education and give credit where it's due (see 1 through 3 above), then maybe you'd sound more objective.</p>
<p>1.) Actually, a 3.4 BCPM isn't a particularly bad BCPM GPA from most private undergrads, but I understand your point. While it's true that science grades are somewhat "diluted" for a prelaw, the point remains that you can't go around scoring poorly in them. People are going to notice aberrant grades.</p>
<p>2.) I certainly concede that you get more flexibility if you are an HPME for non-professional interests. (I meant to concede this all along but miscommunicated quite severely in an earlier post.)</p>
<p>What I do not concede is that this flexibility provides considerable assistance in the pursuit of a second degree. Again: premed summers overlap considerably with the requirements for science PhD's and could overlap with a pre-MBA track. Law schools don't care about extracurriculars. I will concede an advantage if you are pursuing a non-science PhD.</p>
<p>4.) The reputation of NU and Duke probably is "subpar" relative to Yale and Princeton, although of course the educational experience itself is much harder to measure.</p>
<p>5.) From page one of this thread:
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If you happen to like NU better anyway, then by all means go there and be glad for the guarantee. But don't give up an excellent dream school for it.
[/quote]
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