<p>Should I go to Yale or Brown PLME? Why?</p>
<p>Those happen to be my top two choices for next year, and I would choose PLME in a heartbeat. I would imagine that the guarantee takes a lot of stress out of undergrad. Also, Brown is very prestigious (although not as prestigious as Yale).</p>
<p>If you want to do medicine, Brown PLME is undoubtedly the way to go. A lot of the time, the debate is whether or not to take the program with a less prestigious UG/Med School over the ivy, but here we’re talking about ivy with med guarantee vs ivy w/o med guarantee. You’d hardly be missing out on the opportunity to have a great undergraduate and med school education if you go for Brown vs Yale. Unless you really love Yale and can see yourself succeed, go PLME.</p>
<p>The only reasons I can think of to not chose Brown PLME over Yale are: 1. You are not really sure you want to go to med school (but then you can change your mind at Brown too, and why would you have applied to PLME if you did not know?). 2. You come from a state with incredibly cheaper, very good quality medical schools so you might want to pay less for medical school. (although Brown is very good to it’s PLME students, you are more likely to get some scholarship even into med school with Brown). 3. You really like the idea of have a more stressful, more gunner group of premeds to spend your undergrad with and like the idea of the uncertainty of getting into med school or not, and giving up more of your undergrad freedom, as somehow you think this might “challenge you” more?? (believe me, the PLMEs at Brown are no shirkers, they just choose to work hard and do interesting exploratory things as undergrads also.) 4. You absolutely hate Providence and love New Haven.</p>
<p>BrownAlumParent: I like your #4. Unlikely.</p>
<p>Integral314: Feel free to ask me about PLME.</p>
<p>Integral314: Do you mind stating your stats, for future applicants?</p>
<p>About three years ago while on tour at Yale we met a girl graduating with a bs and a masters in a technical bio field. She did the whole thing in 4 years. She was applying to 20 medical schools and flying all over the country going to interviews. She got into a good program but it was very stressful on her and her family even with her background which amazed me due to her very high gpa. </p>
<p>Yale spends so much money on each student due to their endowment and offers so many opportunities in so many areas it is hard to turn Yale down. It is a wonderful place. However, a guarantee like Brown reduces the stress level by at least half. Also in any combined program the students stick together like glue and study together and help each other maintain that 3.5 gpa or whatever else is required. I have seen them provide the best support system you could hope for while in college while an individual alone in a bio or chem programs fights for the prof’s attention, grades, research projects, letters of recommendation etc. It is not a lot of fun being a lone gunfighter.</p>
<p>Then you have the 200-300 hours of MCAT preparation to relearn virtually every science chapter you had over 3-4 years all to be one of the 20 percent that get into med school. </p>
<p>Many schoools that tout that 40 percent acceptance rate into med school. But they do not disclose that they will not write letters of recommendation for students whose performance does not meet what the premed committee thinks is proper or or other factor does not reflect favorably on the school . So they juice their numbers so you can not compare apples to apples. All these factors plus the acceptable amount of debt level have to be considered before the right choice for each individual is made.</p>