Bluedevilmike's Ten Step Guide to Picking a PreMed School

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>In light of the recent burst of questions, I thought I would try to bump this.</p>

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<p>What are the 10 most important things about a school?</p>

<p>There are ten things to look for. In order of importance…</p>

<p>First, you have to get in. Seriously, a ridiculous number of Internet kids seem to take this for granted. Don’t worry about schools you haven’t gotten into. And DEFINITELY don’t worry about schools you haven’t applied to yet.</p>

<p>Second, it has to be affordable. If a school is going to impose a major financial hardship on your family, it usually isn’t worth it. It’s up to you and your family to decide what this means, but as a general rule try to avoid taking on more than $50K in loans.</p>

<p>Third, you have to not hate it. Go on a campus visit. Take a tour. Talk to students. Are they happy? You’re looking to get a sense of the school’s atmosphere.</p>

<p>Fourth, you have to enjoy it. Seriously. Go on that campus visit. Find the seniors there and talk to them. Do you admire them? Do you want to grow into being that kind of person? If so, pick that school.</p>

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<p>You said there were ten.</p>

<p>Sure, but those are the four that really matter. The other six don’t matter nearly as much.</p>

<p>Okay. Fine. I went through your four and I still have seven schools left. How do I choose among them?</p>

<p>Okay, fine. There’s a few other things to consider, after you’ve considered the first four. In no particular order:</p>

<p>Fifth, the best school is usually far away from home. Ideally, not driving distance. If you still have options left, you should pick a school which is more than a car ride miles away. Of course, if you have particularly neurotic parents, you may need to pick something even farther. This time in your life is supposed to be a sign of independence, growth, and stretching out. It’s important to be far away. Plus, it’s important to learn about different parts of the country, too. Just think of it like a study abroad.</p>

<p>Sixth, you want to be a good academic match for your program. In practice, the easiest way to do this is to cross off any school where your SAT is way higher or way lower than their medians. You want to be surrounded by peers, and academics is one good way to measure that. (Use the whole university’s SAT score for this exercise. If their engineering school or Honors college or whatever is higher, ignore it. Use the whole university’s score.)</p>

<p>Seventh, you want a reasonably-sized student body. Most of the kids I know tend to like schools around 7000 undergraduate students – about the size of your average Ivy League. Smaller and it can get claustrophobic; larger, and you don’t get the kind of attention that premeds need. Some kids like it bigger and some like it smaller; that’s fine. But most people tend to prefer a school that’s about 7000 undergrads.</p>

<p>Eighth, you want a “field-diverse” school. Look at the student body – if they tend to study the same thing (or have the same extracurriculars), it’s not preferable. Premeds thrive on the opportunity to participate in lots of different things, and it’s good to have a campus that will expose you to an interdisciplinary education.</p>

<p>Ninth, make sure the school has good advising. Some schools are better at this than others, but you want a department which is competent, friendly, centralized, experienced, and knowledgeable. If you can’t find this, then it’s a red flag. If they have a bad reputation, that’s also a red flag.</p>

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<p>Okay. I’m down to just a couple schools left. They all seem pretty great by your first nine criteria. How do I choose?</p>

<p>Criterion ten: Anything you like.</p>

<p>Anything?</p>

<p>Yes, anything. By this point, all the schools remaining are good schools for you. You can pick for any reason. Do you like the food better at one place? Are the dorms nicer? Is that cute girl from your high school going? Really. Any reason is fine.</p>

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<p>Wait, that leaves out a lot of things.</p>

<p>Like what?</p>

<p>Well, this one school offered me a guaranteed spot into their med program.</p>

<p>Not important. If you could get into a program like that, you’re the kind of kid who will get in in a few years anyway. You’ll be fine with or without it. These schools aren’t stupidly giving away guarantees for nothing. Really.</p>

<p>Well, this other school offered me a spot in their Honors College.</p>

<p>Again, not terribly important. The climate of the school is determined by the school as a whole – academic, social, etc. If you really don’t like a school, it’s unlikely that its Honors program is going to be much better.</p>

<p>I really like the city.</p>

<p>Again, not important. For one thing, your life is going to revolve around your campus. For another thing, it’s good to experience the different sides of America – even including cities you don’t think you’ll like. Of course, safety is another question entirely. Obviously safety matters. But if you think that Raleigh is boring or Chicago is gloomy or Ithaca has nothing to do… don’t worry about it. Adapting to a new place is one of the most important parts of growing up. If you’re from New York, go to school in a red state. If you’re from Oklahoma, go to school in the big city. Sticking with what you know, even if you really love it, is sort of provincial.</p>

<p>My family is rich, but this school is a lot more expensive than the other one.</p>

<p>As long as it won’t impose a financial hardship on your family, then I’d ignore cost. You have to live for four years there, and you’ll carry the degree around with you for the rest of your life. It’s important to go someplace you like.</p>

<p>My Aunt Polly’s son went to our local school, and he’s doing just fine.</p>

<p>Congratulations to Polly’s son. Don’t make decisions based off of anecdotes. And don’t make decisions off of people like Aunt Polly, or the neighbor down the street, or that lady in your grandmother’s Mah Jong group. They don’t matter.</p>

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<p>What matters is this: you aren’t just going to be a premedical student. Most schools serve that function just fine. But they’re often unequal in other ways.</p>

<p>You are also going to be a student of history, and English, and literature, and physics, and economics, and political science, and psychology. You’re going to learn about basketball, and sweet tea, and that girl downstairs with a smile that lights up the whole room. You’ll learn how to take notes, how to throw a surprise birthday party, how to scurry across campus when you’re late for an exam, how to speak to people when they’re mad or scared or stressed out, and how to build friendships.</p>

<p>You’re not just there to become a doctor. You’re there to grow up. Pick whatever school helps you do that the best.</p>

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<p>Reprinted from post #336 here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/202936-good-pre-med-schools-9.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/202936-good-pre-med-schools-9.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Love it.</p>

<p>My only qualm is the point on geography. I’m a fan of getting “away” but a car drive can easily be a significant distance.</p>

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<p>+1</p>

<p>There’s no reason why this shouldn’t be stickied and a “Hot Topic!”</p>

<p>Thanks Mike!</p>

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<p>This was so incredibly helpful. I’ve actually decided to go to Duke by the way. ;)</p>

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<p>this has been very helpful. but i do agree that the location doesn’t seem to matter. as long as I don’t live at home (which is not happening), i will be fine.</p>

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<p>Great advice!!! Very well said!!!</p>

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<p>Thanks for reminding me about this thread. I’m down to two schools, one of which I will visit this weekend. Hopefully that visit helps me choose the school I will attend in the fall.</p>

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<p>Thanks for reposting bdm. I do agree that a plane ride distance adds a lot of character-building. Of course, that means that all of the Northeasterners would have to ignore a certain sports league. :D</p>

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<p>Get this thread stickied.</p>

<p>I think its best to go as far away as possible for college. If you are go to college close to home (1-4 hours away driving distance) then you might come home once every month or every 2 weeks. You need to stay on campus for those weekends, to really experience college life. The farther you go for college, the better, because it teaches you how to live more independently. </p>

<p>****Plus if you live 1-4 hours away, your parents might stop by on the weekends unexpectedly, which would not be a good thing for most college students… lol.</p>

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<p>Thanks for reposting this. I read the post a few years ago and it was useful to help convince ourselves DS probably did not make a wrong decision back then.</p>

<p>Reflecting upon this list after I read it again, I would share my thoughts after these years (if you do not mind):</p>

<p>First, you have to get in. He got in (due to some luck.)</p>

<p>Second, it has to be affordable. Barely affordable for the first two years. But the gamble paid off in the last two years, again, due to luck. The tuition and fees for the last 2 years were almost next to nothing, like a thousand or two only each year.)</p>

<p>Third, you have to not hate it. Go on a campus visit. Take a tour. Talk to students. Are they happy? He seems to like most students there. In 4 years, he only mentioned a single person whom he disliked. (He called him a meat head or something. Is it a very bad word?)</p>

<p>Fourth, you have to enjoy it. Seriously. Go on that campus visit. Find the seniors there and talk to them. Do you admire them? He seems to admire many of his peers. He said he loves going to this school mostly because of their EC opportunities, not particularly for the academic especially for the premed prereqs. (I think he likely refers to the fact that he believes he could learn this kind of stuff just as well in many other school’s setting – including public schools.)</p>

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<p>Fifth, the best school is usually far away from home. It is pretty far for him. A downside is the traveling back-and-forth during the breaks could be quite tiring. It would be nice if the school were in a city where there is a major airport so that he does not need to spend a couple of hours in land travel after a long flight. (He could not afford the taxi. The unreliability of the shared limo service could be quite annoying.)</p>

<p>Sixth, you want to be a good academic match for your program. The school’s academic is challenging for him but not overwhelmed. (A- is very manageable for him, but A is not so much always under his control.)</p>

<p>Seventh, you want a reasonably-sized student body. Reasonably sized school. However, somehow he said at one time the school does not provide a good environment for students to develop a long-term relationship. It appears to me that most students tend to develop relationship like “brothers/sisters” rather than bf/gf – it is almost like an incest if you date one of the 100 or so “sisters” in your residential college. What if the end result is a negative? You still need to live closely together until you graduate.</p>

<p>Eighth, you want a “field-diverse” school. Maybe only one out of six students is in premed (in the end at least.) He said for some reason, abnormally high percentage of premeds seem to be graduated from public high schools for some unknown reason.</p>

<p>Ninth, make sure the school has good advising. The advising is good especially during the application, I think.</p>

<p>Now, it would be nice if some nice soul could post something about:</p>

<p>“What are the 10 most important things about picking a medical school?”</p>

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<p>I agree that this should be stickied. </p>

<p>Um, not so sure what you mean about being far away…it’s not like I would be lurking in the bushes watching my daughter if she were closer. I would obviously stay put in my car with binoculars. :)</p>

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<p>***Plus if you live 1-4 hours away, your parents might stop by on the weekends unexpectedly, which would not be a good thing for most college students… lol. *</p>

<p>My kids’ school is 2 1/2 hours away. We’ve never shown up unexpectedly. LOL (They’d kill us!) </p>

<p>I think “going away” to school is great…it doesn’t have to be a plane ride away (many can’t afford that)…and for some even “living away from home” isn’t affordable. It certainly would not be a good idea racking up student debt as an undergrad just to “live away” from home.</p>

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<p>bdm’s point #2 was affordability. Of course, one shouldn’t live on campus – no matter how far – if it is not affordable.</p>

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<p>^^^ Some schools require students to live on campus. My school requires kids to stay on campus for the first 2 years, which is ridiculous.</p>

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<p>If anyone here goes to an enormous school (student body size), could you comment to dealing with that initial overwhelmed feeling and how one can adjust to it? The two schools I’m seriously considering are huge state schools. </p>

<p>I’ve heard/read things like go to office hours, sit at the front if possible (if not, sit under the speakers), and go to the TA discussion sessions, etc. Any other tips and pointers?</p>

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<p>A couple of years ago, I wrote the following to a young lady then entering UC Berkeley:</p>

<p>Don’t calibrate your expectations based on other Berkeley students. You will have to be smarter and harder-working than most of the kids around you. I remember that during MCAT season, I had one friend at Duke and one friend at UCB. They both scored a 31 on the MCAT. My Berkeley friend celebrated by throwing a party, and all of his friends were very jealous of him. My Duke friend immediately began studying for a retake and his friends all sympathized with his troubles and loaned him their study books. You will have to hold yourself to a higher standard than Berkeley undergrads hold themselves to.</p>

<p>Get to know your professors. Make an effort. This is difficult, because you have to straddle the line between brown-nosing and passivity, but the vast majority of Berkeley kids will err on the side of passivity. Avoiding brown-nosing does not mean sitting back and being quiet; it means being genuinely excited rather than faking it. Remember – you have to be a racehorse, running for its own sake, not a pack mule.</p>

<p>Branch out and find a diverse group of folks. You have to be careful to cultivate a balanced worldview. You will learn from the people around you, if they are different enough; you will reinforce your own tedencies if they are too similar. Berkeley is bigger, but that just means it’s easier to find a “critical mass” of students who are very similar. Avoid them. </p>

<p>[My friend and I are both Chinese, and it’s often easy for us to fall into Chinese cultural surroundings. That has advantages and disadvantages; I wanted to highlight the disadvantages for her.] Specifically, I’ve found that Asian culture sometimes promotes a few very common problems: (1) treating schools as trophies rather than as education; (2) being very geographically picky and thus limiting their options; (3) jumping through hoops only when there are immediate goals involved rather than intellectually exploring. </p>

<p>Ask for lots of advice from students at other schools – particularly private schools like Duke and Penn. I was applying at the same time as one of my good friends who was a UCB undergrad, and he basically did whatever I did. He didn’t have any pre-med advising, but he saw that I did. Following my lead meant that he was, by extension, getting similar advising to me. He ended up at Yale Med. The Internet can help you here, too. I avoid studentdoctor.net because the people there are hyperneurotic and extremely rude, but collegeconfidential.com is a useful resource.</p>

<p>Embark on geographic and intellectual adventures. Going to Duke from California is kind of like an automatic study abroad; since you’re staying within a 15 mile radius your entire life, a study abroad (or somewhere else within the US) is especially important. (And no, China and Taiwan don’t count.) You absolutely have to make good use of your summers, so avoid summer school at all costs. Many students tend to like summer school a lot: it’s easy to find, intuitive, their parents understand what it is, and they already know they’re good at school. This is a huge mistake. Summers are for adventures or exploring; you already spend 75% of your life demonstrating that you’re a good student. Do something else. Ideally, do it SOMEWHERE else.</p>

<p>Travel a lot. Skipping school is okay, really. Make sure to go whenever you can, but having some defined absences just to travel is good too. Take a trip with a few friends to Tahoe. Fly out to Seattle and see the space needle. Go visit Texas: ride a mechanical bull at a bar, eat a big Texas steak, and watch an Astros game. Spend a semester in Greece. You’re saving a lot of money on tuition [by going to an in-state public]; spend a little bit of it traveling. And travel within the US! – I know an awful lot of people who visit New York and London and think of themselves as cultured because of it. Make new friends, even if it’s scary at first. And actively seek out people who are from different parts of the US.</p>

<p>Grades are very important, but they are not the most important thing. Good grades alone will not get you into medical school; mediocre grades alone don’t get you rejected. I have a C+ in organic chemistry, the most important premed class, and a 3.6 science average, but I got into 4 of the top 10 medical schools in the country while only being rejected by 3. MCAT scores, leadership potential, intellectual capacity, and – above all – an excellent application will matter much more, in the end. I know too many students who pour their lives into their grades and then botch the simple fact of getting your application in during June. If they had removed 0.5% of the effort they put into their grades and moved it into the application, they’d be MUCH MUCH stronger. As a general rule, your “schoolwork” is an inefficient place to allot your energy, provided you’re doing acceptably.</p>

<p>Take lots of different courses. Many students like to stick in their comfort zones, and Berkeley is one of those schools that encourages you to do so. Fight the inertia. Make sure to load up on courses which make you write. A lot. Lots and lots of writing. Take a cool language, like Arabic or Russian. Study geopolitics, history, and current events. Go to football games (and yes, that’s a valuable learning experience). Do as many courses with independent research as you can. Maybe an art class or two; I used photography, for example. Naturally many of these will lead back into medicine. When I took a photography class, I did a photodocumentary on a cancer patient in the hospital. When I took a game theory class, I did my project on health insurance. But the point is you’re exercising all the different parts of your brain.</p>

<p>Minimize the competitiveness you have to deal with. One of the solutions to competitiveness, of course, is to have a diverse group of friends! I had a circle of five close friends at Duke. The five of us majored in Biology, Political Science, Public Policy, Economics (me), and Math. This way we all rooted each other on and learned together. I found one or two study buddies in each class who very nice people with whom I could study in a relaxed fashion while still learning. They all turned out to be white, from the South, and older than me; I didn’t plan that, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence either. Study at home, not in the library. Have friends who do different things and are on different schedules. Make it a point not to talk about school with competitive people. There’s no need to impress anybody with how smart you are, and sometimes people will feel threatened by it. Don’t talk about school with other premeds; it’s usually just mutually stressful. Talk about current events, the football team, and church.</p>

<p>Make sure that moving out really is moving out. Go to a new church, even if your family’s church is nearby. Do your laundry and cooking on your own. Have defined times for you to visit your parents and for your parents to visit you – I think once a month plus holidays is very reasonable. September, they come visit you for a Saturday. October, you go home for a Saturday. November, they come visit you for a Saturday, plus you go home for Thanksgiving. Etc.</p>

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<p>^^^I just wanted to point out that you shouldn’t get discouraged if you can’t be better than the students around you, the point is to TRY to be better than them. Just keep working hard and don’t get discouraged if you don’t live up to the high expectations that you have set for yourself. </p>

<p>I try to be more hard-working and smarter than the kids around me, but sometimes in certain classes it can be hard, especially if you are not naturally talented in that subject. Trying to achieve perfection in every course, can be discouraging when you don’t live up to the high expectations that you have set for yourself. Also, trying to be smarter/hard-working than the kids around you can also be discouraging, because there will always be other students who destroy classes that you find yourself getting Bs in.</p>

<p>I have made only 2 B’s in my college career so far and they have all come at the hands of chem courses. I was never really good at Chem (hated it in high school), and no matter how hard I study or work, I could never pull my grade up in those classes. I tried so many different study habits for those 2 classes through the course of the year, and nothing worked. At that point, I gave up and told myself that I will be fine with a B in those classes. I guess you can say that I “gave in” and just settled for a B like some typical pre-meds. I settled because if I hadn’t, and had I continued to beat myself up over those 2 Bs, I would have have lost the motivation to work hard in my other classes. </p>

<p>*****I think the key here is to TRY to be better than the students around you and strive for perfection, but to also understand that it will not be possible in all cases.</p>

<p>I was assuming your post referred to most pre-meds (not just Berkeley students), excluding the ones at elite schools</p>

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<p>^^^ I def. agree this is a VERY IMPORTANT point. I see a lot pre-meds getting too caught up in their grades (me included). Gotta focus on your application as whole…</p>

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<p>^^^ How do you think med schools view study abroad? I am thinking about going to the UK for a semester next year, but if I do go abroad I won’t be able to continue doing research on certain research projects. Do you think its worth going abroad, if it means sacrificing certain ECs for that semester? (inculding office positions in clubs, research projects, etc).</p>

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<p>side note about Intro Russian…it’s generally an easy A.</p>

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<p>Also pertaining to my previous question: </p>

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<p>I have another question. My school has a study abroad program with the Dalai Lama where students go and spend the summer with Dalai Lama and other buddist monks learning about mental health and Tibetan culture. Here is a descrition of the program:</p>

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<p>Its a very unique program that isn’t offered at other schools. We have a special program where Buddhist monks come to my school to learn the basic sciences (bio, chem, physics) in return for Emory students going abroad to learn from them. After talking to my advisers about some of my interests, they all recommended that I try this program out. However, from a lot medical school students that I know at Baylor Med, they told me to instead do a summer research program such as Baylor SMART, UTMB-SURP. My question is which one is better. I honestly don’t mind doing both programs, but I can’t because the dates for both programs coincide. </p>

<p>Let me know what y’all think.</p>

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<p>Mike, as always you are awesome. Thanks for this very helpful thread.</p>