Advice for college admissions

Applying to College
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Will you have four years of social studies? I see four in science, math, English and foreign language. What am I missing.

At this point, your grades, ACT score and ECs look fine to me, and likely will look fine to many adcoms as well. Please choose a college or two with just about guaranteed acceptance, that is affordable and that you like FIRST. Then build your application list up from there.

Re: affordability…you need to do two things.

  1. Your parents can run the net price calculators for colleges of interest. They are currently set for students starting fall 2024, so you might want to wait until summer to do that. If you do them now, use them as an estimate only.

  2. Discuss college finances with your parents. You need to know how much they are able and willing to pay annually for your college costs. This is a conversation to have with them.

Keep in mind, medical schools are expensive and likely will be $100,000 a year if you go the traditional route.

BS/MD programs or BS/DO programs are competitive for admissions, and once you hit the medical school part are costly also.

But at this point, I would suggest putting medical school aside, and concentrate on finding an undergrad school. You can research BS/MD and BS/DO schools to see what all is expected of applicants.

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I’ll add my opinion…this 35 ACT is fine. I would suggest spending time on other parts of your applications…like your essays.

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I’m not a big fan of worrying about prestige, but also I see many people online basically doing it wrong. They focus on a few famous universities they have heard of, not realizing US elite families have long also been sending their kids to various LACs, to various universities on certain named scholarships or within honors programs, and so on. Basically, they are trying to be snobby, but not paying attention to what the real snobs do!

Again, I would not personally worry about this much at all, but it is particularly problematic when you do it in such an incomplete way.

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As physicians or some other kind of health care workers?

Note that while physicians can have high pay levels (>$200k each), they may still be paying off their medical school debt, leaving less available for their kids’ college costs. Other health care workers who had to attend expensive professional school may be in a similar debt situation.

But the thing you need to do before making the college application list is talk to your parents to find out how much they can contribute, and get them to run the net price calculator on the web site of each college of interest.

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For social studies I have World History, APUSH, AP Gov, and AP Psych (which counts as a social studies in my school). These aren’t over four years though, I took APUSH and AP Psych the same year. I tried asking my parents above finances but they don’t want me to worry about it. I don’t know how to approach the subject with them.

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If your family can afford SSP (or you can get sufficient financial from SSP) I don’t see why you would consider not attending, particularly if you are concerned about ECs.

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First regarding budget and medical school: There are currently a few universities in the USA that cost over $90,000 per year. The cost of attending university tends to go up faster than inflation. With price increases you could very well spend an average of $100,000 or slightly more per year for the four years that you are an undergraduate student, and could spend perhaps another $125,000 per year in medical school. If you go on to medical school, the total cost of eight years of university could come to something like $900,000 by the time that they call you “Doctor Seiren”. You do not want to borrow even half of this. Even doctors do not make enough money to make it easy to pay this off. Budget matters for anyone who is considering a medical future and whose parents do not have close to a million dollars to pay for it.

However, there are a huge number of universities that are very good for premed students. I do not know what state you are from, but it is very highly likely that your in-state public university, or several of your in-state public universities, are very good for premed students. Also, there are universities that have various types of financial aid that are very good for premed students. You do not need to attend a top 20 university to get accepted to a very good medical school (and in most cases top 20 schools have very good need based financial aid).

Your ACT score is very good. It is definitely way over what you would need to get accepted to a university that is very good for premed (even ignoring the fact that there are some very good universities that are either test-optional or test-blind).

Most students who start university intending to be premed end up never applying to medical school. Some are not able to maintain a “medical school worthy” GPA in their premed classes. Some just decide that they want to do something else. Some choose some other medical-related career path (such as biotech research). Some just decide they want to do something very different (law school, software engineering, or whatever). Also, some students apply to medical school and do not get accepted anywhere.

This is of course very good. This will make you competitive for the highest ranked universities. However, the vast majority of applicants to the highest ranked universities have similarly very strong credentials, and most are rejected. Probably much more importantly, the highest ranked universities (let’s say top 20) are not a good fit for all very strong students. Some students will be happier at a smaller school such as a liberal arts college. Some students would be happier at their in-state public university. Some students would be happier somewhere else. Finding a good fit is important, but is unfortunately often more difficult compared to just looking at university rankings.

This really depends where you apply. Some schools care about ECs and use them to pick between a long list of very strong applicants. Some don’t care as much. Some do not even look at them. One daughter only applied to universities in Canada (we live in the northeast of the US so Canada is not all that far away) and none of the schools she applied to even asked about ECs.

Reading a bit further down this thread, I see your list of ECs. This is a very good list. You do not need a long list of ECs. Showing commitment to a few ECs and doing well with them is the point. Having the longest list is not the point.

I think that you might want to read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, this recommends that you do whatever is right for you, and whatever you do, do it well. This is the approach that my wife, my two daughters, and I have all taken and it has worked out well for us. However, what each of us did was very different. This also helped us attend 8 different universities (one each for a bachelor’s degree, and a different one each for graduate school). Perhaps part of the point is that if you do what is right for you, then you are likely to do it well. Also, if you do what is right for you, this is likely to look genuine and fit well with whatever college or university is likely to be a good fit for you.

Finally, keep in mind that there are hundreds of very good colleges and universities in the US. You do not need to attend a top 20 university to do well in life. Also, if you look at top 20 graduate programs, the students in these programs will have gotten their bachelor’s degree at a very wide range of different colleges and universities. Given your excellent academic performance up to now, assuming that you keep up the good work, there will be plenty of very good universities where you can be accepted. You will want to try to find one that is affordable and that is a good fit for you.

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You can take the required courses for medical school applicants at just about every four year college in this country, arts conservatories excluded. I’m not sure what “very good for premed” means since you can meet the requirements at so many places.

At this point, the most important thing for you to do is FIRST choose a college or two that you like where you have a high likelihood of acceptance and the school is affordable.

I would suggest you do a chance me thread…and put the complete info there. And a couple more thoughts.

  1. Start by looking at your instate public universities. We don’t know your state, but there is at least a flagship and likely a few others that could meet your needs and would be budget friendly.

  2. Did you take the PSAT last fall? Is your score national merit semifinalist level? Let us know. There are a lot of good suggestions for you with very good merit aid if you are.

  3. Your 35 ACT score is fine, and I’m not sure a 36 would make any difference.

  4. Here are some colleges where you would get great merit aid…University of Arizona, University of New Mexico, University of Alabama, Miami in Ohio, Arizona State. Plus you would likely be comoetitive for scholarships at places like Washington and Lee (Johnson Scholarship), Duke (Robertson), the Ohio State University (Morell), and many more. Apply to Pitt as soon as applications open (rolling admissions and you will receive a decision with possible merit aid very quickly).

  5. If you want a smaller college, look at the Colleges that Change Lives list. You would likely get merit aid there.

  6. If you give more info about your actual college preferences (geographic, size, religious vs secular, urban vs rural vs suburban) etc…there are lots more suggestions folks can give you. I would suggest doing that using the Chance me set up here.

  7. I would focus on finding an undergraduate school you really like now…if you end up doing premed there, fine. But you might not.

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“Very good for premed students” is indeed a phrase that might be a bit vague and that would apply to a very large number of universities.

As one example, my older daughter attended a public university in the northeast of the US that is not quite ranked in the top 100 in the US. She was seriously considering becoming a veterinarian, but had not yet decided for sure. Based on this, she completed all of the requirements for applying to DVM programs. These include the same classes that are required to apply to MD programs (some optional classes were different, and the “clinical experience” that my daughter got involved animals rather than people). She had quite a few friends from the same classes who were premed students. The premed classes were academically challenging and very well taught. Her friends who were premed got clinical experience at a good nearby hospital. The various premed / pre-vet classes were full of very strong students (one boyfriend for example had never had a B in his life), and even these very strong students found the classes challenging (eg, at the time my daughter referred to organic chemistry as “the most difficult B- that I ever had in my life”). Of her various premed friends, at least one is now an MD and another is in medical school (and probably graduates in a few weeks if I am remembering this correctly). Of her various pre-vet friends, at least one is either a DVM or currently in a DVM program. My daughter, after getting her bachelor’s degree at a university that was not ranked in the top 100, is getting her DVM at a university that is ranked in the top 5 and that has a very good large animal program. The other students in the same program got their bachelor’s degrees from a very, very wide range of universities.

I think that there are two points here. One is that there are hundreds of universities and colleges in the US that are very good for premed students. The other is that @seiren’s stats are strong enough to get them accepted to a very large number of universities that would be very good choices, and that would allow them to be competitive for admissions to very good medical schools.

There is another point that is also worth making: Premed classes are very academically challenging at any university at least in the top 200 in the US. @seiren you have done very well in high school. The most important benefit of this is not to get accepted to a “top 20” university. Rather the most important benefit of this is that you will be well prepared to be ready to do well in tough classes when you show up at university. Another potential benefit is that depending upon where you attend, at some schools you may be eligible for merit based financial aid, which might allow you to avoid debt for a bachelor’s degree and maybe even save some $$ for medical school.

As I mentioned above, the majority of students who start university intending to be doctors instead choose some other path. However, some of the possible other paths include a master’s degree, and master’s degrees are usually not funded. If you save money intending to use it for medical school, and then change paths, the money you save is still likely to be useful.

And finally it is worth mentioning that the least costly undergraduate university is indeed not always the right choice. There are other factors to take into consideration, with finding a good fit probably at the top of the list. Also, finding the best academic fit is part of this, and there is a tradeoff between academically very challenging universities (eg Caltech and MIT come to mind as academically tough universities) versus universities where the academics are still rigorous, but not quite as insanely rigorous. Location and size also come into consideration. There is a lot to think about when looking for a university that will be a good fit.

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You’ve gotten a lot of great advice.

I think you are positioned well. Keep doing what you are doing. The essays are going to be the differentiator.

Start complying your list now. I’d recommend looking at schools with merit money. My son is also pre-med. He’s down to two colleges-one full pay and one where we only have to cover room & board. He likes both equally so he will likely go with the full tuition scholarship school so he can save money for medical school.

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I live in Illinois, so my NMSQT index score of 216 likely won’t qualify me. UIUC is one of my options for now, but I am not as familiar with the other ones in my state.

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My dad is a medical physicist with a Ph.D and my mom is a x-ray tech. I have tried to ask them about college costs, but they tell me not to worry about it.

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If you live in a small town a 216 could qualify you for the Rural/Small HS National Recognition program (look it up, College Board).

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