As a premed student, should I choose a top tiered competitive college or a small private school? Which will increase my chances of acceptance? School suggestions?
Top tier colleges with competitive admissions tend toward small and private in many cases. That noted, schools of this type (NESCACs et al) can offer excellent support for their pre-med students.
Take a look at the pre-med forum on this site. It has loads of useful information.
Your chances of acceptance are going to be based upon your GPA, MCAT scores, and ECs. Oodles of colleges could get you there - or not - pending what you do at the college. Pick one that fits you financially and academically. IME, students do best when they are in the Top 25% of incoming students at their college with both GPA and SAT/ACT.
I often show students this Class Profile from U Rochester’s med school class since they’re nice enough to post it online each year (change the year in the URL and you can look at several). It gives you a great idea of what they look for in successful applicants and the variety of schools those applicants attended. I suspect pretty much all med schools look for similar things.
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/MediaLibraries/URMCMedia/education/md/documents/2022-profile.pdf
I think that in addition to tremendous support, it’s indisputable that a lot of top tier private colleges have tremendous grade inflation to help you along. You would think that med schools would normalize, but I don’t think they do.
This was an interesting read. Thank you for sharing it!