96.22 GPA
Bio SAT 720 as 9th grader
1360 SAT
31 ACT
Retaking both on the fall
Eagle Scout
AP Calc BC 4 AB 5 and AP Bio 5
Boys State
Varsity Soccer
Tennis and Track too
Good volunteer
Worked as a lifeguard, and in a dental office
Wants to go Pre-Med, Pre Dental or some healthcare track.
No Financial Aid coming our way, so we are hoping for merit aid to help offset costs so we can help with grad/med school.
Looking at the following schools:
Hobart
St Lawrence
U of R
Union
Siena - BS/MD
St Bonaventure - BS/MD
Hamilton
Middlebury
NYU
What do you all think? Any others to add? Any reach schools to add? Any schools that are better for pre med?
The NE can be awful for large merit. How much do you want to spend each year? You’d be full pay at NYU…no merit there.
I’m going to be very honest with you since I’m assuming that your child is serious about med or dental school. His stats are not high enough for a successful NE premed. He’d likely be weeded out the first year at many NE schools because his premed classes will be jammed with 4.0+. 1480+ SAT students…and likely the curves will be too harsh for him.
If you want him to have the best chance at NOT BEING WEEDED out, then along with those bs/md schools, find a good affordable school where his stats would be high that is outside of the NE.
Look into Clark University (in Worcester where the UMass medical school and some hospitals are) and and Wheaton College (in Norton, Mass) which is known for its science programs.
UMass Amherst and U Vermont will give some merit to out of state students.
The top SUNY schools tend to be affordable for out of state students.
Hamilton and Middlebury do not offer merit aid.
If “U of R” means U of Rochester, then that could be a good option as it offers some merit.
I’m in Southern PA, so not near enough to the schools you’re asking about to have loads of knowledge about them specifically (except U of R as my own currently in med school lad went there), but I can say we’ve had students with similar stats from the high school I work at go on to be pre-med both successfully and weeded out.
The key is pretty much always to be in the Top 25% of students attending the college both for the SAT/ACT and GPA. One wants to be at or near the top when they graduate college and having top stats going in gives students confidence that they can compete plus it often shows a foundation level of knowledge that allows them to be competitive.
When one has lower stats going in they can be just as intelligent in real life as those with higher stats, but the slower processing speed or lower foundational entry can be quite discouraging to them making them think all the other students are better even if they aren’t in reality. That discouragement is tough to overcome. It can be overcome with more study to add in the material, but few are mentally up to the challenge.
I’d suggest looking at schools keeping this tidbit in mind. The best merit aid also tends to come when a student is in the Top 25% (or Top 10%) of students too, so this can work out for that as well - assuming the schools offer merit aid of course.
My own lad at U of R would have been in the Top 25% at any school I think - just for comparison “competition for med school” wise regarding that school. He graduated Summa Cum Laude. No regrets on where he chose, but it’s not necessarily the school for everyone heading Pre-Med. It’s a terrific school for students loving undergrad research as the vast majority of students are involved in it.
Thanks for the feedback! My son is taking a class and going to retake the ACT and the SAT in the Fall. I do agree with boppers comment…especially #5. He has some transferable credits and he is in the New Visions Medical Program for his senior year, so he will be taking 4 college courses. I hope that gives him some additional flexibility.
This is almost impossible to truly discern. I don’t think any undergrad tracks/publishes how many incoming freshmen premeds it has, and how many of THEM get into med school.
I remember a high school senior telling me that School X had a 90% acceptance rate into med school. In his mind, that meant that every premed that went to that school had a 90% chance of getting into med school. He didn’t realize that 75% of the freshmen premeds got weeded out and never applied. So, what does that 90% mean to any incoming frosh or parent???
As I understand it, a 90% acceptance rate can only mean one thing:
that 90% of students who actually applied to medical school were accepted by at least one medical school.
Most students who actually apply to med school already should have completed (or be in the process of completing) all expected pre-med courses, with passing grades. The denominator in the acceptance rate does not (and perhaps should not) include every first year college student who ever considered himself or herself “pre med”.
A premise behind the “weed out” concept is that some colleges are more aggressively discouraging the weakest students from even applying, thus artificially inflating their med school admission rates. An alternate explanation is that the highest med school admission rates are simply telegraphing low college acceptance rates (and high average entering stats.) IOW, the most significant weed out is at admission time, when those colleges cherry pick the best students and the best test-takers (who tend later to have high college GPAs and MCAT scores.)
Colleges with >= 75% med school admission rates include Columbia, Duke, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, UChicago, UPenn, WUSTL, and Yale. I haven’t seen any good evidence that those schools do (or don’t) weed out more aggressively than other colleges.
So I think this question needs more research before I’d feel confident advising a student to turn down certain schools in hopes of getting a higher GPA at a much less selective college. I’d focus on overall academic quality, personal fit, and net cost. Let the adcoms figure out whether the applicant is prepared to succeed in the pre-med/other programs at their college.
@tk21769 Agree with many of your points…a med school acceptance rate where the denominator includes every student who ever considered themselves ‘pre-med’ is not a very helpful statistic. Many schools have taken to reporting the med school acceptance rate of students who were at or above the average GPA and average MCAT scores of that year’s overall med school applicant database. This number can be informative and allows one to compare between schools. Obviously still not a perfect measure though. What would be most helpful if every school made public a grid of acceptance by gpa and mcat score, in the AMCAS format https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
Not only is WUSTL’s prehealth handbook an excellent document, kudos to them for transparency in reporting acceptance rates in this level of detail. Although the links I shared don’t match up in years, if you look at AMCAS stats from 16/17 (matching WUSTL’s data), one can see that WUSTL has a much higher acceptance rate than the overall rate, including an impressive acceptance rate at GPA levels of <3.5. To me, this demonstrates that med school admission committees do consider undergrad institution, at least at the margin. Another point is that many students at WUSTL with lower GPAs score well on the MCAT, which I interpret as a sign of institutional strength in teaching BPCM courses. Yes, you have to be able to do the work at WUSTL, but the point that WUSTL is already weeding students in undergrad admissions is a good one.
@bopper what about Case Western? We have been getting a significant amount of promo from this school and after noting your logo, I researched the school and it looks solid. What can you tell me about it and do you think he could go pre health there?
IMHO Holy Cross is high up on the list of places to avoid if you want to go to med school.
Not all colleges offer a Committee Letter for med school applicants, but if your school offers it then med schools expect you to get it. This gives those colleges a sword they can swing to to boost their med school “admit” rate. You’re wasting your time applying if your college declines to recommend you. Holy Cross is one of these schools. They will only write a favorable letter for their stronger students and they make no bones about doing this.
In contrast a school like Hamilton as mentioned in post #12 appears to write a supportive letter for anyone requesting one. WUSTL may do the same since their handbook mentioned in post #11 says “In addition to your recommendation letters, we will provide a letter of introduction highlighting the strengths of your candidacy, if your application process welcomes such a letter. All medical schools expect A&S applicants to have a prehealth cover letter.” This also reinforced the point that if your school offers a letter you need to submit it, so a letter saying “not recommended” gives the committee de-facto control over who applies.
CWRU is fantastic for pre-health…they have a med school so they know what it takes to get in. THere are 4 hospitals within walking distance to do volunteering/research at. Case has strong engineering and liberal arts programs.
Another great thing about Case is the Single Door Admissions policy…once you get in you can major in whatever you want…i f you change your mind you don’t have to apply to another school within the college.