Yeah. My first job was teaching kids that went to underfunded school systems, I’ve shadowed researchers, and I’m in the final stages of application processes for positions in labs.
Have you shadowed MD/DOs and spent time talking with them and understanding what the job entails on a day-to-day basis?
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You don’t have to wait - that’s what you’re missing. Plenty like UMN will estimate up front.
Others, like Alabama, have automerit. No guessing. Your cost all in (tuition, room and board) would be $22k-ish. That’s why thousands of Northeasterners are there.
You know up front schools like Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin, Penn State etc won’t give merit or in the case of CO - significant merit. They give many $6250.
You know a UVM, Delaware, South Carolina, Miami Ohio will - and UGA may. UF and FSU won’t but their total costs are less than other schools that give merit.
If cost is a consideration and I think it is - then plan your list based on this and not based on this school seems good. Let’s apply and see.
Reverse the order. See the likely or potential cost , Then apply if it works!!
There’s enough intel on this board you can ensure a properly built list but since your family wants to see offers /then have that true discussion now - what # would we ideally hit ??
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Any interest in Catholic / Jesuit schools ?
A lot kids from my school go to Notre Dame, BC, and Holy Cross. So if I can get into them RD and they’re decent packages, sure. It’s just that they tend to be less STEM focused.
They are more than enough STEM for your interests. You don’t need a state of the art Nano technology lab or a nuclear collider or an Advanced Polymer Center to major in Public Health and fulfill med school requirements!
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You responded to me by mistake. That’s ok.
How do you know you want to be a physician (see what I wrote above)?
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I like chemsitry, biology and lab work but don’t wanna do academia. I know biotech is an option but being a physician is a more stable career and I don’t think I’d do too well in a corporate environment (I’m not great with politics).
Well….fyi hospitals can be very political.
You will not know if you want to be a physician until you shadow MD/DOs, get a good sense of what they do on a daily basis, spend time talking to them etc.
You also need to be able to clearly and confidently answer the “why” question if you make it to an interview.
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I asked because many give significant merit - not the three you mentioned tho (which all do meet need if you have)..
As an example, there was recently a student asking about Xavier of New Orleans. Their med school placement report seemed great, and @fiftyfifty1 who is a physician validated she’s heard only great things.
There’s also colleges with special programs. U of Alabama ($22K for you) has the McCullough Pre Med Cohort. Description below.
Schools - more than these - but Miami Ohio, U Florida, UT Dallas, Pitt, and more - more than you’d think - have Pre-Health living learning communities (i.e. dorms that are themed and includes people with shared career/academic iinterests).
Many Jesuit give merit - Loyola Maryland says this about their program (of course, they choose who get letters)
In 2025, 63 percent of Loyola’s medical school applicants with a committee letter matriculated to either allopathic (MD) or osteopathic (DO) medical schools.
Xavier in New Orleans (I believe an BCU) but shows - see link. I also put U Dayton, which is very aggressive merit wise - see link.
Your search is fine as you desire - but if you seek a different type of school, it’s ok to pivot. If you have a budget, it’s ok to pivot. I can’t think of a main stream school out there that won’t help you achieve your goals. At the same time, simply by going to a bigger name, is no assurance of achieving your goals.
Good luck.
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Research is done in labs; medicine is done with people who are NOT in labs.
Research is nice, but often overvalued by naive pre-meds and their parents.
Community service w/disadvantaged groups & communities is more highly valued by med schools. (Teaching/tutoring is considered an academic competency, not community service, no matter which type of community you’re working with.)
Community service is working directly to help alleviate the physical, mental or emotional suffering of others. Like volunteering for helping to build or furnish housing (think Habitat for Humanity), food banks, clothing banks, soup kitchens, Meals on Wheels, battered women’s shelters, homeless outreach programs, helping homeless/recent non English-speaking immigrants to look for jobs or file their taxes.
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Unfortunately the days of the doctored-owned independent practices are pretty much over. New doctors should expect to go to work for a corporately owned healthcare system and work as 1099 salaried employees.
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OP - I just put this on another thread - but it might open your eyes a bit.
I like Vanderbilt U, a top med school/hospital- where I was a patient, because they posts useful lists.
Here are their residents for Neurological Surgery. It’s pretty interesting. I was a radiation patient - and results were similar - including names you never heard of.
So even if you end up at UMASS or similar, your goals are equally in range - just as these students did. There’s big names, of course,…but also not big names.
Schools like Miss State, Oklahoma State, Penn State, and Quinnipiac for the neurological surgery.
Schools like Indiana U Indy Campus, UAB, LSU, FIU, UTK, Florida A&M, Lipscomb, Northern Illinois - and more and yes that includes top schools for radiation.
You can have a lab based career without being in academia. There are also many “stable” careers in health care besides becoming a physician.
BS/MD programs are extremely, extremely competitive. Take a look at the requirements, essays etc. You mentioned UConn- you still need to take the mcat and complete several essays- including one that discusses shadowing and medical experiences.
Do you have a teaching credential? It took me years to complete degrees and state teaching credentials to be able to say that I taught children at underfunded schools. Be careful how you state your experiences.
Were you tutoring?
For med school entry you need to have face to face patient contact.
Minimum skills are practice in taking hundreds of vitals, triaging patients, and initiating patient lab procedures. During those experiences, you’ll have exposure to blood, bile and urine. A LOT of students can’t take the odors of the injured homeless.
Plus, expect to have your parents pay close to $100k per year. Students are on loans or are on the Bank of Mom and Dad.
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I was an assistant to licensed teachers.
Have you considered Medical Laboratory Science? It’s a very stable career and doesn’t require a graduate/professional degree.
Mayo Clinic describes MLS this way:
A medical laboratory scientist (MLS), also known as a medical technologist or clinical laboratory scientist, works to analyze a variety of biological specimens. They are responsible for performing scientific testing on samples and reporting results to physicians.
Medical laboratory scientists perform complex tests on patient samples using sophisticated equipment like microscopes. The data they find plays an important role in identifying and treating cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other medical conditions. It is estimated 60 to 70 percent of all decisions regarding a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, hospital admission, and discharge are based on the results of the tests medical laboratory scientists perform.
MLS grads can work in a hospital, a stand alone medical lab, a biotech lab, a public health lab, a medical research lab (like the NIH), a forensics lab (as part of the medical examiners office), a pharmaceutical research lab.
Please understand…these BS/MD programs are high reaches for just about all applicants.
You have some excellent strengths. But my free advice is to put medical school on the back burner for now. Look for a great undergrad school where you will be happy, and can see yourself doing well for four years. If you decide to apply to medical school, it will always be there. And you can do so later.
Many of the schools on your current list offer a variety of majors, and this is a good thing…just in case you change your mind about applying to medical school.
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There’s public health, medical research, and medical school. They are not the same thing. Being undecided between these options at this point is entirely reasonable.
And you can major in anything and be a premed student.
You have a list of reaches or high reaches that are expensive. Public health, medical research, and premed are all likely to lead to some form of graduate school. Medical school is expensive, and typically is only funded by some combination of loans and the bank of Mom and Dad. Master’s degrees are typically again only funded by loans and/or parents, but at least take less time and therefore less total dollars compared to medical school. PhDs are typically funded, but admissions is insanely competitive. Also the stipend for a PhD student is typically just enough to live on very frugally, and some help from Mom and Dad can be helpful.
Which means that saving some college $$ for graduate school is a very good idea.
Also, for any of public health, medical school, or medical research, you do not need to attend a big name undergraduate school to get into a very good graduate program. If you look at students at very good medical schools, or very good master’s degree programs, or very good biomedical PhD programs, you will find that they come from a very wide range of undergraduate universities.
Part of this implies that I think that as many others have said you should pay attention to budget, and apply to more schools that are likely to be affordable, and that are likely to allow you to both completely avoid loans for your bachelor’s degree and also leave some money in the bank to help pay for a graduate program.
I did not attend Caltech. I have a few friends who did. I did attend MIT, which is quite similar. I understand that these schools are a good fit for some very strong students who want to work very hard for four years. I would not personally pick either of them to study public health on a premed track. I understand that some students do keep up a medical-school worthy GPA at both of these schools, but this will be very tough. Both MIT and Caltech are full of very strong students and are academically very challenging.
This is compatible with my experience. At Caltech, or at MIT, you should expect there to be quite a few students who were able to walk in off the street with no preparation at all and get 800 on the math part of the regular SAT exam. The students at Caltech and MIT in many cases really are that strong, and least in math and science. And even they find the school to be a LOT of work. The desire to do this needs to come from inside yourself.
Which perhaps comes to my main point: You should be looking for a university that is a good fit for you and for what you want to do. Just because a school is highly ranked, does not mean that it is a good choice for you.
UCLA and UC Berkeley are great schools. I do not think that they are worth the cost for a bachelor’s degree for an out of state student (at one point I did very seriously consider one of them for a PhD, but that would have been fully funded). I might say the same thing about Michigan.
Schools that are safeties for you might include ones that will help you in terms of making it possible for you to maintain a medical-school-worthy GPA in tough premed classes while saving some money for medical school (or for some other graduate program).
Given your intended majors, keeping open the option of some sort of graduate program seems like a good plan.
By the way, many students take a gap between when they get their bachelor’s degree and when they start graduate school.
There are quite a few universities in Canada that are very good. Some of the “not quite as well known ones” might be less expensive for international students compared to McGill or Toronto. You might want to also look at Queen’s, Concordia, Dalhousie, or if you want a smaller school Mount Allison (in New Brunswick) or Acadia (in Nova Scotia). You should look at the prices for international students for each of these which will vary quite a bit. McGill and Toronto are known for grade deflation which might not be ideal for a premed student. At least one daughter did demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a “medical school worthy” GPA at one of the smaller primarily undergraduate universities in eastern Canada, although she is more interested in research (and is now studying for a PhD, in a biomedical field in the US).
Given that you are in-state with a strong GPA and SAT score I think that your chances for admissions at U.Mass are very good (probably a safety), and that it will be affordable and help you save money for medical/graduate school. Yes, it is very good. Premed classes there will academically challenging and will be full of very strong students. It is true that you probably did better in high school than you might have strictly speaking needed to get accepted to U.Mass in-state. However, the point is that your very good results in high school will help you to be prepared to do well in the tough premed classes. When premed students start getting weeded out, you want to be one of the students who is not weeded out. Even with your excellent results from high school, premed classes will still be tough at U.Mass (or any other school on your list) and you will need to work very hard and make a strong effort to stay ahead.
Both daughters had majors that overlapped with premed classes and had many friends who were premed. I have heard a few stories about exams with class averages in the 40’s or 50’s. Some students will get 80’s or 90’s on these exams and they might be the students who are headed to medical school (although other issues will impact this such as MCAT results, medical experience, references, and whether they just decide to do something else).
I think that this is quite important for admissions to the BS/MD programs.
I think that you have mentioned above the idea of waiting to see what offers you get from multiple schools, comparing these offers, and then deciding where to go. I think that this is a very good approach.
By the way, I think that you are doing very well. Hopefully this thread is useful and will help you think about the options that you are going to have going forward.
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Yeah, it has. Thanks for all the advice.
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