<p>I want to be a pediatric oncologist and I want an ivy education. How does Columbia compare to other ivy leagues for pediatric oncology.</p>
<p>I don’t think any Ivy would be bad for pediatric oncology. I really don’t think you can go wrong with Columbia. I also think this job sounds like a very noble profession. It seems like a very upsetting job to me so I think it’s great that you would want to do it :)</p>
<p>ps. For a second I thought that said “podiatric oncologist” and I was wondering why someone would specialize in foot cancer :P.</p>
<p>are you talking about columbia med school or doing the required undergrad to apply to med school at Columbia ?</p>
<p>Both. I’m in Texas. In a podunk too. How will that affect an application to Columbia? The schools here are laughable. My HS career is going to be geared toward a career in medicine, pediatric oncology - all AP and my grades are all A’s, I hope to have finished at least a year of college including calculus before I start college. I’ve dreamed of Columbia since I started looking into Ivy League schools. My mom thinks maybe I need to do NYU and then pre med and med at columbia. I think maybe why not do it all at Columbia? What do you guys know that can help me figure it all out? </p>
<p>Avoiding out of state tuitions a plus, maybe deal with it for a while until I am considered a resident? </p>
<p>LOL foot cancer, although that’s not funny actually. Obviously there are not alot of people willing do deal with pediatric oncology, and I was greatly inspired by a book I read a last year. I know I want to help people, but when I read that book, I realized exactly how I would do that. I’ve always wanted to work with kids too. It just fits. My mom found this forum today and I’m excited to use it, excited to already have replys to my post. Thanks very much, nicole.</p>
<p>Where you go shouldn’t be too much of a liability as long as your AP exam scores and SAT scores match with your grades. If you get A’s in your classes and 2’s and 3’s on your exams, they’ll know how seriously to take the grading.</p>
<p>Your HS career will be geared toward medicine? You’re making it sound as if you haven’t started HS yet, but then you talk about grades you got in HS - clarify please.</p>
<p>Premed would be a direction in undergrad, while you might major in biology or something. You wouldn’t “do” NYU and then Columbia for premed and med unless you want to do undergrad twice… It’s way too early to be thinking about med schoosl anyway - you’ll need really good grades in college and you just don’t know how you’ll do yet so don’t get too far ahead of yourself.</p>
<p>“Avoiding out of state tuitions a plus, maybe deal with it for a while until I am considered a resident?”</p>
<p>I really don’t understand what this is saying. Neither NYU nor Columbia are state schools so you would be paying the same amount whether you are a NY resident or not.</p>
<p>lol I used to think NYU was a public school too until I Wiki’d it. You gotta admit it does look like one as well.</p>
<p>Edit: Actually, public schools back in California all look 100 times better than NYU.</p>
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<p>OMG, this person is getting so far ahead of herself it’s unbelievable</p>
<p>Since your’e still in high school my advice to you would be to focus on getting into college…don’t worry too much about the med school part, much less specialization. If your’e really interested in that field though it would probably nice to get some volunteer experience at a hospital that does that but its kind of early to be worrying about specialization. </p>
<p>I’ll try to give you a quick run through on the path to med school</p>
<p>Undergraduate
You must do 4 years at an undergraduate school…you can major in whatever you want…being pre-med just means that you have to take certain required classes eg.organic chem, some bio, math etc…apart from those required classes, you’ll be a regular student …for eg. you could major in history and be pre-med.</p>
<p>You start applying for med school if you intend to go straight after college in your junior year. Mind you if this is the case, things like MCAT would have to be completed before this time. MCAT is a standardized test for those applying to med school…sort of like the SAT for pre-med students.
You can do your undergrad at any school from Columbia to your local state school…some people think going to a “better” school can help you get in to med school…the debate still goes in …check the pre-med forum.</p>
<p>Graduate(Med School) 4 YEARS
If you get into med school, then you’ll spend another 4years studying to be a doctor.</p>
<p>After which you will have to do three years of a pediatric residency program…and then three years of a pediatric oncology fellowship program…mind you you have to get in to the pediatric residency and pedonc fellowship program which are both fairly competitive.</p>
<p>So thats about 14years after high school…a lot of time to think and change. My advice again just focus on trying to do well in high school, do Ecs you enjoy, maybe a little volunteering in a hospital since you seem to really like medicine and leave yourself open to trying new things in college and med school you might be surprised.</p>
<p>Also read the pre-med forum on this site to get more of an idea.</p>
<p>Neither columbia nor NYU as stated before are state schools…the good news Columbia has good finaid so depending on how much your parents own it could end up costing you even less than a state school.</p>
<p>By the way what grade will you be in in the fall?</p>
<p>Thank you lizzy2009. You’ve been very helpful in answering my questions. </p>
<p>ps. Columbia2002, i am not ahead of myself i just know what i am going to do with my life.</p>
<p>Many people “know” what they’re going to do in high school. I changed my career choice 4 times in high school - once between sending college apps and receiving answers. Every single time, I was absolutely sure that that one thing was what I wanted to do.</p>
<p>The point is that what you want to do will very likely change. You don’t choose what medical specialization you want to do until med school, so think about broadening your view for now. Maybe just look at medicine for now - it’s not stopping you from specializing in pediatric oncology later. You may find out you aren’t a huge fan of bio in which case you will be miserable studying for MCATs.</p>
<p>Set yourself goals, but don’t limit yourself to them. Pediatric oncology is a very noble profession, but its also difficult (not only in terms of studying). My aunt is a psychologist in a cancer hospital for kids - both for the kids as well as the doctors. Many of the doctors are depressed, much more so than the actual patients. I personally wouldn’t have the inner strength to do a job like that.</p>
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<p>If you know what you’re going to do with your life, there’s no way you’d post something so uninformed as “I want an ivy education.”</p>