I showed you above - whether Luther College, Arkansas or Princeton, you can end up in med school and a top hospital for residency.
This goes to budget first - what can your parents pay but also what are they willing to pay ?
If Florida is $8k tuition so about $25k all in - your parents prefer.
Are they ok paying high $40s for CWRU or $60k+ for gw - including housing ?
UF is in a small city - }really a town - so there’s not a downtown. But there’s a Cheesecake Factory :). And two Bolays in Gainesville - a yummy build your own bowl place.
UF is the best value but not best on what you described.
What is your parents cost tolerance and that includes med school at 100k plus a year.
“For universities that are college towns I LOVE downtown areas so, if their not already integrated into a city (like GWU and NYU, i would really prefer that they have an active downtown scene.”
So this is more UW in both cases than UF.
But UW cost much more so that’s what the student needs to discuss with the parents.
Also, maybe not this student but others are steering clear of Florida for female rights and other political issues. That may or may not be a concern to OP.
FTR if you’re serious about being premed, you can’t graduate early. Not only that but you need to take your time because you’ll have ONE shot at med school and most successful applicants apply senior year with a glide year… Or more.
CWRU is very good for premed advising and access to clinical experience, being right by University Circle. It’s fun - you can’t have thousands of young adults together without some amount of fun things happening - but it’s definitely not work hard/play hard and all in all, on the quieter/nerdy side. And sports are definitely not that big. Going there would mean prioritizing your career goal over parties&spectator sports.
the social/campus part of the colleges are all preferences but i know that i can make the best of my experience at any school and be happy as long as it’s not hardcore studying or just dull. so i just want to know if there are schools that are good by a significant amount where that big difference in price is worth it! if the school has opportunities i am more than willing to work hard to get those opportunities as it’s something i’ve been doing since high school!
You are pre med. it will be hardcore or you won’t be a doctor. You will be on your own to advocate for yourself too.
Some classes will be more difficult than others, of course.
And some kids do better than others in the same classes. I don’t know what your aptitude is for the classes you’ve chosen.
But if you want to go to school for pure fun, med school isn’t likely in your future.
As I showed you above in my first post - the name doesn’t matter. What you do does. But you will have to seek the things you do. They are not going to find you on their own.
This is college - not hs. Time to get aggressive. Every college you listed is great - there’s not a ‘better’ one.
The political issues was another reason why I was scared about UF. However, I talked to a couple of students there and they said that the politics and florida’s overall stance on women’s/lgbtq rights didn’t really affect their experience yet, nor did the budget cuts. However, I think it might be a little different for the next four years💀
Yes! this was my plan! I wanted to graduate early so I can get classes out of the way and take a gap year or two to focus on improving other parts of my application!
I am aware of this and have definitely considered the cost of attendance in general. I just wanted to mention only tuition in this post since it was easier to compare those costs rather than the entire cost of attendance since some schools, when calculating, don’t take into account the same things as other schools (like indirect costs or such).
But housing in DC and Boston is not housing in Gainesville. So always best to use tuition, room and board.
What you may look into does having so many AP or DE hurt you - will med schools accept them? I don’t know the answer but I bet one of the posters does.
Or do they hurt you because they move you to the next level of class - but you may not be truly prepared for that level as AP is not like college work in difficulty - at least not a pure 1:1.
I just wanted to use APs to get me out of some of the liberal arts/GE credits and I’m trying to do some research as to what med schools don’t take AP credits for non-premed courses. As for preparing me for college, I have taken over a year of foundational courses at my state university that fulfill premed pre reqs for subjects like ochem, biochem, and higher level math above calc 3. Those classes were known as weed outs at my university and I did well in them so Im hoping that no matter where I go I will be prepared for the next level classes!
Most/many biostats classes and research will be housed in public health/Epidemiology. Some of your schools are strong in public health/Epidemiology, others are not. For example, UVA is weak in public health, while uw, bu, and gwu are considered strong. Look at at the usnews Epidemiology rankings for some guidance. Fit is still most important-consider that closely, but high quality offerings and research in your area of interest are also important.
There are plenty of premeds who have a LOT of fun in undergraduate school. Yes, they have to work hard, but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t fun. You can message me for more information.
In my opinion, all of the schools on your list are find options. Using “higher cost” as a metric probably isn’t the way to go. You need to figure out where you think you might fit in the best and where you think you will find the most things on your list that are appealing to you.
Choosing a higher price school might not net you more of what YOU want in a college.
@WayOutWestMom will verify…but I don’t think medical schools are concerned with courses other than the ones they require for applicants to their medical school.
My son was choosing between Case and UW in the end. Case has an amazing location in Cleveland and we liked the students we met a lot. Great walkable urban area with amazing cultural amenities right there (museums, symphony, botanical garden, Little Italy, etc.) The on-campus housing seemed decent. We had great middle eastern food in university circle. It was by far our favorite until we hit UW. I’ve been writing about UW a lot lately because we were all quite smitten. TLDR: every conceivable urban amenity (certainly comparable to BU if not NYU) is right there, but you also have great outdoor opportunities. Unlike NYU, BYU, Pitt, and even Case, the campus is surprisingly lush and self-contained. You’re not just crossing streets all the time to get to class. School spirit there is probably comparable to most big state flagship schools. The dorms seemed pretty nice and new. And, well, it’s not in Ohio or Florida (with all that might imply for someone with ovaries or someone who is going into healthcare). I think the big downsides might be darkness/cloud cover during the winter months and maybe cost of living (but not compared to NYC or Boston). I’ve heard great things about Gainesville and about the University of Florida but in today’s climate, I might pay more and sacrifice sunshine/humidity for rain and mountain views and good transit and healthcare access.
There really is no consistency among med school in what AP credits they will accept/not accept. I would research all of your in-state public med schools since those will be your best chance for an admission.
Be aware that some med school have surprisingly high requirements for humanities–as many as 24 credits at some schools.
UF also has several (3 or 4) hospitals very close to campus for you to have jobs, shadowing, other opportunities. It’s a big enough town to have the box stores, little neighborhood groupings of stores and restaurants, UF and a large community college. Where there are college kids, there are things to do like movies and rec activities, on and off campus. For the ~$25k you’ll save per year, there are places you can travel to (Orlando, Tampa, even Atlanta).
If you already had Organic Chemistry at a 4-year college and got a B- or higher, then the plan to graduate in 3 years makes sense.
Do take a good array of classes, including in neuroscience and biochemistry as well as advanced Biology or chemistry, biostatistics beyond elementary level if it’s offered, Spanish through Spanish for Health Professions or another language spoken in the US as high as you can in terms of proficiency, perhaps a Medical Humanities Minor if you can fit it in, etc.
I stand by my recommendation of GWU as a happy medium in terms of what you want academically, socially, and urban location.
Another downside to UF is that they might want you to graduate as fast as possible (being a public university with strict credit benchmarks for graduation so that most graduate in 4 years) and, seeing how many DE credits you have, might “kick you out” before your academic record shows all you’re capable of - something a private university is highly unlikely to do since their goal, on average, is to keep you there. You really don’t want to be a college student for just 2 years as a future med school applicant.
I vote UF. There’s no reason to spend a quarter of a million dollars for a bachelors degree you can get for a fraction of the price. UF hits everything.
As for data science, I actually do that for a living. I’m not sure how it’s related to medical school as a premed major. If you’re interested in tech, I recommend getting an IT/CompSci degree that’s more general. This way you have more options when you graduate. You don’t want to overspecialize in something out of college because you might find you don’t like data. It’s pretty dry and boring for some people. Just learn SQL. It’s not difficult to get your foot in the door for data science as it’s a fairly broad specialty.