Help me to set a target

IvyGrad09
Mon, 13 Aug 2018 09:24:20 +0000

Medical school acceptance is based on undergrad GPA, standardized test (MCAT,) recommendations, and practical experience (shadowing doctors, hospital volunteering, etc.)

To prepare for that, your undergrad studies have to include bio w lab, chem w lab–actually go online and see the list yourself on JHU, Tufts or another college website (“premed track by year.”)

For undergrad admission in BME, very hot field:

Join a local and national BME society. That way you’ll receive invitations to academic meetings that you should consider attending. It’s a good way to see the cutting edge people and programs in your field, and meet people who are doing whatever aspect of BME you find interesting.

One or more of those folks may take you up and draw you into their circle, including perhaps influencing your college acceptance and scholarships/funding.

Enter national and international science competitions, Intel, for example: All that you should research yourself, many options.

Spend summers in programs related to BME–but not exactly the same–for example, robotics or programming. You want to splash a little away from the center and cross-pollinate sciences. In fact, it may boost your science creativity to take a drawing or painting class too.

Your current school likely will offer a pre-PSAT timed, proctored practice SAT. You’ll also take a PSAT. But you should take practice tests for months to prepare. First year of prep school may be early to start, but you seem in a hurry, so see how you do in a timed tryout on your own. In general, SAT is the slower, trickier test (as I recall, no calculator) and ACT is the fast test (with calculator.) You won’t know which you’ll excel at until you try them. At any rate, check out the latest test info online at their sites.

Lastly, I urge you not to focus on a specific school yet: You need to hear and see the people in BME give their papers, and see from that where they teach, what research aspect specifically interests you, or from whom you particularly want to learn.

I am not a fan of having one school you aim for based on its reputation or rank. That’s too abstract and sets you up for terrible disappointment if you don’t get in. It also isn’t great for your development: You’re an individual with particular gifts (you hope) that require a specific fit. There should be nothing generic about your goals or your ultimate school list.

–You are a rising upper school first-year, please keep an open mind about everything, even or especially about who you are and what you may become.

If you’ve researched BME and are sure it’s for you (though that seems too early,) your first aim should be learning more about BME by experience: What aspects you particularly like and would be unusually talented in, and then figure out where your best fit would be by mentorship and specialization.

If you are “interested” in BME merely because you read somewhere online it is a way to get into med school, think again. That’s why I suggest more exposure to BME first, before you commit yourself. You may decide after sitting through a few hours of papers and demonstrations that BME is not your thing: No problem.

Medical School is open to anyone regardless of major who jumps successfully through the hoops outlined in my first paragraph.

You could major in drama (or whatever,) as long as you did the science foundation required for the MCAT. Even if you skipped the foundation as an undergrad, you could make it up in a post-Baccalaureate program (Research that yourself online.)

For the undergrad “premed track” (which is not an official major, but just a list of science classes that prepare you for your MCAT,) you’ll take a college psych class. Not sure what your plan with an economics minor would be. Why not see when you get into college?

First things first, First Year. You haven’t scored a grade yet in prep school.