<p>Hi everyone! I’m a 15 year old student currently enrolled as a sophomore in Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted; if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a school where teenage girls can skip anywhere from 1-4 years of secondary school education. Most girls in the program earn their B.A. or B.S. by the time their peers are graduating high-school. Mary Baldwin is an women’s college located in a small town, making it ideal to keep teenage girls safe and mostly out of trouble. However, its science department is not as good as other, similar liberal arts colleges; we only have one physics professor (who is actually a chemist)! As a pre-med student, I’m wondering how completing my undergraduate degree at this relatively unknown school will affect my chances of getting into a good medical school. Yes, I know that all medical schools are required to give the same standard of education, but I’d really love to go to UPenn, UC San Francisco or Johns Hopkins for medical school. If I keep my grades up, do well on the MCAT, do a lot of ECs, and complete a Masters or PhD (from age 17, when I’ll graduate from Mary Baldwin, to 21), can I make up for not having gone to a top-ranked undergraduate institution? Also, how will my lack of a high-school diploma affect my medical school admission?
I know I sound really dumb, but my parents completed their education in India and can’t answer my questions very well, and my advisor refuses to answer these questions for some reason. Thanks!</p>
<p>1.) As a general rule, undergraduate prestige doesn’t matter that much. It’s certainly something that can be overcome with high grades, MCAT, EC’s, and especially a PhD. (A Master’s wouldn’t help very much.) This is especially true if the PhD is subsequently done at a name-brand institution.</p>
<p>2.) However, I don’t recommend this path – if you’re going to get a PhD, it might be wise to do it simultaneous with the MD. That would result in your MD being paid for. (PhD’s are paid for in both situations, usually.) If you’re going to spend that much time in school, the financial help can be a big deal.</p>
<p>3.) However, I think if you’re applying to a joint-MD/PhD degree, applying at age 17 (or whenever) will hurt you. Being that young is a negative.</p>
<p>4.) Bearing #1 in mind, I’m concerned that this school is one of the ones that is <em>so</em> under-equipped that it actually WILL hurt you. Most schools are fine/acceptable, but this one – it only has one physics professor?! – sounds like it might be below that threshold, bluntly.</p>
<p>5.) Even if it’s still possible to overcome as a handicap, why would you want to handicap yourself in this way right off the bat – seems very unwise to me.</p>
<p>6.) Your advisor’s reluctance to speak to the subject arouses my suspicion. Ask for a track record – has anybody from this program EVER gone on to medical school?</p>
<p>It sounds like with a limited natural sciences department, it would be difficult for you to take the courses required by almost all medical schools in your bachelors, and that you may have to do a post-bach program to satisfy course requirements.</p>
<p>I don’t think the financial issues will be a problem…but you are saying that getting a PhD before going to medical school will be beneficial?
I do know that a few of the students at the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted have gone on to grad programs at WashU, Stanford, and Yale.</p>
<p>There’s no reason to pay $160K for a medical education if you’re going to get a PhD anyway. That’s a lot of money, even for families where financial issues aren’t a problem.</p>
<p>Yes, I think having a science PhD helps with admissions.</p>
<p>Grad programs aren’t the same thing, especially if they’re in the humanities. The question is medical school.</p>
<p>I originally wanted to get an MD/PhD, but my advisor said that those who enroll in that program are not fit to practice medicine and should only do biomedical research. Is that true? I’m starting to think that coming here screwed me over.</p>
<p>Well, it’s the same training as getting them separately, which appears to be what you’re planning anyway. And it certainly isn’t true that they’re “not fit” to practice medicine, it’s just that most of them choose to spend most of their attention on biomedical research. Those that choose to practice medicine (and almost all of them practice SOME medicine) are generally excellent docs.</p>