<p>There are a few schools I am growing more interested in, but I plan on studying “pre-med”, so I need to know more on their abilities/prestige in the natural science departments. Here are the schools:
-SMU (Souther Methodist University)
-NYU
-Georgetown University
-Vanderbilt University</p>
<p>I know each of these schools are highly prestigious and excellent overall, but what about their science/pre-med departments? Do they get alot of their students to top med schools? Any info would be helpful. Thanks!</p>
<p>I know NYU for myself because two of my courses are in the NYU medical school program.
They said a lot of undergraduates internships are available in NYU med programs, and at other city’s medical program.</p>
<p>I don’t know how expensive the rests are, but certainly NYU is really expensive.</p>
<p>I think undergraduate pre-med should not be bother with ranking. As long as the school is a good school, and their biological science departments are pretty strong, and they have enough funding and events for students, there is no need to go to NYU or Columbia.</p>
<p>But if you can get into NYU, and tuition is not a problem at all, I think great school can really make a difference. Even if you decide to switch your career path, you can still go on with NYU degree.</p>
<p>Ya if money isnt an option and Georgetown/Vandy tier schools are an option for you, I would also look into Rice. Its has an amazingly high med school acceptance rate, and I do love the school despite turning it down (I am not set on a career in medicine).</p>
<p>Usually someone pipes in and corrects this misconception by now, but I will do it. High acceptance rates to medical school are easily manipulated to look very good and, even when honest (if ever), are far more due to student quality and a way for a university to ensure that they continue to get good pre-meds rather than them actually “sending” someone to medical school. An example of how schools cheat is Swarthmore. For many years they had a 100% acceptance rate to medical school. What they didn’t tell you is they were essentially forcing anyone who was not guaranteed to get in somewhere to take time off before applying so they didn’t have to count them.</p>
<p>Maybe the following metric is a better one to measure how successful the students from a school sends their students to medical schools.</p>
<p>x = the average of the number of students taking general chemistry class and the number of students taking organic chemistry class.
y = the number of students who matriculate into a medical school eventually.</p>
<p>the metric = y / x.</p>
<p>If a school appears to be a magnet to attract too many motivated premeds (say, it has an affiliated well-known medical school, e.g., the school that was said to have many hot girls here :)) or this school heavily advertises how good it is for premed students, the metric number may need to be scaled down by a fudge factor, say, 0.8.</p>
<p>This is just my bias only though.</p>
<p>Regarding rice, I heard in recent years it tried to attract more engineering students. (being patriotic maybe? Or, they do not want to forget their root, which has been in engineering for years.)</p>
<p>To me, it points to the fact that the ratio of the number of premed students vs the number of professors who are more into hardcore engineering may be too high so the school wants to seek some balance. Their BME department (which is quite good, as I heard) may have a hard time turning away students – maybe by making it harder and harder to scare away students who are not that strong in physical science/engineering. (After all, that school had been famous for many engineering feilds before NIH got more funding than DOD during cold war.) It still heavily advertises how close it is to TMC in order to attract high stats high school students (many of them are premed) though.</p>
<p>We have friends’ son graudated from Vandy UG and then Vandy Med. School. In residency at Harvard, turned down residency at JHU. Not too bad at all.</p>
<p>Regarding Rice, ya I understand you get schools (JHU…cough cough) that do kinda screw over “non-competitive” applicants to medical schools to inflate their school’s success rates at medical school. However, I believe Rice doesnt pull this stunt in their acceptance rate number. I believe some attribute it more to the fact that 40% of Rice students are Texans, and Texas has quite a few medical schools where these instaters would be benefited.</p>
<p>I think that it would be of interest to know how many graduating seniors were accepted into medical schools as “y”. The definition of X may be inflated to be used as Pre-med especially at lower tier school. But, I do not know any other better way. The fudge factor approach may be reasonable.</p>
<p>^ Reading what I wrote above, I realize that I may be too harsh in my comments toward the few schools (esp. regarding Rice, which was once DS’s top choice, and we still think it is a very good school.) that I happen to mention. I should apologize for this overly harsh comment.</p>
<p>The reality is that almost all top private college may share the same problem, that is, an “unhealthy” ratio of the number of premed/prelaw students vs the number of professors who are sort of enthusiastic about their school’s “serious business” of sending their students to medical/law schools.</p>
<p>I remember that BRM once said (somewhat in frustration when he needs to deal with many these kinds of students in his Kaplan class): all prestigious private colleges are premed factories (if I remember what he said correctly.) It means that you may need to introduce a fudging factor as I mentioned above. If you end up being a very strong student there (But how would you know that when you are a HS student?), this is a non-factor.</p>
<p>The number “y” for each school can be found. AAMC publishes it each year and it was posted on CC many times before. The problem is “x”. Oftentimes, it is only after you are in that school already that you can estimate what the “x” is (at some school at least.) But you are only in one school only.</p>
<p>Hmm…some may say (and I agree) we should use the percentage instead of the absolute number for “x” and “y” here. Otherwise, state schools like Berkeley, UCLA, and Texas produce a huge number of medical school students each year.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, A Vandy student on CC (the sample size = 1 here) complained that the premed classes are very very challenging. I do not know if this is true though. My guess is its science courses may be rigorous compared to the similar courses offered by most other rigorous schools.</p>