<p>I live in Louisiana. I’m currently a junior and I really want to be a dentist.
My friends are telling me to go to Tulane for pre-med since I won’t have to take the MCAT if I maintain a 4.0 GPA there, but I want to go to an out of state college, like Brown University. I know Brown’s pre-med courses will be harder than Tulane’s, but I think it will prepare me better for med school.
So what should I do? Attend a college in Louisiana or Brown?</p>
<p>could be wrong, but i think brown has an excellent premed program. if you can get in and afford it, i say shoot for brown.</p>
<p>I mean, I’m sure they do have an excellent premed program, but everyone is telling me to go the “easy” school, which in this case is Tulane. Is brown’s pre-med curriculum that hard?</p>
<p>You don’t have to take the MCAT to become a dentist, do you?</p>
<p>I do… I have to take it to get into med school so I can become a dentist…</p>
<p>Ummmm… maybe your first step in thinking of being a dentist is to take the right exam?</p>
<p>Google the Dental School Exam (DAT). The MCAT is for medical schools. Please investigate. Good luck.</p>
<p>this is personal preference, but i’d be wary if someone advised me to do something because it was the easier option</p>
<p>You go to dental school, not medical school, to become a dentist.</p>
<p>alright, thanks!</p>
<p>If you go to Georgetown (I believe that’s the right college), you can get guaranteed admission into their Medical school. Just a thought.</p>
<p>Do all doctors make the same amount of money regardless of their school?</p>
<p>^No.
A brain surgeon makes significantly more then a pediatrician, and location causes salaries to vary also. In rural areas you generally make less money then urban areas. School probably plays a role in employment, top med school students can have an edge over other students. I’m not completely sure though.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>How refreshing to find a poster who’s done his/her homework about his/her chosen profession before posting on CC! </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>^ur style of sarcasm is the best thing since sliced bread</p>
<p>Rush10 may be talking about a post-bac program at Georgetown, GEMS which has about a 75% admit rate into Georgetown SOM. However the GEMS program is not an undergrad degree – it’s a competitive program itself.</p>
<p>Saugus: not all physicians make the same money. Better ones make more. Some specialties make more. Remember, the last place student in a graduating med school class is still called “doctor”. But you can guarantee that he/she won’t be fought over like the top students in the class nor will be invited into the more rigorous (and better paying) specialties.</p>
<p>yeah, smart idea. I mean nobody from Yale or Harvard ever gets into med school…</p>
<p>It truly doesn’t matter. Idk why everyone on this form is obsessed with ivy leagues. There are so many great doctors that did not go to an ivy league. Look up the Nobel and MacArthur fellows, they come from a wide range of schools in America. Its not the school that makes you smart. The school give you a status symbol and connections. If you are truly intelligent you can do whatever you want wherever you want. That being said a doctor is a doctor. When do you ever ask where your doctor went to school? First of all of you are going to be a doctor it doesn’t matter where you go undergrad at all. There are kids who go to state schools do really well on the mcat and in college and get into Harvard medical school ( my teachers son). On the other hand I personally know people coming from ivy leagues who are struggling to get in med school because of the MCAT and they scored super high on SATs. It truly doesn’t matter how you do on SATs or in high school because college is much different. High school is just a prep level. Also if u are going to be a doctor you will have massive loans in medical school. Wouldn’t you rather do well at a state school. Be top of your class get into Harvard then takeout a loan. Instead of coming into med school already 200,000 dollars in debt. Obv if you get into such a good school go for it. However, I feel other CCs on here fail to realize that where you go undergrad really doesn’t matter when you are going to pursue higher education beyond that. If only wanted a bachelors degree by all means go Harvard brown or wherever it is you want. However, dont think that because you go to brown, it means you have a pass in brown medical school, two totally different admissions and they won’t favor you just because you went to an ivy league over someone else who did better than you at a state school.</p>
<p>Back to the OP’s question: pursue an Ivy if you inherently find that you’ll enjoy the learning experience there. If you’re singularly focused on prepping yourself for med school, to be blunt, you’ll probably waste many opportunities offered by the Ivies and such. But if you find characteristics therein that will mature you and sate your curiosity and creativity, then apply and hope for the best. If you feel any college that can educate students and prepare them for Dental School apps is sufficient then go that route. </p>
<p>One significant factor to consider is the financial side of things like poster 17 stated. If you can get a free ride or something close to a non “name” school and can expect to do extremely well and prepared for DAT and dental school – going to Dental school w/o undergraduate debt is a huge bonus. Dental school isn’t cheap.</p>
<p>My classmate at my HYP college turned down a full ride at UofIllinois for undergrad. Later she applied and was accepted at UoIll for med. In hindsight she said that she should have done the opposite for financial reasons: taken the full ride at Illinois and gone to my college’s med school.</p>
<p>Where a person goes to undergrad means NOTHING about how much he’ll earn as a physician. That is a silly thought. </p>
<p>Physician salaries are more related to specialty than what undergrad or med school the person attended.</p>
<p>Even your med school doesn’t matter that much…your residency location might matter some. I know a very successful surgeon who went to an unranked med school but did his residency at UCSF. </p>
<p>These are the med schools that recent Tulane pre-meds were accepted to:</p>
<p>U.S. Allopathic Medical Schools</p>
<p>University of Alabama
University of Arkansas College of Medicine
University of Florida College of Medicine
University of South Florida College of Medicine
Mercer University School of Medicine
University of Hawaii at Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans
Tulane University School of Medicine
Uniformed Services University and F. Hebert School of Medicine
Tufts University School of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
New York Medical College
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Drexel University College of Medicine
Temple University School of Medicine
University of South Carolina School of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science College of Medicine
University of Texas Medical School at Houston
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
University of Maryland School of Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine
University of Missouri Medical School
Florida State Medical School
University of South Alabama
Florida State University
University of Miami School of Medicine
Emory University School of Medicine
Morehouse School of Medicine
Rosalind Franklin University and Science Chicago Medical School
Rush Medical School College
University of Kentucky College of Medicine
Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine
Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School
Albany Medical College
State University of New York Upstate Medical School
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine
Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine
Meharry Medical College
University of Texas Medical School at Galveston
University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine
Wayne State University School of Medicine
Sackler School of Medicine/Tel Aviv
Rush Medical School
University of Missouri Medical School, Columbia
Temple Medical School</p>
<p>Pre-med and pre-dental pre-reqs are similar…sometimes pre-d requires more chemistry. </p>
<p>Tulane will NOT be easy for pre-dental. No good school has easy pre-dental pre-req courses. Pre-dental pre-reqs are weeder courses.</p>
<p>**you don’t take the MCAT to get into dental school, you take the DAT. ** </p>
<p>If Tulane doesn’t have a Dental School, then they can’t offer guaranteed admitance.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Really? I’m quite surprised. </p>
<p>I’ve always heard, believed and advised the opposite. I’m inclined to think that medical school teaches a trade, and it teaches more or less the same stuff wherever you go. The liver is the liver, and it’s in the same place and does the same thing and is vulnerable to the same diseases whether you learn about it at Johns Hopkins or University of Illinois. Babies are born pretty much the same way in Oklahoma as in Palo Alto. But the undergraduate experience in a fancy college probably is qualitatively different from the experience even at a really good state flagship with 20,000 or more undergraduates. So, yes, I suppose that a $0 B.A. plus an Ivy M.D. costs less than an Ivy B.A. plus a state-flagship M.D., but if I were going to spend big bucks on only one phase of education, I think I’d still lean toward undergrad.</p>
<p>Now, if you want to be a big professor and a leading researcher, it might matter where you do your residency and fellowships, but you can get to good residencies by excelling at your home-state medical school.</p>