I was thinking the exact same thing.
Premed classes are tough. I have heard quite a few stories about how tough they are. I do not think that you want to be going into premed classes with incoming stats that put you in the bottom 1/2 of the students who are taking the class.
Also, I am not sure that the ED bump is quite as large as you are thinking. Remember that ED stats include stats for recruited athletes (Brown is for example in the Ivy League, and this is an athletic league with teams that in some cases are surprisingly good for schools that do not offer athletic scholarships).
This is a big deal. This is particularly a big deal if you end up going for medical school. However, even something like a master’s degree or a fully funded PhD can be easier to pull off if you have some parent financial help.
And UMD is a very good university. I have worked with a small number of UMD graduates, and knew one UMD graduate when I was in graduate school (master’s at Stanford). Certainly the UMD graduates who I have met have all made the point that you can do very well with a degree from UMD.
Experience in a medical environment is critical if you want to continue on the “premed to medical school” path. Getting clinical experience early can also help you decide whether you want to continue on this path. One daughter needed very, very little clinical experience to realize that she wanted to do something else, and is right now in a lab doing biomedical research. The other daughter needed relatively little clinical experience to discover that she wanted to take this path, but with animals (she is a veterinarian).
Biology and chemistry are of course fields where some sort of graduate school is likely.
I had the same experience when I visited WUSTL, although this was a long time ago. I have heard good things about Rice. The cost does however make me pause.
Nothing in your post makes me think that you should apply ED anywhere. I would be inclined to apply either EA or RD everywhere, and see what sort of offers you get before you decide. Certainly UMD is a very good option regardless of whether you end up on the medical school path, or on the “chemistry / biology bachelor’s to masters to PhD path”, or doing engineering, or on some other path.
And this is very true. The strongest graduates who I have worked with from for example U.Mass Amherst or UMD or Rutgers compare very well with the strongest graduates who I have worked with coming from MIT, Stanford, or Harvard. Very strong students attend a huge range of schools for a wide variety of reasons, and you will find some very strong students at UMD.
This is what I would do.
Also, make sure that UMD really is a safety, and if you are not quite sure, add another safety to your list.