I’m a high school junior in NJ. I’m trying to decide between New York University and Swarthmore College for pre-med.
I’m specifically looking for answers to:
Prestige: Which school is generally seen as more prestigious academically and on medical school applications (especially for top-tier MD programs)?
Pre-Med Opportunities: Which school offers better structured pre-med advising, clinical exposure, research access, internships, and med school pipelines?
Clinical + Research Access: Given Swarthmore’s proximity to Philly hospitals (Penn/CHOP/Jefferson) and NYU’s location in NYC, how do the actual opportunities compare? Is one noticeably stronger than the other professionally?
Culture Fit for Pre-Med: Which environment tends to support pre-med students better (class size, advising attention, internal opportunities) rather than just offer opportunities?
Any personal experience, stats, outcomes, or other info how I can get into Swathmore and NYU would be very helpful!
Neither - kids from all schools go to top tier medical schools. Swat and NYU are so different - which is right for you.
You can research, find out, but pre med is an intention. Both schools use committee letters - which others here say, without you can’t get in.
Both schools are need blind - so money won’t be a factor. How do you get in? ED helps. Swat lets in under 8% (or did last year). NYU is under 10%.
Will you have four years of English, Math, Science, Social Science, Foreign Language? How many APs.
These are very different schools.
There’s other schools like Wofford with a pre defined program, Alabama with McCullough Pre Medical Scholars and Virginia Tech with on campus shadowing. They’re not in your set - but to show you there are programs out there, etc. so these two are great but if neither happens, it doesn’t dampen your goals one iota.
Many say to forget pre-med, go to the school where you’ll be happiest - so you do your best. And then there’s things like budget - because with med school, it can be over $800K and how can you pay?
Anyway, even if these are your two schools, you’re a year away from knowing if you even get in.
Hi, if I go through with Swat, I’ll be ranking it through Questbridge, then if I don’t get matched, I’ll run it to ED1 (Go NYU ED2), and then if that fails I’ll let it roll over to RD. They will be effectively be reviewing my application three times.
My school doesn’t allow us to take AP Classes our freshman year, and the only possible AP course you can take sophomore year is APUSH. I was prevented from taking Spanish 3 Honors this year due to scheduling issues, so I can take it next year. I’ve taken APUSH, AP Gov, AP World, AP Lang. Next year, I plan on taking AP Bio, AP Lit, AP Human Geo, AP Research, and AP Macro. In total, 9 APs.
Will you have four years of English, Math, Science, Social Science, Foreign Language? How many APs.
You should use all 15 QB slots if you qualify. All 15. You don’t need to be at NYU or Swat. If you can go to school for free, it’s a home run.
You’re fine - no one will penalize you.
Good luck.
But you need to (in my opinion) play the “free tuition” game and not limit yourself to two schools - and not just apply to the big names. There’s smaller names that are on QB. Who knows, they might get a lot less apps than the Dukes of the world.
NYU can be gamed and tooled around by the school. For example, gallatin will have significantly higher odds of admission than stern. While no such school specific system exists in Swat
But if you want to do premed, you should be in CAS, which has less than a 5% admit rate. Gallatin would be…an odd choice for premed, and very likely suboptimal in terms of getting the courses you would want to do.
Gallatin is a school for individualized major. As long as you have all the prerequisites for med school, you can be a pre-med. But overall, I agree. I intend on applying for CAS. I wonder if there’s a benefit to applying ED2 as NYU RD is near impossible.
Those are my top two schools in which I’ve done extensive research on both.. I love the vibe of NYU and Swat which is sort of funny with how different they are. And they’re need blind
If you only do one QB, you’re giving up 14 other chances to go for free.
That’s a big risk.
When you have full need, you have to be flexible. Well you don’t have to be but you can very well end up with having nowhere to attend school. You still can with QB but you have more opportunity applying to 15 vs. 2.
If you find anyone willing to pay for you, it’d be crazy to not take advantage…at least in my thinking.
My kid majored through Gallatin. You will spend a lot of time doing required courses in areas that would not be optimal for a premed student. And don’t assume you can just transfer to CAS. You’d probably be better off applying to liberal studies where a transfer to CAS is guaranteed if you’re going to try a back door route. Both routes will require a strong humanities/social sciences aptitude.