Recently accepted to Case and Berkeley and planning to do premed. Was just wondering if any current/former premeds can answer some of these questions about their Case or Berkeley experience.
Did you ever feel like studying for assessments was holding you back from finding/pursuing medical extracurriculars, just because of how much material there was to cover or how rigorous/frequent the exams were?
How difficult was it to balance everything out throughout the years, and what did a typical day look like (did you commit parts of the week to exclusively academics and then extracurriculars or was it doing a bit of everything everyday)?
Was there a quiet place on campus or somewhere you could always be really productive without distractions?
How hard is it for students to get desired classes without priority enrollment and how competitive is it to get typical medical/research opportunities? Is it like as soon as something comes up, everyone does a “mad dash” to get it, or can you spend time browsing opportunities, learning about them, and picking ones you actually like?
How many medical/research opportunities are there on campus and in the surrounding area, and is it always easy to schedule them into a week, along with studying and time spent commuting to the city and back?
How easy or hard was it to establish meaningful relationships with fellow students and professors? Did each interaction require you to reach out and put consistent effort into the relationship, or do people also go halfway (i.e. professors you know emailing about research or internship opportunities, friends helping you, things like that).
Did you genuinely enjoy your time and find it easy to be motivated/productive, or was there at times where it was just going through the motions and trying to survive/get through each day?
Anyways, that’s it for now. I know it’s a lot of questions, but I think it could definitely help in my deciding where to go (since I’m not too sure right now). Thanks for the help!
I am answering from a parent perspective and my son is freshman at CWRU as Pre-Health.
exam frequency of premed courses are subjective. So far my son took bio1&2. Used AP credits for Chem1 and took Chem2. CWRU offers many resources for those premed classes. In addition to office hours and TA, there are also supplemental instruction and peer tutoring. My son has utilized all and they are helpful. Peer tutors and SI are students who took same classes in the past and they can help you to setup your study routine of the subject.
It depends on how many classes you take. Per my son’s bio professor, you will need to put in 3hrs of study time outside of classroom per credit. Meaning 3 credits class for 9 hours of study time per week.
Yes, my son goes to main library after each class to do homework and wait for next one if it’s not back to back. There are many other places you can use. I remembered seeing information like that from cwru IG.
So far we don’t feel it’s difficult to get his classes so far. Upperclassman has priority for course selection but you won’t have issue to get the core courses or premed prerequisites as those are usually big class.
There are many. On campus or Cleveland Clinic. My son has not started to look for it so I cannot comment on this but so far I can see there are many opportunities and school really promotes research.
Professors are very approachable in our experience. For students, sometimes it takes time to find your people but there are many events set up during first years. As long as you go out, you get to meet new people.
My son has to work hard on his classes but he did enjoy it.
One other thing to consider is that CWRU uses a Health Profession committee letter; Berkeley does not.
A HP committee letter is used by an undergrad to control who can apply to med school. The committee will either supply the student with a letter or they won’t. Not having a committee letter from a school that offers one is a red flag on a student’s application. A committee letter will also rank a student’s competitiveness w/r/t to other applicants from their school (typical categories are: highly recommended; recommended; recommended with reservations; not recommended.)
On the positive side, a HP committee letter will highlight a student’s achievements (Only 9 students out of 87 received a A in Prof’s Q biochem class. etc) And a HP committee letter fulfills LOR requirements at all med schools, even if it doesn’t include all the LOR types a school requires.
I appreciate the insight. Just wondering hypothetically, if you’re an average/typical premed at a university, is it better to have no committee letter at all or a committee letter that just ranks you as “recommended” or “recommended with reservations”?
And if you’re a good/standout premed, will the health profession committee go out of their way to write about you in the best way for med school admissions, or do the committees tend to talk about their premeds’ achievements in the same way (i.e. the content of the letters is similar for all students)?
I was also wondering if you have any advice you could share about doing premed at berkeley or case, based on the questions I asked above or interactions with current/former premeds from these schools? Thank you!
I appreciate your help. If you’re fine with sharing, I’d be interested in hearing more about the medical/research experiences your son eventually goes into, and how it’s like balancing them with academics. Thank you!
If a college does committee letters, and you don’t get one at.all. this will be viewed negatively by medical schools.
@WayOutWestMom posted in her reply above that this would be a red flag.
I want to add, there is no advantage to attending Berkeley as a premed if your intention is that the kid will apply to medical school in CA. Most medical school applicants in CA end up attending med school outside of CA…because there are simply way too many applicants for the seats available at CA instate medical schools.
I will add, I don’t see an advantage or disadvantage for any of the questions you posed. IOW, your student can be happy at either college.
No committee letter if your school offers one–that will make you stand out. And not in a good way. You will be required to explain why you don’t have one.
Recommended with reservations is the kiss of death for a med school application.
No committee letter if your school does not offer one is a non-issue. You simply provide the 3-5 LORs required by each med school you apply to. Students commonly use a letter service to hold their LORs until it’s time to upload them to AMCAS. Once uploaded to AMCAS, a student can assign specific letters to individual schools. Only the assigned letters are forwarded as part of your application packet. This gives the student some control over which letters the med school admission officers will see, If you think one of your letters is less than ideal, you don’t have to use it and sub a different letter,
If you’re a stand out pre-med, the committee letter will reflect that. If you’re an average pre-med at the school, your committee letter will reflect that. So, no committee letters aren’t cut and paste; they are individualized and will discuss your specific strengths and weaknesses, esp with regard to The Premed Competencies for Entering Medical Students.
I was also wondering if you have any advice you could share about doing premed at berkeley or case, based on the questions I asked above or interactions with current/former premeds from these schools? Thank you!
Sorry, I don’t have any first hand knowledge about Berkeley, though I do know the daughter of a friend was UCB grad and was a successful med school applicant. She’s now a practicing physician who divides her professional practice between SF and Seattle.
My best advice is to consider 3 factors when deciding on what undergrad to attend:
Fit. Social and academic fit. Happier students do better academically. Also it’s 4 years of a student’s life. That’s too long to be miserable.
Cost. Medical school is breathtakingly expensive. If you can save some money during undergrad that can be used to help defray he cost of med school, you’ll be helping your future self. Many changes are coming to the student loan program that will make paying for med school much more difficult. (Like a $135,000 cap on all Direct Loans, the end of Grad Plus loans, PSLF and loan forgiveness.)
Opportunity. Opportunity to find mentors and advisors. Opportunity to develop relationship with professors who will write those important LORs for internships, jobs, grad or professional school. Opportunity to get involved in campus organizations and activities. (Leadership is a key trait med schools look for.) Opportunity to explore other areas of interest and other careers. (Less 20% of freshman premeds actually finish all the pre-reqs. Most not because they can’t manage the academics, but because they discover other careers that better align with interests, values and skills sets.)
I appreciate the insight. As a followup question, just wondering if you happen to know any current/former premeds from Berkeley or Case who we could connect with, or have other insights about choosing a school.
For the second part, he’s currently not very sure/has pretty good opinions on both schools, and still doing some research as well. Thanks for your help!
This is really helpful information. Thank you so much! We’ll definitely consider that as we decide this month. I know this is a lot of a questions and I don’t want to take up all your time, but we were also thinking about two other things:
Wondering there’s any good place to find/compare the percentage of med school applicants from a university (like Berkeley or Case) that actually get admitted (like a common data set); historically, has Berkeley or Case med school applicants seen more success with admission?
Have also heard some people don’t recommend majoring in Bio since it’s more challenging, and that choosing a different major makes it easier to maintain good grades/high GPAs, and also more time for medical ECs? Do you have any thoughts on this?
I think if you don’t make med school, bio puts you in a career pickle.
I put this on another thread but the point being, it’s likely more the student than the school that is lifting to med school. So find the right school for you. If you are Dr material, it might happen if not, it won’t.
Two great schools - which feels right. The rest doesn’t matter. Kids come to med school from all levels of college.
I’ve posted b4 - Vanderbilt residents in radiology first and 2nd year went to the following:
Auburn CWRU
Florida A&M
Florida State Fordham
Lipscomb
Luther
Murray State
Northern Illinois
Pitt
Princeton Tulane
Tuskegee
U North Carolina
U Puerto Rico
U Tennessee
Taking it further - look at the Johns Hopkinsresidents - where’d they go undergrad:
JHU UMD UMBC
U Miami
Morgan State
South Carolina
TCNJ
U of Puerto Rico
UT Dallas
Towson
Vandy
and more
Duke Medical - first letters of the alphabet for residents.
Arkansas
Michigan
UNC
Princeton
Rochester
South Florida
Southeastern Louisiana
Texas
The moral of the story - Johns Hopkins or James Madison
I appreciate the insights, and we’ll definitely take this into consideration! As a followup question, just wondering if you happen to know any current/former premeds from Berkeley or Case who we could connect with to learn more about these schools, as currently we think both are great for various reasons. Thanks again!
This example is not for med school, but when my son was applying to engineering schools we were surprised to learn that Case engineering grads applying to graduate programs (at schools other than their undergrad) had outcomes that were as good or even better than CMU grads, with students landing at Cornell, CMU, MIT, UIUC, UofM and other top schools.
This information was buried on the Case website in their First Destination Survey report. Rather than dig around the website, I did a search for “Case Western engineering graduate school placement”. Unfortunately, this methodology does not provide the acceptance rate for Case students applying to graduate programs. If you use a similar search methodology you can probably learn which med programs Case students attended, but not their acceptance rates.
Here is an article that compares Case pre-med grad medical school acceptance rates to other highly rated schools:
Agreed - there are exceptions but bio stats overall are lower than other majors.
I understand some of that is due to students taking lab work while they prep for MCATs , etc. but I can’t imagine it’s the most.
But yes - my comment is more in generalities - there’s always exceptions but when you look at bio grads at even top schools like UNC, their outcomes are low.
Here’s the salary breakout for Case bio - but only 21 respondents on salary.
Here’s the career link to med school hopefuls - not many but again, we don’t know how many respond.
Schools listed that I can tell are medical are NE Ohio Med School, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and then they have lots of onesy twosy that - it’s hard to know the major/desire - but your Ivys to your Akrons and Butlers.
