Help choose between Gettysburg College and Muhlenberg for premed. Does anyone has experience in terms of medical advising, ease of getting good GPA, clinical opportunities? Thank you so much.
Are both of these schools affordable?
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They’re academically equivalent.
So, differences would be
- which one leads to lower debt (is one debt-free)?
- socially, which is more appealing? Gettysburg has a stronger fraternity presence, Muhlenberg is quirkier, for instance. Happy students do better academically.
- if your child contacts the pre health adviser, can they let them know what kind of support premed students receive in their application cycle and does that extend to “glide year” students (most students apply to med school over the course of senior year with interviews the year after graduation or during the year after college).
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This is all on the student and the work they do. The premed required courses are not easy…anywhere (let us know if you hear about an “easy” OChem course).
Many premeds do things like shadowing during vacations or in the summers. And many also take a year or two after undergrad to round out the things they need to do to be a competitive applicant for medical schools.
Our friends around here have spoken highly of both schools for different reasons.
At this point, your student’s goal should be to find a college where they will be happy to be for four years…happy kids get better grades.
And keep in mind that medical school is funded by loans loans and more loans…and/or the bank of mom and dad. So keeping loan debt for undergrad to a bare minimum is a good idea.
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Yes, they are. We got similar scholarships from both. Do
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I wouldn’t make the decision based on which college has the better pre-med program, which is murky to begin with.
Most students who start out pre-med don’t end up going to med school - for a lot of reasons. So, every student with this interest should have a Plan B. What else is she interested in? I’d base the decision on which school gives her a better opportunity to explore her other interests.
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These schools were on my DD list for premed. She does not attend either.
5 cents from our experience.
- Environment is totally different. Feel too. Gettysburg is more conservative. Muhlenberg is very LGBTQ friendly with big LGBTQ population.
- Gettysburg had in our case top robust scholarship. Muhlenberg scholarship were not guaranteed for all 4 years. I do not remember details, look through old forums but one of grants was to be revised every year in our case.
- Muhlenberg has some specific premed programs.
In our case Gettysburg was clear the top choice out of 21 schools (including UMD with Presidential scholarship) and DD almost committed. The only reason DD chose her current school, Rhodes college, is due to the acceptance to DO LECOM EAP that Rhodes participates and Gettysburg doesn’t. - There was someone on Muhlenberg forum about difficulty for registration with students not able to get any useful classes to progress with their degree. However, this is not unique for small colleges. DD is having nightmare registration every semester but it is so far was resolved with relative success at the end.
Has your kid visited both schools? I suspect that most students would have a definite preference of one over the other after seeing them both in-person while school is in session. They’re about 2 hours from each other so should be able to be combined into one trip if visiting from a distance away.
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Both offer committee letters for med school (not all colleges and few publics do). Your kid needs to contact the premed advisor at both or ask while visiting to find out the criteria in order to receive a favorable letter. It is a waste of time and money to apply without it.
As Swarthmore says
Since most medical schools are aware that Swarthmore has such a Committee, they will wonder why they are receiving an independent application without a Committee letter of recommendation. Everyone cannot be recommended equally strongly, so some deficiency in the record is assumed to be the reason for applying outside the usual structure. (In most cases, medical schools assume that you have been disciplined for either academic dishonesty or irresponsible behavior.
Committee Letter of Recommendation :: Health Sciences Office :: Swarthmore College)
Apply/admit matrices based on GPA and MCAT scores are on the web and premed advisors at colleges are well aware of these odds. If your chances of admission are say 30% then some schools will essentially block you from applying with a poor letter since it drags down their admit rate, yet out of 10 similar kids applying 3 will get right in to med school.
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This is a big issue.
Make sure that premed advisor sounds reasonable.
We did not meet premed advisor at Muhlenberg. Gettysburg one sounded very neutral. But we met one premed girl from Gettysburg who was very successful at MCAT.
Here is another point. At DD’S school with more like 30% of students who are premed, commette support is crucial. Likely, in her case it is not necessary, since her program is fine with 2 recommendations from science teachers.