Hi,
Looking for help for my DS to choose between Rice and TAMU for pre-med. We understand the financial aspect of the decision and are prepared for it. What we are trying to figure out is which college provides him with better opportunities to succeed as pre-med and get good chance to med school admission (we know its highly competitive to even get interviews). We are Texas residents. Rice major is Chemistry, TAMU is Bio medical engg.
Below are some factors that I am thinking about:
Are getting grades easier at TAMU or Rice?
Does college station have enough clinical or volunteering opportunities that he can participate in during the school year?
Are there hospitals in college station where shadowing opportunities are available?
Is TAMU med school in college station so that research is available? I remember seeing a building in Houston for TAMU med school
What about internships?
Given the volume of students at TAMU, is it possible to even find and get these opportunities? Riceâs small size and location next to TMC and Baylor means there can be more opportunities there.
Crazy thought - All factors equal, Does going to Rice (with its brand name) help him have a chance at Top 20 med schools in US? This may be due to brand name or the number of different clinical activities performed at TMC or quality of research done at Baylor.
Can someone who went through pre med at TAMU please advise me? Thanks a ton for your help.
Rice will likely be a better experience based on its size and resources but if I wasnât going to med school, Iâd much rather have an engineering degree than a chem degree.
One will lead to a solid career path. One has the odds stacked against them. And most who think med school never get there so that would be a consideration for me.
That said, A&M has secondary admissions in engineering.
You can do your hours during summer if theyâre not local.
My D24 is a freshman at Rice. All her friends are STEM majors.
The basic gist is that most Rice students can do research if they want to.
If they are staying in Texas, it wouldnt be too difficult to get internships as a Rice student. Thatâs what my D tells me but obviously nothing is guaranteed.
Rice has an open door policy vis-a-vis majors, so if he attended Rice and decided to switch to engineering, there would be no barrier other than meeting prerequisites. (Which is to say, fewer barriers than for a pre-engineering major at A&M, who has to meet a high GPA threshold to progress into the desired program.) My Rice kid even had a friend who started out as a music major and switched to engineering.
So, whatever concerns one may have about a chem degree and employability, I wouldnât see that as a strike against Rice.
Except for Architecture & Music, Rice doesnât admit or restrict department/major - OPâs son isnât limited to chemistry.
OP, congrats to your son! I can answer a couple of your factual/factual-ish questions: A&Mâs primary med school is in College Station, many more Rice students do their research on campus than at Baylor/TMC, Rice has a stronger national reputation but both schools have very strong alumni networks - A&Mâs is of course larger and stronger in-state.
If you donât mind, though, Iâd suggest an alternate view here - Rice and TAMU are wildly different student experiences. Everything from school size, to student housing and living, to campus culture, to class size and availability, to city v. college town, to⊠everything. There are both wonderful schools, and strong students can absolutely succeed at either of them - and both send many students to medical school each year - but the biggest factor to your sonâs future opportunities is about how happy and successful he can be in the specific place. Your questions are understandable, but also all of those things will work out for a dynamic and driven student: assuming finances are both fine for you, Iâd recommend the school that better resonates for your son.
While pre-med isnât a major, in terms of number of classes required, it almost is one if your other major is outside of biology/chemistry or similar science.
You should also be thinking about how possible it is to get an engineering degree and take all of the pre-med courses, engineering degrees tend to be heavy loads already, will he need a 5th year?
You should also think about how easy it is to bang out close to a 4.0 as an engineering major.
What will work most against him for âTop 20â med schools is being a Texan who went to college in TX, those schools understand the economics and are stingy with the invites for Texans, especially those who havenât spread their wings outside the state.
I donât understand at all what youâre trying to say here about âunderstand the economics,â and I donât know why a medical school would discriminate against a student who doesnât leave their state for their undergraduate education. Do you have any data to back this up?
Texas residents are fortunate in that Texas public medical schools and Baylor College of Medicine are relatively low cost for Texas residents. However, other (i.e. more expensive, like $400k+ total for four years) medical schools may be hesitant to admit Texas applicants because they are likely to choose a lower cost Texas medical school.
The cost of attendance for Baylor SOM for 24/25 is just under $30k for a TX resident, the other TX schools are probably all less.
As an example, the cost of maybe similarly ârankedâ Emory is $104k. Out of state med schools can do math, and realize the odds are stacked against them for most TX candidates, and review applications and issue interviews accordingly. If the TX student already made the school/economic decision once to stay in stateâŠ
Spend some time on Student Doctor Network if you want to understand, and do some googling to learn more.
OK. I see what youâre saying: medical schools outside of Texas may hesitate to admit a Texas resident who they believe might be admitted to a Texas medical school. I donât know if thatâs true, and Iâm not going to click around SDN to see if thereâs anything beyond anecdote, but at least I understand it now. Thanks for clarifying.
Thank you! He visited both places multiple times and liked them both for different reasons. TAMU for its large campus, diverse student body. He liked Rice for the cozy environment and the location of city center. So he is indifferent with respect to college life and culture. So, the decision is coming down to which one is better to lay foundation for his future aspirations (and ofcourse the money factor which we are flexible on)
How easy/tough it is at Rice to maintain grades? Flexibility of major is awesome but if he sticks to med school, grades are going to be super important.
I fear all youâre going to get on the grades side is anecdote. Theyâre both schools where pre-med classes will be challenging and where your son will have strong peers. A&M obviously has a wider range of academic quality, but your top 10% (or so) of A&M students will look academically like your median Rice student. Likely A&M will have more traditional weed-out classes in pre-med and less individualized support, just because that comes with a larger state university. And yes, obviously, Rice is a much smaller R1 institution - building relationships with professors and finding research opportunities is just going to be easier - but itâs more than possible either place.
Both of these schools will set up a student well for a future career in medicine, and if your son changes his mind, for a career in another field.
When it comes to Rice v A&M, I canât wrap my head around being âindifferent with respect to college life and culture.â These are wildly different college experiences, and your son is going to be spending about four of the most formative years of his life at either place. (Without loss of generality, I know both of these places very well.) For heavenâs sake, the A&M Corps of Cadets is 2/3 the size of the entirety of the Rice undergraduate population! As a parent, perhaps you can help him dig more deeply, so that he can be most successful wherever he is. Alternatively, if your son is truly ambivalent between the two, I guess you could consider the one that creates the smallest impact on your financials? I donât think you can quantify âlikelihood of future medical school admissionâ based on these two institutions: your son himself, and the experience your son has, will create significantly more variance than the institutions do.
TAMUâs med school has 4 campuses. The main medical school campus is in College Station. In addition, there are 3 satellite campuses-- Dallas, Houston, Round Rock.
Consider that Engineering tends to have lower GPAs and TAMU has a secondary selection process for Engineering where heâll list 3 (up to 5) majors and will be assigned to 1 from that list based on GPA and essays, with no appeal â so he may end up in a totally different branch of Engineering than BME.
It is true. Only 6% of TX med school applicants enroll in an OOS med school. Per AMCAS FACTS Table A-5.
Other med schools know that and tend not to interview TX applicants unless the applicants makes a strong effort to convince them they wil attend if offered a seat. (Gotta protect the yield!)
TXâs very low instate tuition and early pre-match system that lets TX applicants know theyâre accepted months before AMCAS schools do all contribute to the low OOS enrollment.