@2016paws
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I had a 34 on the ACT and a 3.97 GPA unweighted. I have taken all honors and APs offered to me in high school. I will mostly likely qualify for NMF. Hope this helps
fell in love with Kenyon, but I am worried about costs, GPA, and entrance into med school.
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Have you had your parents run the NPC? Or do you already know that your family will be expected to pay more than what they will or can pay? What have your parents said about paying?
What is your worry about entrance into med school?
If you’ll likely qualify for NMF, then be sure to apply to a few schools that give huge merit for NMF…those can be back-ups for you.
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give you a better shot at a great committee letter.
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^^ This is why it can be important to want to be a high stats student at your undergrad. You want the LOR (recommenders) to think you’re fab and you want those who write the Committee Letter to think you’re fab.
I also don’t recommend attending a school that has 300+ juniors applying to med school. Not only are those schools less likely to write CL’s, but even if they do, I can’t imagine trying to snag great LORs from profs who are being approached by 300 other students.
Don’t pay much attention to claims that XX% of med school applicants get into med school. That stat means little/nothing to you unless that % is low. All schools weed their premeds. If the % is low, then look to see if the school is in a state with “too many premeds” (like Calif). BTW…an OOS student should think twice before heading to Calif as a premed. You might as well cut your chances in half.
But getting back to how a reported high acceptance rate can be misleading…
For example ~ School A has 500 frosh premeds
by the end of frosh year, only about 300 will still be premeds (lowish Gen Chem or Bio grades**)
by the end of soph year, only about 200 will still be premeds (lowish Ochem or Physics grades
by the end of junior year, after seeing MCAT scores, there may only be 175 premeds
(** many frosh premeds “shoot themselves in the foot” by loading up their first semester/first year with prereqs or second majors and then become overwhelmed. )
175 apply to med schools and maybe 150 get accepted (for a variety of reasons). That’s an acceptance rate of 86%. This means that 86% got accepted to at least one US MD school. (as of now, most schools only track that stat. At some point more may track the DO school acceptances. I don’t know of any that include caribbean acceptances)
The 25 who didn’t get accepted to at least 1 US MD school likely had some “flaw,” such as: BCMP or cum GPA issues, MCAT issues (either too low or unbalanced), didn’t get great LORs/CL, inadequate medically-related ECs, had a bad app list, poor interviewing skills, and/or their their AMCAS application was subpar.
That acceptance rate number, 86%, doesn’t really tell a high school senior what HIS chances are at that school.
The Director of the PreHealth Advising office at my son’s undergrad was very confident that any of his applicants who had at least a 3.6 cum/BCMP GPA and a 30 MCAT (now there’s a new score system) would have an 85% chance of acceptance. Those who wouldn’t be accepted would have one of the flaws listed above.
there are schools, like Holy Cross, that strictly control who can be premed and who can apply to med school by controlling who will get a CL and/or who will be “officially premed” at that school. Perhaps @par72 can elaborate on that.
The words, “premed program,” are so misleading. Pre-med isn’t like an “accounting program,” engineering program," or “nursing program” where there are unique classes for those professions. I think when high school students say that they want a good “premed program,” that they think they’re looking for a school that will prepare them for the MCAT or that will “feed them” into a top med school.
BTW…all 141 US MD schools are excellent. This country and each state has a vested interest in making sure that these schools are excellent because they’re educating future American doctors. The cost to educate each med student is over $100k per year. We don’t have any “so so” or “not so good” MD schools here in this country. To borrow @pizzagirl 's words: The education at US med schools is flat. They all teach the same things. The student gets himself into med school, not the undergrad. To get accepted to any one US MD school is an achievement. No one is “too good” to attend any of our country’s med schools. Going to a “top med school” is not important unless the student intends to go into academic medicine (MD/PhD).
Undergrad schools do not “prepare students for the MCAT”. That is NOT their job. Those BCMP classes are taken by other STEM students. They are basic lower-division classes that are staples at every univ. Nothing special.
And even at smaller privates, those lower-division Bio and Chem lecture classes will often be LARGE (50+ kids sitting in a lecture hall. The labs will typically be smaller, but the lectures will be large). The exceptions are the few schools that guarantee that no class will have more than 20-25 kids.
Furthermore, all schools, even top schools, will have “good profs” that teach those classes and “lousy profs” that teach those classes. That’s one reason why students often resort to websites like Ratemyprofessor to sort out the best “teachers”.
Med schools don’t care what you major in, and they don’t care about double majors, extra minors, etc. Major in a subject that you love and will excel in…English, math, music, whatever.