I’ve heard that it doesn’t really matter where you go to for pre-med, and at the end of the day I don’t really care about the “prestige” that my alma mater has. All I care about is that I had a well-rounded educational experience at the college level. However, I have been looking into BS/MD programs, and I really like the idea of being able to “skip” the MCAT and matriculate directly into medical school. I feel like this would greatly decrease the already high amounts of stress associated with pre-med and medical school. I was looking into Northwestern’s HPME and Brown’s PLME to pursue a BS/MD program. In my situation, I could go to UVA for free. However, if I wanted to go to Northwestern or Brown, for example, for free or at a greatly reduced price, I would have to look into work-study, getting tons of financial aid, and working my butt off at obtaining a bunch of scholarships. Also, I personally feel like it would be better to go to the more “prestigious” school at the graduate level, during medical school, such as Harvard Medical School or Stanford Medical School. What is your stance on the matter?
Have you run the net price calculators for UVA, Brown, and Northwestern?
Note that Northwestern’s HPME requires you to keep a 3.7 college GPA and 3.55 science GPA.
https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/hpme/program-overview/index.html
All US medical schools are reaches or high reaches for all applicants, and “more prestigious” ones are even reachier, so it is very unlikely that you will get into a “more prestigious” one. Most pre-meds who are not weeded out before applying apply to dozens of medical schools. Most of them get rejected everywhere, and those who get admitted usually get admitted to just one.
Be sure to consider the cost of medical school when making financial plans. Assume that if you do get in, it will be to an expensive one.
From your other threads it looks like you’ve just finished your freshman year of HS. All those schools are basically lottery shots so you can’t count on easily getting in. Apply broadly and include some safeties on your list.
“I could go to UVA for free.”
I am guessing from this comment that you are in-state at UVA.
UVA is a really good university. Premed classes there will be tough, as they will be at any very good university. You will find very strong professors and many other very strong students.
If you have just finished your freshman year of high school, then you still have a long time before you apply to universities. Keep ahead in your classes. Seek out help early when and if you need it. Participate in the ECs that you want to participate in. In a couple of years people here can give you good advice. However, in a couple of years UVA will still be a very good university and a great choice for in-state students who can get accepted there.
That if you see it thru and end up applying to med school 6+ years down the road from 9th grade, that you’ll be overjoyed to get an acceptance from any US medical school.
Might want to reevaluate what “prestige” is…I know many kids who haven’t gotten into UVa and have gotten into Brown and Northwestern
For a medicine, even the med school itself is not as important as where you land your residency. And yes, med school graduates do get into fill-in-famous-residency-program-name-here every single year from random-state-med-school.
It drives me crazy to see residents of states like VA and NC disregarding and disrespecting their wonderful options in lieu of name brands elsewhere. There are many out of state applicants envious of that accessibility to UVA or UNC. Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose.
You need to learn more about the financial aid process. All the outside scholarships in the world won’t lower your costs to -0-, if the school is a need-based institution (as most prestigious colleges commonly are.)