<p>For pre-med, likely a double major for a humanities b.a. degree and some sort of biology b.s. degree, which is better?</p>
<p>A comparison between the two based on percentage of students accepted into any med school, undergraduate experience in preparation for doing well in med school, advising, research/lab opportunities, classes, competition, etc.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins has a very successful premed program, but this is often attributed to the fact that they only endorse strong candidates (i.e. there are certain requirements you must fulfill in order to get a recommendation from their prehealth board).</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with Chicago, but just about everywhere other than Hopkins will give their blessing regardless of your GPA/MCAT. That is, they may advise you not to apply to med schools, but if you decide you want to try they will support you.</p>
<p>Keep these in mind when you make your decision – both are very strong schools.</p>
<p>“regardless of your GPA/MCAT” - ?? Isn’t GPA/MCAT the most important? I keep reading here that UG school is almost irrelevant in comparison to GPA/MCAT, when applying to Med. School. Is this correct?</p>
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<p>When you think critically about it, you’ll quickly figure out the correct answer (hopefully) – and it ain’t whether a college prescreens premeds! The short answer is go where you can earn the highest gpa. Given that Hopkins is a premed magnet, it probably has one of the highest classes of premed wannabes in the country – I would guess ~33% of matriculating Frosh. Obviously, the vast majority of them will be out of premed after Frosh year – bcos they all will not receive the required As; heck, many of those high flying kids will earn Cs for the first time in their lives. Competition for those A’s is fierce. Think about it.</p>
<p>Both Chicago and Hopkins are very “painful” for premeds… It makes no difference which one of the two you choose to attend…</p>
<p>So far my D’s state school has been very “painful”. She managed all A’s so far (junior in senior standing) but she was surprized how hard she had to work for them. She graduated #1 from her HS and has seen a lot of valedictorian pre-meds from Private HS’s in her Honors college changing their major and future carrier because of challenging first Bio class. I am happy that D. decided not to attend any elite college as UG, she does not need to work any harder. According to posts here on CC, name of UG does not guarantee anything, still need high GPA.</p>
<p>^^^ The name of the UG does not guarantee anything, but it does help. To what degree, I do not think it really matters. I will go for anything that can help, as long as it does not have a worse impact on my application (my grades or my sanity…) :)</p>
<p>I think you’re misunderstanding me, MiamiDAP. MCATs and GPA are the most important. But what is also essential is the letter of recommendation from the pre-health advising board. If your school has one which gives recs and you don’t submit one with your med school applications, your chances go out the window. Most schools will give a letter regardless of your MCATs and GPA, although they will discourage the applicant privately (as one poster put it: they feel it’s not their place to decide who should and should not be accepted to med school).</p>
<p>Some schools don’t have pre-health advising board, so med schools ask for other letters instead. But if you do have a PHAB and you don’t have a letter from them, you should have a really good reason why.</p>
<p>So I wasn’t saying that one UG looked better on an app than the other, but rather one UG is notoriously difficult for premeds because of their screening requirements.</p>
<p>I agree with the previous posters about going to an UG where you will get your As. The worst case scenario is going somewhere where you find it so hard to get As because of the competition. </p>
<p>But between JHU and UChicago, obviously JHU has the reputation in premed. Both are large institutions with lots of money/resources, so you’ll get your research opportunities. I would guess that JHU’s advising might be better because the entire university is known for the premed and med school. However, UChicago will probably have fewer premeds and give you less competition (not significantly though).</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input. I know people usually discourage undergrads from being a premed in either university in terms of the sheer academic insanity of it, but I’ll try and manage somehow.</p>
<p>D’s school has awesome pre-med.advising, reminding about all deadlines, helping with all steps, she even will go thru mock interview. I assume that it is good everywhere, any UG is interested in high percentage of thier grads getting into Med. School.</p>
<p>im at uchicago right now, and while i feel the science classes are not very different from other schools, the “core” humanities are significantly more challenging compared to other schools. just one thing to consider.</p>
<p>Whichever is going to cost you less…and you’ll get the higher GPA. That might be neither of them. Maybe it’s U of IL…</p>