You might not know this until you get an offer (or less likely don’t get an offer) from UF. However I am wondering whether there is any significant difference in price between these schools. Also important, would you need to take on any debt for your bachelor’s degree at any of these schools? Given that you are seriously considering either dental or medical school, it would be a good idea to minimize or eliminate debt for your bachelor’s degree.
I don’t have any close family member who went into human medicine. However, both daughters had undergraduate majors that overlapped a lot with premed classes, and have multiple friends who were premed students. One daughter is on track to get her DVM in May (at about the same time one of her friends gets an MD), and the other is studying for a PhD in a particular subfield of biology.
From their experience, and their friend’s experience, and from what I have heard from others (including a couple of doctors I know), you can attend any of a wide range of universities and get a very good preparation for medical school (dental school I do not know as well but I doubt it is much different). The “big name” higher ranked schools seem to get a higher percentage of their undergraduate premed students into medical school, but a lot of this, and some might speculate perhaps all of this, comes from the consistent high quality of students who start at the big name schools. For any one very strong student (and your high school stats are very good) it is not clear that it makes much difference which undergraduate school you attend at least at the level of anything in the top 150 or so.
By the way, my oldest had an SAT score that was almost identical to yours, a high school GPA and ranking only slightly lower than yours, and is on track to be called “doctor” in May (except her patients are large, walk on four legs, and many of them say “moo” or “neigh” or “baa” when they get excited or upset). Her experience seems to be that her academic strength was sufficient, classes were challenging, but that determination and a drive to do it and a love of caring for patients was what really made the difference.
I doubt that it would make much difference one way or the other in terms of your chances of being accepted to medical school.
In addition to cost another issue comes to mind: Do you have a strong preference one way or another? Does one school feel like a better fit for you?
And of course most students who start university thinking “premed” end up doing something else. Some find the premed classes too tough. Many others just decide they would prefer to do something else. Will any of these universities be better for whichever “something else” you have in mind?
One last nit: I would be very cautious about any statistics regarding the percentage of premed students from any particular university who get into medical school. These stats can be gamed in a number of ways.
I have yet to visit their campus, but am planning to go soon just to see how I feel!