Vanderbilt vs state fullrider

fdgjfg
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 21:45:22 +0000

@crazym0m

The curves in pre-med classes actually aren’t that bad. The worst curves are in bioI/genchemI&II/orgoI&II, and that curve is where the average is brought to the B-/C+ line. So half the class will get a B- or better, and half will get a C+ or lower. A lot of the people taking the low grades in these classes are engineers who don’t care that much about their GPA. Upper levels are easier. So if you work reasonably hard, you can get B’s in the pre reqs and still end up with a 3.8+ cumulative and science GPA. If your son is a CV he’s probably pretty smart, and although the competition is fiercer in college, he might still be at the top of his classes.

I would say yes, there were definitely opportunities to fill those other criteria. It’s pretty easy to get involved with clubs, nonclinical volunteerring, etc., but that’s true at pretty much every major university. The real advantage that Vanderbilt has is the huge medical center across the street from campus. This gives you access to a wide variety of clinical volunteering opportunities (you can do general volunteering with the hospital, work at the student run free clinic, translate for ESL patients, work with a specific type of population), shadowing, and research.

Most major universities have research but having a top research hospital so close by gives you a lot of opportunities. For example, you can get your classic microbio petri dish bench research pretty much anywhere, but if you want to do something like neurosurgery research looking at deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease, you need the hospital for that. There are tons of labs doing a lot of great work, and most of the science majors allow you to write an honors thesis senior year, which I really enjoyed. The faculty also seemed very invested in training undergrad scientists, or at least the ones I worked with.