@Much2learn, the schools with a high med school admit rate often have better quality inputs as well. That doesn’t mean that for any particular student, that those schools would be better.
Also, schools can do things to keep that admit rate high like use a committee letter, etc. (which, again, may not actually help any particular kid).
I am the mother of a med student.
I can offer the following advice:
The chances for ivies is small anyway. I wouldn’t focus on that.
Another poster is right: your CHILD is going to college; your CHILD will be going to med school. You can advise but your child needs to make the decisions as long as they’re affordable and sound.
Med schools are not likely going to favor a student who took most of his college classes while in high school, particularly if many of them were at a CC. Med schools like to see courses taken at a university.
Many med schools will likely think he’s too young. It’s not like he graduated from high school at 12 and then went onto Harvard for four years.
Med schools are going to want to see how a student does while in a college setting full time.
Also, your child may not have the medically related ECs and research experience to have a good resume for his med school app.
If your son only attends his univ for a year, he won’t likely have the relationship with profs to get the excellent LORs.
Med school is EXTREMELY intense. EXTREMELY. Your child has had no time to just “grow up” and enjoy his young life. I’m afraid that he will burn-out if he were to even luckily get into a med school at a very young age.
My son had just turned 22 a couple weeks before he started med school. He is either the youngest or one of the youngest in his class. That is young enough!
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I just don’t want to be cheap and they pay for it for the rest of their lives because we didn’t send them Ivy as an undergrad. Some DR friends say that it all builds on itself so you should go to the best school you can get into."
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I don’t know who these “doctor friends” are that you’re talking to, but they’re mistaken. Most doctors went to a state school. No one cares where you went to undergrad and ALL US MD schools are excellent. We don’t have any “so so” MD schools here in the US. To borrow advice long-given from @pizzagirl , the education at US MD schools is flat. They all teach the same things.
My son’s undergrad hardly cost us anything. He will graduate in 2 years from a well-ranked med school (but he also would have happily attended one that was lesser so). His goal is a highly competitive specialty, and he’s on track to achieve that (with fingers crossed that his Step I scores are high). His med school does not give grades (many don’t anymore), but they do tell students what quartile they’re in, and he’s always been in the top quartile.
Do you really think he’ll get paid less or reach “less success” since he went to a mid-tier flagship for undergrad? As @pizzagirl states, insurance companies do not pay you more based on school names.
I’m not sure a college would even grant a degree with only two or three semesters at the college. Every college for which I have read the rules requires a minimum of 60 credits to have been taken at that school.
“I don’t know who these “doctor friends” are that you’re talking to, but they’re mistaken. Most doctors went to a state school. No one cares where you went to undergrad and ALL US MD schools are excellent. We don’t have any “so so” MD schools here in the US.”
Absolutely.
There is no such thing. What do they say about statistics, “lies, damn lies…”
The point is that undergrads can easily manipulate their reported numbers – and they do – every year.
Or think about it from another perspective: if there really was a college with a “high rate of admission” (however defined), the mass of premeds would flock to that college in droves. They’d be lining up outside the door to get in. (And, if admitted, the competition would drive down the med admission rate.)
Sure, some colleges (T10) do better than others vs T100, but that is bcos the T10 selects for great test takers. Those without such skills need not apply. And since the primary way to score an interview for med school is the MCAT, it is only logical that the T10 will send more to med school (on a %) basis than #100, since #100 doesn’t have many tippy top test takers.
@brantly, many colleges are like that. I believe some state schools are willing to take a ton of transfer credits, however, and have a minimum residency requirement of 1 year.
I also want to add that not all state schools are the same when it comes to research opportunities, etc. either.
Artificially restricting the kid’s choices to Ivy or state school (when you don’t know the costs after merit and fin aid) doesn’t make a lot of sense, IMO.
Both of these plans are terrible. Go to UG school for 4 years.
While I agree “more or less” with the statement that medical schools are flat, that being said, they are not all created equally, and do have distinctions. My comments are derived from both my wife (a rare triple board certified MD) and my oldest daughter, UCSF M.D. graduate. If one wants to pursue academic medicine versus clinical… the best med schools are ranked usually in both, (e.g. Harvard, Stanford, JHU, UCLA…) then they do provide an advantage of depth. I will concede, to a certain degree, where you went for residency is a much more influential factor than medical school itself.
You’re right that the name matters more in academic medicine, but unbeknownst to many outside of medicine, academic medicine pays way less, so if you want to be the big hot shot mansion owning, porsche driving (with fancy school stickers on the rear window) MD, academic medicine (and thus chasing brand name schools) is not the way to go.
First: Look at the med school pre reqs and make sure to take those. Most med schools won’t accept AP credit for Calc Perhaps some will but most likely you need to take those at a 4 year college. All the other applicants will be.
I would be worry about rushing graduating in 2 years (or less)…most people take 3 hard/technical lab courses a semester and two electives…your child will have to be taking all major courses a semester to finish. That will be difficult.
At the risk of repeating some other posters’ points, here is my $0.02:
OP’s kid(s) (are there one or two, it’s difficult to tell??) should look at schools in the 20-50 ranking range for UG b/c they could get a full ride based on their stats. Then, they get the “college” experience at no or little cost, can do research and other things to pad their med school resume. There are plenty of posts on CC that talk about which schools these are, so I won’t list them here.
The reason you go to college is to figure out your path - while OP’s kid(s) is/are “predetermined” to go into medicine, if I had a dollar for every well-intentioned, motivated smart kid who entered college pre-med and found something else to do… They could do research and decide they want to get their PhD instead, there are thousands of paths to choose, and many kids in your kids’ position actually choose them. Don’t cheat them of that opportunity to explore all options before setting out on a grueling track.
Given the world of healthcare today, I’m not even sure why anyone would go into medicine - unless you become the top 1% who are like Mayo Clinic heart surgeons, the ROI on med school just isn’t there for the majority of roles. Even the “helping people” part of it is now overshadowed by administrative burdens and complicated reimbursement arrangements.
As others have mentioned most competitive private schools won’t allow more than 2 yrs of transfer credits, and 2 yrs is probably the minimum you’d want to spend at a college to get the experience anyway. I’d vote for at least 3 myself.
I agree with many posters who say that med schools will not look as favorably on HS and comm Coll credits as being the majority of the classwork - they need to get some serious university level coursework in before applying to med school.
Another confusing part - is/are the kid(s) in question juniors now, and you are projecting next years completed coursework??
@cameron121 As to point 3–not sure if this is just an anecdotal comment, and you are just viewing this from a non-medical sidelines, but it is not true at all, in most situations. By way of paraphrasing, and in short medical education remains a very profitable investment. Even under very conservative conditions, physicians command and receive not only a generous ROI, but one that is palatable now and into the future. For instance, I suggest you peruse the numbers from this CAL economist—see: https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/roth_nicholas.pdf
The two main pleasures of medicine are a) driving a nice car, b) complaining that you don’t make any money.
c) going to continuing ed seminars and training sessions in Aruba while corporate exec’s in America have been downgraded to Dayton Ohio.
OP, as you begin to sort out college choices, one thing that is worth considering is access to medical experience and research opportunities. Ask about the school’s proximity to and access to hospitals and medical facilities. They should be able to tell you the percentage of students who have medical and research experience, and what the process is to get involved.
“Now again for the upper level classes in the major: Note you can take these classes for majors or non majors, these are all the FOR MAJORS courses. Chemistry 1 with lab, Chemistry 2 with lab, Biology 1 with lab, Biology 2 with lab, Physics 1 with lab, Calc 1 and Calc 2. Possibly Organic Chemistry if offered next year at the local college. These are upper level college courses at the local college. The state Universities HAVE to take these courses by law because they were taken at a state college. These are all JUNIOR level courses.”
I don’t see how these can be junior level courses. Junior level courses are usually not labeled “1” and “2.” Community colleges usually don’t offer upper level courses at all. Chem majors who get into medical school would generally take O-chem as sophomores. I don’t see any way that someone who hasn’t taken it yet could complete a chemistry major in 2-3 semesters. It’s not about how many credits have been earned or whether the state university is required to accept the credits. It’s about completing the required coursework in a demanding major.
I also think you are misunderstanding how advanced the coursework your son is completing while in high school actually is. It sounds to me like intro level freshmen courses which top high school students typically complete during the last 2 years of high school. If I understand the OP properly, Calc 1 and 2 are differential and integral calculus, equivalent to AP calc AB and AP calc BC. Chem 1 and chem 2 would be freshman inorganic chemistry with lab, similar to AP chem. Physics 1 roughly equivalent to AP physics. Many of the better college freshmen will be skipping over some of these classes and starting as freshmen with more advanced coursework. These are the students your son will be competing with for med school admission, only they will have several years of more advanced coursework, research experience, possibly publications, a much longer record of working in hospital settings. Who told you these are junior level courses? I think you misunderstand the level of the science courses your son is doing. It’s a strong program for a high school student but it’s not most of college. I’m trying to understand why you think your son will be a successful med school applicant competing vs. others who have more education and experience and letters from professors who know them better.
How are your son’s test scores? Is he going to be a National Merit scholar–if so, he can choose from several free full ride options which can be very helpful to premeds anticipating med school bills.
I also think that if taking SAT2 exams is even a concern or an issue that is another sign that your son isn’t really ready to be a college junior next year, be taking the MCAT, etc. For a well-prepared student they should not be a big deal at all.
Why do you need to make these decisions now? Take the SAT2 exams in June, if needed for colleges of interest, apply next year, and then decide which of the options you actually have look best. A lot can change between now and then. Do not overlook the possibility of getting a very generous scholarship from a school which is not quite Ivy but perhaps more selective than your state school. And I would attend a school which has a hospital associated.
Most of those courses sound like HS courses, not the kind of thing one would find at a select college or university, especially the humanities courses. Many of them are HS courses for most decent students, and definitely for any kid likely to be admitted to an Ivy-level university or college: pre-calc, for example, is definitely a HS course. Most kids admitted to elite schools will have taken math through Calc in HS.
If your kid is obsessed with being in a warmer weather location–your idea of “horrible weather” is not shared by all–then instead of looking at northern elite schools look at Stanford, Pomoma and Harvey Mudd, Rice, Vanderbilt, Duke, Davidson, U VA, UCLA, Berkeley, GA Tech, etc.
If your kid is actually interested in northern elite schools but doesn’t want to take many courses outside STEM, then look at elite schools that have no distribution requirements, such as Brown (an Ivy) and Amherst.
The question to me is whether your kid is interested in getting an education that is potentially intellectually inspiring and broadening, or simply a credential. I find it quite likely that your kid has been bored by most of the HS and community college classes s/he has taken, most likely because they are not taught at a level that is challenging for him/her. I think that courses at an elite school–or the honors college at a flagship–would be a very different matter.
I don’t think that undergraduate education is something to rush through with a lot of sub-par “credits.” It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t waste it.