BS/MD vs WashU Undergrad

[efle]

Hey all,

Thanks for all of your helpful responses.

It seems that WashU, Emory, or any other expensive private schools are pretty much out of the question now in terms of the cost and risk associated with it.

Now, discussing the BS/MD: I really like that it would provide me a peace of mind as an undergraduate so that I'd be able to explore different passions, have fun, and focus on myself for the next four years. Also, I've looked at the profiles of some students that have gone through this specific BS/MD and most of them have an MBA by their senior year of undergrad along with some research publications. If this program provides me that ease of obtaining an MBA and research right before medical school, it'd pretty much be a no-brainer, but I need to make sure with the program director.

However, going beyond the option of WashU is the fact that I'm on the UT Austin waitlist. Now, UT Austin is also cheap but it's a tad bit more expensive than Texas Tech because they don't give out scholarships (30k/yr) so they're both around the same ballpark. Texas A&M is also similar in that regard. The waitlist is not your typical waitlist, though. According to my UT Austin application portal, they only admit a "very select few" onto the waitlist this year so I'm pretty confident I'd get in by next month. I would presume that they're using this waitlist to gauge the amount of admitted students that enroll this fall.

@ingobingo is correct in that the only reason I'd ever go to Texas Tech would be for its BS/MD program because of the quality of the other students and its location, but from my perspective, it seems worth the sacrifice. On the other hand, I'd be happy to go to UT Austin because it's a nice, familiar location and that I know the students are of higher quality (many of my friends are attending). Overall, in terms of quality of location and students, I would rank my public IS undergrad schools as such in descending order: UT Austin, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech.

So I guess my final question boils down to this: would attending UT Austin/Texas A&M be worth the effort and stress of maybe getting to attend a better medical school like UT Southwestern and UT Houston McGovern over the guarantee of TTUHSC? Does going to a higher-ranked medical school really matter if I wanted to pursue a competitive residency such as ortho or general surgery?

Since medical school admissions seem to be getting increasingly more difficult every year with more and more people reapplying to more cycles and people taking gap years just for the sake of getting in, I am leaning towards the BS/MD. Especially as an Asian male, I know I'd have to grind my ass off in undergrad and sacrifice my mental well-being to get into ANY medical school.

Again, thank you all for helping me make my decision-making process much easier.

Have you lived somewhere like lubbock before, or even had a chance to visit during COVID? Location is a huge sacrifice compared to Austin, you gotta know what you're signing up for especially if you're thinking for 8 years

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[KnightDoc]

So I guess my final question boils down to this: would attending UT Austin/Texas A&M be worth the effort and stress of maybe getting to attend a better medical school like UT Southwestern and UT Houston McGovern over the guarantee of TTUHSC? Does going to a higher-ranked medical school really matter if I wanted to pursue a competitive residency such as ortho or general surgery?

Only you can decide. As you are learning, there is no free lunch. UT Austin/A&M = nicer experience at greater cost with no guarantee. Yes, a better school will help with a more competitive residency, although it also provides no guarantee and people do match into competitive specialties from everywhere.

It all comes down to your risk tolerance and confidence in your abilities. Here are the relevant statistics from last cycle:

Nationally: 53,030 applicants (we know this number is over 60,000 this year!), 13,430 matriculated IS, 8,809 OOS, and 30,791 not at all.
Texas: 4,888 applicants, 1,556 IS, 296 OOS, and 3,036 not at all.

If you are confident in your abilities, hate Lubbock and can deal with those odds, you do not need a guarantee. You have already evidenced some talent by your ability to be accepted into the program, as well as your T20 acceptances, but those are no guarantee of success in a competition with a national success rate that will be under 40% this year. The Texas accept rate was already under 40%.

Plenty of those people not succeeding are statistically far below you, but, if you try and fail, you will absolutely not be a fluke, no matter how good your application ends up being. A ton of really impressive people are humbled and disappointed by the process every year.

 

[ingobingo]

Congratulations. Surely you realize you are FAR from typical. You got into all of the most prestigious BS/MD programs in the country, all at very excellent schools, in order to roll the dice and apparently ended up at an Ivy MD/PhD program. So that means anyone else who just clicks their heels and wants it badly enough can do the same? VERY presumptuous.

So, exactly where did you end up attending UG, and how many hundreds of thousands of dollars more did it end up costing you than the Northwestern, Brown, and WashU's BS/MD programs you turned down? At the end of the day, that is precisely what you are advising OP to do. If you ended up at HYPSM at a cost comparable to or less than your BS/MD options, it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, is it? Also, while your physician scientist pursuit is certainly impressive, hopefully you recognize the irony of advising OP to cast cost concerns aside while you pursue your lowest cost, albeit extremely prestigious, option.

I'm not going to be pursuing this further, but I don't take well to someone who is casting aside my thoughts on a very tough decision that I had to make all those years ago and think I benefitted from with the mentorship of others. It's incredibly disrespectful and belittling.

I'm not saying cost doesn't matter - OP's initial post indicated that if he preferred WashU, he would be able to attend it without too much financial concern, but his updated post rules WashU out due to finances so I'm clearly not going to further recommend WashU. Cost is a very personal thing that differs in priority from person to person and is influenced by the options that are in front of you.

And no, I did not attend HYPSM and I think that it's very presumptuous of you to think that I did and that because I decided that pursuing an MD/PhD program was best for me (let me be clear that if someone decides to pursue an MD/PhD due to the cost, then they're making a grave mistake), that I am in no position to provide guidance to the OP.

 

[KnightDoc]

I'm not going to be pursuing this further, but I don't take well to someone who is casting aside my thoughts on a very tough decision that I had to make all those years ago and think I benefitted from with the mentorship of others. It's incredibly disrespectful and belittling.

I'm not saying cost doesn't matter - OP's initial post indicated that if he preferred WashU, he would be able to attend it without too much financial concern, but his updated post rules WashU out due to finances so I'm clearly not going to further recommend WashU. Cost is a very personal thing that differs in priority from person to person and is influenced by the options that are in front of you.

And no, I did not attend HYPSM and I think that it's very presumptuous of you to think that I did and that because I decided that pursuing an MD/PhD program was best for me (let me be clear that if someone decides to pursue an MD/PhD due to the cost, then they're making a grave mistake), that I am in no position to provide guidance to the OP.

Fair enough, but there is absolutely no reason for you to be insulted. I was complimenting you by pointing out that you are so atypical (in a spectacularly good way) that your experience just isn't relevant to the other 99% of us, no matter how much you struggled with your decision. And yes, cost is a personal thing, so I think it's presumptuous to advise someone to spend an extra $500K+ when you didn't do so yourself.

 

[shady0997]

Only you can decide. As you are learning, there is no free lunch. UT Austin/A&M = nicer experience at greater cost with no guarantee. Yes, a better school will help with a more competitive residency, although it also provides no guarantee and people do match into competitive specialties from everywhere.

It all comes down to your risk tolerance and confidence in your abilities. Here are the relevant statistics from last cycle:

Nationally: 53,030 applicants (we know this number is over 60,000 this year!), 13,430 matriculated IS, 8,809 OOS, and 30,791 not at all.
Texas: 4,888 applicants, 1,556 IS, 296 OOS, and 3,036 not at all.

If you are confident in your abilities, hate Lubbock and can deal with those odds, you do not need a guarantee. You have already evidenced some talent by your ability to be accepted into the program, as well as your T20 acceptances, but those are no guarantee of success in a competition with a national success rate that will be under 40% this year. The Texas accept rate was already under 40%.

Plenty of those people not succeeding are statistically far below you, but, if you try and fail, you will absolutely not be a fluke, no matter how good your application ends up being. A ton of really impressive people are humbled and disappointed by the process every year.

Wow, those stats don't look promising at all. Can you please send the source for them?

 

[KnightDoc]

Wow, those stats don't look promising at all. Can you please send the source for them?

AAMC Table A-5.

 

[deleted314957]

Like most states the vast majority of Texans live in cities and would prefer not to be in Lubbock, but true, maybe he loves Lubbock. I've said it already and I'll say it again, the right choice for him may still be Tech or any of the others. I just HATE seeing people hype the BS/MD part as a reason to choose Tech. It's a **** deal that helps the school, not the student. If Tech is the right choice of cost, location, career opportunities, fit, etc then by all means he should go to Tech. But if the BS/MD is the reason why, he shouldnt.

The BS/MD part is not some kind of “trap”. It is a win for a person who has made a career choice. Notice i did not say choice of sub specialty type or choice of practice arrangement.
You just make the choice to be a success. You don’t even consider failure.

 

[ooh a bean]

Hey all,

Thanks for all of your helpful responses.

It seems that WashU, Emory, or any other expensive private schools are pretty much out of the question now in terms of the cost and risk associated with it.

Now, discussing the BS/MD: I really like that it would provide me a peace of mind as an undergraduate so that I'd be able to explore different passions, have fun, and focus on myself for the next four years. Also, I've looked at the profiles of some students that have gone through this specific BS/MD and most of them have an MBA by their senior year of undergrad along with some research publications. If this program provides me that ease of obtaining an MBA and research right before medical school, it'd pretty much be a no-brainer, but I need to make sure with the program director.

However, going beyond the option of WashU is the fact that I'm on the UT Austin waitlist. Now, UT Austin is also cheap but it's a tad bit more expensive than Texas Tech because they don't give out scholarships (30k/yr) so they're both around the same ballpark. Texas A&M is also similar in that regard. The waitlist is not your typical waitlist, though. According to my UT Austin application portal, they only admit a "very select few" onto the waitlist this year so I'm pretty confident I'd get in by next month. I would presume that they're using this waitlist to gauge the amount of admitted students that enroll this fall.

@ingobingo is correct in that the only reason I'd ever go to Texas Tech would be for its BS/MD program because of the quality of the other students and its location, but from my perspective, it seems worth the sacrifice. On the other hand, I'd be happy to go to UT Austin because it's a nice, familiar location and that I know the students are of higher quality (many of my friends are attending). Overall, in terms of quality of location and students, I would rank my public IS undergrad schools as such in descending order: UT Austin, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech.

So I guess my final question boils down to this: would attending UT Austin/Texas A&M be worth the effort and stress of maybe getting to attend a better medical school like UT Southwestern and UT Houston McGovern over the guarantee of TTUHSC? Does going to a higher-ranked medical school really matter if I wanted to pursue a competitive residency such as ortho or general surgery?

Since medical school admissions seem to be getting increasingly more difficult every year with more and more people reapplying to more cycles and people taking gap years just for the sake of getting in, I am leaning towards the BS/MD. Especially as an Asian male, I know I'd have to grind my ass off in undergrad and sacrifice my mental well-being to get into ANY medical school.

Again, thank you all for helping me make my decision-making process much easier.

I'm probably gonna get some backlash for this response, but oh well.

I'm a Asian male medical student who went to WashU for undergrad, and I strongly advocate other Asian male incoming freshmen to really consider WashU. Despite its location in the Midwest, WashU has a very strong Asian-American student group presence, whether you are interested in participating in Christian groups (Asian Christian Fellowship), in social groups (Asian American Association, Chinese Students Association, etc), or in other types of Asian cultural groups (Lunar New Year Festival performance groups, Pl4Y, etc). If you participate in any of these groups or even make friends with anyone in these groups, you will be able to very easily build your own social network and social identity, which you might not be able to do at schools that are much larger or do not have the same level of Asian American student group presence. As someone who went to a 99% black/white/latino high school, WashU was very integral for me developing and grounding myself in my Asian-American identity, which is something I think non-Asian people don't truly understand the importance of as they don't have to deal with the particular flavor of racism that we have to face everyday. As an FYI, 10/12 people from my freshman dorm community who started out as pre-med, myself included, are currently in medical school with the other two dropping pre-med as a career path by the end of first year with one being a private equity investor and the other an analyst at Epic.

But if you really think locking down a medical school seat is more important than these sort of factors then perhaps Texas Tech is the way to go.

 

[KnightDoc]

I'm probably gonna get some backlash for this response, but oh well.

I'm a Asian male medical student who went to WashU for undergrad, and I strongly advocate other Asian male incoming freshmen to really consider WashU. Despite its location in the Midwest, WashU has a very strong Asian-American student group presence, whether you are interested in participating in Christian groups (Asian Christian Fellowship), in social groups (Asian American Association, Chinese Students Association, etc), or in other types of Asian cultural groups (Lunar New Year Festival performance groups, Pl4Y, etc). If you participate in any of these groups or even make friends with anyone in these groups, you will be able to very easily build your own social network and social identity, which you might not be able to do at schools that are much larger or do not have the same level of Asian American student group presence. As someone who went to a 99% black/white/latino high school, WashU was very integral for me developing and grounding myself in my Asian-American identity, which is something I think non-Asian people don't truly understand the importance of as they don't have to deal with the particular flavor of racism that we have to face everyday. As an FYI, 10/12 people from my freshman dorm community who started out as pre-med, myself included, are currently in medical school with the other two dropping pre-med as a career path by the end of first year with one being a private equity investor and the other an analyst at Epic.

But if you really think locking down a medical school seat is more important than these sort of factors then perhaps Texas Tech is the way to go.

Absolutely no reason for you to receive any backlash at all. No one is arguing that WashU isn't a great school, and it's great that you loved the vibe and the demographics. That is indeed extremely important.

Whether it is important enough to justify relinquishing a guaranteed IS med school seat at a cost of literally several hundred thousand dollars is the question!!

 

[DokterMom]

I'll admit to having skipped a few posts, but from what I've read, most of the relevant points have been covered. One I didn't really see emphasized too much is the likelihood that as a legal resident of the great state of Texas, odds are very high that if you do choose to go to medical school, it will also be in Texas. The cost differential makes state schools that much more appealing to applicants and conversely, makes Texas applicants that much more likely to be time-wasters for OOS medical schools.

So in a nutshell, you go to undergrad somewhere then end up either at a Texas medical school or in some other profession.

How certain are you about medicine? What are your reasons? You don't have to tell us, but do be completely honest with yourself. Are you bringing honor and prestige to your parents? Choosing a field that's secure and lucrative? Do you have a passion for the science and are you comfortable with the idea of working with strangers in such a close and intimate way? How much exposure do you have to real life in the medical trenches? What would you do if you found out you could never be a doctor?

The reason I'm asking is that in the event you decide you don't really want to be a physician after all, your undergraduate school will matter, and speaking frankly, TX Tech's prestige is a notch below your other options. However, if you DO continue on to medical school then your UG college won't matter in the slightest - really.

However, the prestige of your medical school will matter to some extent for residency selection, and accepting the BS/MD option slots you into a lower-mid-tier US MD program. Could you do better than that? Maybe. With a lot of effort and strategizing -- so an organized four-year campaign of strategic volunteering, extra-curricular activities, research, studying for and taking the MCAT. It's not an inconsequential effort. Skip that rat-race and you could have a fabulous time at college exploring your genuine passions without worrying about how it'll look to some AdCom. Or you could become part of the 60% of folks who don't make it. Or part of the 35% who are accepted at the mid-tier TX schools rather than UTSW or Baylor. The prestige difference between TX Tech and say Dell or Long is pretty meaningless.

So back to the downsides. As I said, the prestige of your medical school will matter to some extent for residency selection. To some extent. Your own performance in med school will matter far more. Your board scores and letters of recommendation will carry more weight, particularly with residency programs in TX that will know the people who will be recommending you. Leave TX for residency and you'll be part of the vast majority of US MD students at mid-tier schools with no particular advantage or disadvantage.

In this particular case, it seems like a pretty good deal.

(Get off the UT Austin wait list and my opinion could change.)

 

[deleted314957]

I'll admit to having skipped a few posts, but from what I've read, most of the relevant points have been covered. One I didn't really see emphasized too much is the likelihood that as a legal resident of the great state of Texas, odds are very high that if you do choose to go to medical school, it will also be in Texas. The cost differential makes state schools that much more appealing to applicants and conversely, makes Texas applicants that much more likely to be time-wasters for OOS medical schools.

So in a nutshell, you go to undergrad somewhere then end up either at a Texas medical school or in some other profession.

How certain are you about medicine? What are your reasons? You don't have to tell us, but do be completely honest with yourself. Are you bringing honor and prestige to your parents? Choosing a field that's secure and lucrative? Do you have a passion for the science and are you comfortable with the idea of working with strangers in such a close and intimate way? How much exposure do you have to real life in the medical trenches? What would you do if you found out you could never be a doctor?

The reason I'm asking is that in the event you decide you don't really want to be a physician after all, your undergraduate school will matter, and speaking frankly, TX Tech's prestige is a notch below your other options. However, if you DO continue on to medical school then your UG college won't matter in the slightest - really.

However, the prestige of your medical school will matter to some extent for residency selection, and accepting the BS/MD option slots you into a lower-mid-tier US MD program. Could you do better than that? Maybe. With a lot of effort and strategizing -- so an organized four-year campaign of strategic volunteering, extra-curricular activities, research, studying for and taking the MCAT. It's not an inconsequential effort. Skip that rat-race and you could have a fabulous time at college exploring your genuine passions without worrying about how it'll look to some AdCom. Or you could become part of the 60% of folks who don't make it. Or part of the 35% who are accepted at the mid-tier TX schools rather than UTSW or Baylor. The prestige difference between TX Tech and say Dell or Long is pretty meaningless.

So back to the downsides. As I said, the prestige of your medical school will matter to some extent for residency selection. To some extent. Your own performance in med school will matter far more. Your board scores and letters of recommendation will carry more weight, particularly with residency programs in TX that will know the people who will be recommending you. Leave TX for residency and you'll be part of the vast majority of US MD students at mid-tier schools with no particular advantage or disadvantage.

In this particular case, it seems like a pretty good deal.

(Get off the UT Austin wait list and my opinion could change.)

”slots you into a lower- mid tier US MD program”. Pure, unadulterated hog swill. Are you a practicing physician? If so, you gotta be an academic.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

”slots you into a lower- mid tier US MD program”. Pure, unadulterated hog swill. Are you a practicing physician? If so, you gotta be an academic.

What's wrong with that statement?

 

[deleted314957]

I will tell you precisely. What is wrong with that statement is that it is pure, unadulterated hog swill. Generally speaking, a US MD program is just that. Some institutions are suited for some individuals and some are not. I would have failed miserably if I was not able to coast among the masses of my class in blissful anonymity. That was my style and it worked great.
What is lower-mid tier to you may be Mecca to some. Some people get a kick out of this “small group” stuff and classes of 30 people. That is a horror show for many people.
Some folks like lots of fun faculty interaction. Some, like me, avoided faculty and authority like the plague.
So, you have zero idea how people rank programs. You probably DO know how some magazine ranks any academic endeavor you can imagine.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

I will tell you precisely. What is wrong with that statement is that it is pure, unadulterated hog swill. Generally speaking, a US MD program is just that. Some institutions are suited for some individuals and some are not. I would have failed miserably if I was not able to coast among the masses of my class in blissful anonymity. That was my style and it worked great.
What is lower-mid tier to you may be Mecca to some. Some people get a kick out of this “small group” stuff and classes of 30 people. That is a horror show for many people.
Some folks like lots of fun faculty interaction. Some, like me, avoided faculty and authority like the plague.
So, you have zero idea how people rank programs. You probably DO know how some magazine ranks any academic endeavor you can imagine.

I get it now true fit is more important than rank. However I am not sure if a 17/18 year old can figure out MD school fit.

 

[deleted314957]

I get it now true fit is more important than rank. However I am not sure if a 17/18 year old can figure out MD school fit.

Well, that’s why so many people disliked/hated med school. It was largely because they were not comfortable in that particular institutional setting. Some people are very happy largely because of the exact opposite reason. Your dilemma is to figure out where you will thrive over a long period of time, but you must base your decision on incomplete information. Ergo, you must be as informed as possible and make good use of your interviews.