How is being pre-med at a large school different than a small school?

[jug330]

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This is kind of a silly question but I figured I might as well ask anyways. I currently attend a small private liberal arts college however I don't really like it here. Therefore I might transfer to a large state school.

What differences can I expect? I know the obvious like there will actually be TA's, larger class sizes, etc. but is the grading different/classes are actually curved? Can I expect questions about it in interviews?

 

[787593]

Large schools tend to have more people than smaller schools.

Haha but honestly, you'll have more premed people to socialize with. A buddy of mine at a small school had 11 people in ochem 2, which sounds awful. I don't know how many A's were given.

 

[sdhere1234]

Getting letters of rec from large state schools is a ****ing pain in the ass.

Imagine a bio class with 400 students, probably 150 of them trying to go into medicine or something else that needs a letter. You have to go to office hours, ask BS questions that you already know the answer to so you seem "interested". Aside from this, there's really no other way to build a relationship with your professor since you're just a face in a sea of faces (literally).

You might have better luck with upper level science courses where the class size is smaller, but it's still the same principle.

That was my experience with going to a large state school (40,000+ students)

 

[ScottTenorman54]

I went to a very large school. And it kinda sucked. Shadowing/ clinical volunteering / clinical research opportunities were few and hard to come by, because there was such insane competition for all of them. For example, to volunteer at the hospital, you had to call for a spot in the first hour that the applications opened, or the phone lines would be flooded and there was no chance you'd get a position. The vast majority of students in science courses (which had very large class sizes) tended to be premed, and everyone was gunning for an A. Professors would quickly get annoyed because all anyone ever cared about was getting points and rec letters. It all got old really fast; I felt like just another person among the vast premed horde that was terrorizing everyone with its neuroticism.

 

[featherdelights]

and one of the advisors, who is a physician and former adcom member at the best med school in the state, proofread every single one of my application essays before I submitted them.

I believe you but I'm just curious why a physician decided to eventually become a pre-med advisor?

 

[Pholaffle]

I'm sure there are many pro's and con's between State Vs. LAC as other posters have mentioned. I recall when I first started college at a state school that I was afraid I wouldn't get the best opportunities to prepare me for medical school because I was very geared towards attending a liberal arts college back in high school. Fast forward to today I have no regrets for attending where I did. My state school has a large affiliate hospital on campus that allowed me ample exposure to shadowing and volunteering opportunities. There are also so many research projects going on around campus that I was able to get involved in a few different areas. Talking with some of my friends who went to liberal arts colleges I can't be sure that they would have been afforded the same experiences. However, now that I'm gearing up for applications I'm really pulling at straws to find a solid 4-5 professors/mentors who would write me a good LOR. One professor in microbiology with whom I've taken all the classes he teachers still hardly acts like he knows who I am, yet the orgo1/2 professor who teaches probably 250+ students a semester somehow knows all of his students by name and face. You'd be surprised with what might happen going forward, but I wish you the best of luck wherever you end up.

 

[663697]

I go to a small school that's not very well-known for medical sciences, but there still seem to be a lot of people gunning for med school.

The issue you might face going to a smaller school is potentially less opportunities for meaningful club participation/leadership. You'll probably find your run-of-the-mill pre-med clubs, but not much to get involved with that actually makes a difference. That's what I've noticed, at least.

If you're interested in biomedical research, it's likely that there will be less choices for you, especially if biomed isn't their strong suit. I found this to be the case at my institution, where most students end up working in labs unrelated to the medical field, which I've heard is fine as well.

 

[littledreamer]

I'm sure there are many pro's and con's between State Vs. LAC as other posters have mentioned. I recall when I first started college at a state school that I was afraid I wouldn't get the best opportunities to prepare me for medical school because I was very geared towards attending a liberal arts college back in high school. Fast forward to today I have no regrets for attending where I did. My state school has a large affiliate hospital on campus that allowed me ample exposure to shadowing and volunteering opportunities. There are also so many research projects going on around campus that I was able to get involved in a few different areas. Talking with some of my friends who went to liberal arts colleges I can't be sure that they would have been afforded the same experiences. However, now that I'm gearing up for applications I'm really pulling at straws to find a solid 4-5 professors/mentors who would write me a good LOR. One professor in microbiology with whom I've taken all the classes he teachers still hardly acts like he knows who I am, yet the orgo1/2 professor who teaches probably 250+ students a semester somehow knows all of his students by name and face. You'd be surprised with what might happen going forward, but I wish you the best of luck wherever you end up.

Exactly this. My large school offered me an incredible wealth of opportunities to pursue, including some extensive experiences outside of medicine that are a little more ~unique~


HOWEVER, getting LORs if you don't have a committee (I didn't) can be extremely extremely challenging. Getting one great science LOR was not a problem but I had to really work intentionally/longitudinally at building a relationship to get a second one.


Wouldn't trade my undergrad for the world though!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[jug330]

I went to a small, relatively unknown LAC and was extremely satisfied with my experiences and opportunities, though obviously there's a lot of variation in schools. Small class sizes (<30 for even my biggest classes) meant tons of one-on-one or small group interaction with professors so I could actually get decent, meaningful LORs from people who knew me well. Classes weren't graded on a curve, so I was graded based on my own knowledge and not my classmates' as well (which sometimes helped and sometimes hurt, lol). I wasn't competing with grad students for research and got to work directly with my PI to do several of my own independent projects, and wasn't competing with a ton of other pre-meds for clinical opportunities. My school actually had fantastic connections volunteering and clinical opportunities, as well as local alumni who were physicians and would let any pre-med from our school shadow them. And the pre-med advising was actually pretty good - everybody on our committee knew me personally, and one of the advisors, who is a physician and former adcom member at the best med school in the state, proofread every single one of my application essays before I submitted them.

I personally had a 3.8+ GPA and a <30 MCAT (completely my fault, nothing to do with my school), but had incredible ECs and letters as a direct result of attending this school, and ended up getting 9 interviews and 5 acceptances (the rest were wait lists).

This is in comparison to some of my friends at larger state schools who struggled to find professors who could write them decent LORs, couldn't get research opportunities beyond grunt work for somebody else's projects, had to go way out of their way to get volunteer/clinical opportunities they hated anyway...

That said, it really depends on your school - if you have these kinds of opportunities available to you, they are a huge boon compared to what you might get at a bigger school. If you don't have these kinds of opportunities, it might be good to move to somewhere that does, whether it's a big school or a different small one.

Yeah I like the small class sizes at my school and it is easy to build a relationship with professors, and there's a decent amount of places I can volunteer at. Part of the reason why I want to transfer is because we don't really curve so I think that going to a bigger school can help me out academically.

 

[jug330]

I went to a very large school. One known for having one of the largest premed populations in the country. And it kinda sucked. Shadowing/ clinical volunteering / clinical research opportunities were few and hard to come by, because there was such insane competition for all of them. For example, to volunteer at the hospital, you had to call for a spot in the first hour that the applications opened, or the phone lines would be flooded and there was no chance you'd get a position. The vast majority of students in science courses (which had very large class sizes) tended to be premed, and everyone was gunning for an A. Professors would quickly get annoyed because all anyone ever cared about was getting points and rec letters. It all got old really fast; I felt like just another person among the vast premed horde that was terrorizing everyone with its neuroticism. I was in the right place at the right time, and so I ended up with some outstanding ECs and that got me through. But I feel like the vast majority of my peers struggled for opportunities

I'm not too worried about the EC since I could always volunteer and shadow when I'm home, and during the school year I plan on being in a club or intramural/club team. Were your classes curved at all? would you happen to know how much it happened to help you out?

 

[Summerlax2016]

This is kind of a silly question but I figured I might as well ask anyways. I currently attend a small private liberal arts college however I don't really like it here. Therefore I might transfer to a large state school.

What differences can I expect? I know the obvious like there will actually be TA's, larger class sizes, etc. but is the grading different/classes are actually curved? Can I expect questions about it in interviews?

Only premed my year, no advisor.

 

[Optimist Prime]

Currently going to my state school and luckily we have a committee letter so you don't really have to worry about making relationships with the teachers. Depends on the school you're looking into going to I guess. Our school has a ton of opportunities for research as long as you go out of your way to set up meetings with professors. The only thing would be is how do you learn better? I'm in a single micro class of 430+ people so if you learn by asking questions you have to go to office hours because thats not happening in class. Some classes are curved, while others are your typical weeding out classes that are there to have half the class fail out and change there majors.

 

[Diirez]

I go to a fairly large state school in comparison to others I know in a small private school, the differences are pretty significant.
My state school is known for pharmacy and use math and science to weed out pharmacy students (Average high school GPA for them is a 4.0). My school also makes freshman pre-health students take all math and science their first semester.

Here's my experience:
I originally tested into calculus going into my freshman year but I wanted to get a solid foundation so I took pre-calculus instead (I only did algebra 3 in high school and self-study on my own). 50% of my pre-calculus class failed.
I had to take chemistry 1 as part of my major which had a class average of a 58.
I also took BIO which had about a 20% failure rate (Not bad) and I luckily was able to take the class with a experimental professor who researches how to lower failure rates in science classes and his class had a 7% failure rate.

Needless to say I pulled out a low GPA but pretty good for a first semester transition with only science and math (3.25). My pre-health advisor told me to quit pre-health because I showed I can't handle the work needed to get into medical school (it was my first semester!)

So I quit and I am getting back into pre-health now as a sophomore. I can say from friends at other small schools it is much different. For instance, my gen chem 1 lab would take about a whole weekend to complete, but other schools I know their labs are much simplified and less work. Other science classes are hard, especially gen chem, but don't nearly have the class sizes that my classes do (200-300 per lecture) and they don't go over nearly the same material. My gen chem class was fixed on doing orgo and gen chem 2 in the class.

I think it depends on the school, but from my experience the smaller schools are nicer because you can have smaller class sizes and sometimes better curriculum.

 

[700825]

I actually did what your are proposing doing (started at small liberal arts school and transferred to large state school) and here are the differences I noticed in my experiences thus far:

At a smaller school it is easier to get to know the professors, easier to get leadership opportunities, and you overall have a more personal relationship with your advisor, the pre-health advisor, faculty, etc. Getting help in classes and getting academic advice is much easier (don't have to schedule appointment well in advance). The down side is the lack of opportunities to explore EC and academic interest to the extent you can at a larger school and as stated above the number of other pre-meds to socialize with.

At the larger school there are more opportunities to explore your interest so to speak, but leadership opportunities are a lot harder to come by especially as a transfer. The classes are larger (~60-100 students in upper division sciences) which makes getting to know the professors personally more difficult, but it is still very possible. Whether or not there is curve in the science classes is more dependent on the professor and the difficulty of the class (some classes have a curve others do not). The main difference I for me was that an A is a 90+ here rather than a 93+ as it was at my first school. As for the TA's my experience with them has been very positive (they are helpful, friendly, etc.). Also, they have a close relationship with the professor and they will often put in a good word with the professor for you if you impress them which can help with LORs.

Hope this helped some!