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I got into an ivy league, but I'm worried that if I attend my GPA will suffer.
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Ivy league for pre med?
- Thread starter ScienceLover97
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Your GPA is more likely to suffer in a PharmD program than at an Ivy. Just don't pick a crazy rigorous major and you should be fine.
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A crazy rigorous major, as in bio or chem?
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What's the debt/financial aid story at all your options? Ivy League isn't the sure bet it once was in this economy.
If you want a good job w/ little debt, the way to go is computer engineering.
If you want a good job w/ little debt, the way to go is computer engineering.
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It's actually ironic and frustrating cause they'd both turn out to be similar (around 10 to 15k a year for my parents), which makes it even harder to decide. I also got into NYU and I'd have to pay 10k since I'd be a commuter.
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Unless you are really smart (as in, well above average at your Ivy), yes your GPA will likely suffer (even at Harvard & Stanford).
For some, the different might be like getting a 3.8 at Harvard vs. 4.0 elsewhere but for others it might be much more drastic.
That being said, you do not even seem committed to medical school if you are seriously considering a pharm-program.
For some, the different might be like getting a 3.8 at Harvard vs. 4.0 elsewhere but for others it might be much more drastic.
That being said, you do not even seem committed to medical school if you are seriously considering a pharm-program.
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10-15k a year for your parents? You poor thing, having undergrad paid for.
Seriously though, pick a major that interests you and that you think you can do well in. If you are not 100% set on being a doctor, go to the Ivy, because it will open up many, many doors, doors that are better than an MD ever could if you are happy with them. Also highly depends on the Ivy- Princeton deflates hard, but Yale and Harvard aren't so bad- they actually inflate a bit. Not all Ivies are equal.
So the question is, do you want to make a lot of money, or do you want to be a doctor? There's a different approach for each of these things, regardless of the school you attend.
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Go wherever you think you can excel. Srsly.
Ivies are prolly stacked w/ hard core gunners, but premed blows everywhere. EVERYWHERE legit that is.
And don't buy into the Ivy door-opening BS. These are the same people who think law school or Wall Street are sure tickets to success. Most Ivies are liberal arts programs that are facing a serious wake up call.
Ivies are prolly stacked w/ hard core gunners, but premed blows everywhere. EVERYWHERE legit that is.
And don't buy into the Ivy door-opening BS. These are the same people who think law school or Wall Street are sure tickets to success. Most Ivies are liberal arts programs that are facing a serious wake up call.
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The school is Brown, and if anything, I'm probably below average, since my high school isn't that strong and especially not in the sciences.
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I think SDN downplays the importance of undergrad prestige – my Ivy diploma has opened a lot of doors for me. Brown's not a school known for grade deflation (in fact, I think Brown grads typically have pretty high GPAs), so I think the pros outweigh the cons.
Don't take the pharmacy program. You can get into pharmacy school if you can breathe nowadays and the job market is bleak. Personally, if I wanted to go into medicine, I'd go wherever I would be happiest. Also, I'd want to go wherever I could do my best. Sometimes, these things go hand in hand. Know that most med schools do NOT care where you went to undergrad, just that you did well. Also, I wouldn't go to a school like UChicago (not ivy but notoriously tough), but as a high schooler I'm sure its hard to give up prestige and go to a nearby university.
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Go to the Ivy. I've gone through premed at one, and it was a much better experience than what my friends experienced at their flagship state schools. Less weed out, less cutthroat competition (more collaboration), schools like your undergrad name (or at least my interviewers did), and you get a little bit of slack for your gpa if your MCAT is solid. People from my school get into top 10s with 3.6-3.7 GPAs and strong MCATs. I'll give you the advice that was given to me 4 years ago: if you want the Ivy League experience, do it now and make the most of it, because it's unlikely you'll get the experience again.
Edit: Brown is a solid school with solid med school placement. You'll be totally fine.
Edit: Brown is a solid school with solid med school placement. You'll be totally fine.
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You really don't know what you're talking about, sorry.
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You'll be fine.
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Take the Ivy. It offers excellent networking opportunities and a phenomenal support network. If you decide not to do medicine, then an Ivy league diploma and Ivy league connections will get you a long, long way. People who say that an Ivy league education isn't worth it anymore likely have no idea about the benefits of being at an Ivy. Especially nowadays when a college diploma is a dime a dozen, a diploma that can attest to your skills and abilities goes a long way, not to mention the network.
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Also notice how all the posters who went to an Ivy are saying to go to one for premed.
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Agreed with Wedgedawg. My Ivy experience was phenomenal, and I was constantly surrounded by brilliant individuals and a wide range of opportunities. Less than a year out of college, the friends that I made in college are now Rhodes Scholars, Fulbright Scholars, published writers, bankers, consultants, clergymen, and entrepreneurs who are literally spread across the world, doing their own thing. It's the students themselves that feed collective belief that we have the capacity to change the world around us (and/or make lots of money). Plus, you also go to the Ivy Leagues to make connections that can help you professionally decades down the road.
Moreover, going to an Ivy League university does give you a significant leg up in competitive med school admissions for a number of reasons, and I believe one of the factors that isn't talked about as much is the small class size. I got to know most of my professors very well, and this sort of interaction makes the difference between an okay class/fantastic class and a generic recommendation/strong recommendation. One of my professors even offered me a jar of her homemade pickles (I declined).
A couple of my college friends were accepted to the Yale School of Nursing and the UCSF School of Pharmacy. So while Ivy League students pursuing non-MD/DO health professions aren't very common, they are out there, an Ivy pedigree is still valuable for admissions. At an institution like Brown, I have no doubt that you will receive the career advising and faculty support to help you on your career path.
Plus, if you ultimately decide that medicine isn't your thing, the on-campus recruiting programs at Ivy League universities are really hard to beat.
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Thank you guys so much! You're all very reassuring. Should I major in a science or can I major in something different like economics? I know that the Open Curriculum allows no requirements and freedom, so would that make it easier to finish the prerequisites and pursue a non-science major? Also, if I end up getting C's in my science classes, can I still make it in pharmacy at least?
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Major in whatever will get you the best GPA. This will generally be whatever is most interesting. I majored in Biology because I've wanted to since I was 3, but other people I know majored in things from Anthropology to Economics to Sociology to Engineering.
You can get a C or two and still make it to med school (and definitely pharm). Just don't make it a habit.
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I switched my intended major like six times my freshman year. Take your med school prereqs, but be sure to take advantage of your first years to try things out. My best advice on that front is to follow the good professors – you might be surprised by what ends up being interesting to you!
First off, congrats to you for getting into an Ivy League! I think that's awesome. I'll share a little bit about my pre-pharmacy experience
1. I've wanted to be a pharmacist since I was a sophomore in high school. I was accepted into my pharmacy's school pre-pharm program but I was balking at the cost of it since I was the only one supporting my education sooo.. I went to community college.
2. Community college was honestly the best decision I ever made. I saved a lot of money by having a cheaper tuition and being able to mooch at home. Also, I wasn't 100% sure of pharmacy just yet... by going to community college I could transfer basically anywhere after two years and that was a reassuring thought. The classroom sizes were a lot smaller too, and I got a lot of time in at my professor's office hours. I did have a social life, but the whole temptation of either going out or doing school work was never an issue for me. In general, I feel like the classes were a lot easier.
3. I was able to do all my prereqs on time, and got accepted in pharmacy school. So, while having a bachelors degree may help your chances... it isn't necessary.
I know some people think community college is underneath them, but it really is a good option. It'll save you money and also buy you time to decide what you want to do with your career. Most community colleges also have articulation agreements with colleges in the state, so I had a guaranteed transfer acceptance to many schools if I didn't want to do pharmacy school anymore.
1. I've wanted to be a pharmacist since I was a sophomore in high school. I was accepted into my pharmacy's school pre-pharm program but I was balking at the cost of it since I was the only one supporting my education sooo.. I went to community college.
2. Community college was honestly the best decision I ever made. I saved a lot of money by having a cheaper tuition and being able to mooch at home. Also, I wasn't 100% sure of pharmacy just yet... by going to community college I could transfer basically anywhere after two years and that was a reassuring thought. The classroom sizes were a lot smaller too, and I got a lot of time in at my professor's office hours. I did have a social life, but the whole temptation of either going out or doing school work was never an issue for me. In general, I feel like the classes were a lot easier.
3. I was able to do all my prereqs on time, and got accepted in pharmacy school. So, while having a bachelors degree may help your chances... it isn't necessary.
I know some people think community college is underneath them, but it really is a good option. It'll save you money and also buy you time to decide what you want to do with your career. Most community colleges also have articulation agreements with colleges in the state, so I had a guaranteed transfer acceptance to many schools if I didn't want to do pharmacy school anymore.
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This thread is just one big circle jerk, but I guess that's to be expected of SDN. Most of you would pick one med school over another just because it's three places higher on the USNWR list.
If you looked at the forest and not the tree, you'd see that my fundamental point is that this person should choose the school that's right for them and to not let prestige-driven lemmings make the call.
These threads are always the same. Hate to bust your bubble, but some people have to be in the bottom half of the class. Would love to hear from them and how their doors got opened.
In sum, what do you call a 3.2 Ivy med school applicant? Uncompetitive.
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What does the rest of their application look like?
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Not understanding the vitriol.
80 to 90% of applicants at my school got in the first time they applied, and the number is similar in other schools in the Ivy League as well. The sub-3.4 biology majors that I know of are at health care consulting in Cambridge or EPIC in Madison. N=2, sure, but what happens to the 3.2 public school applicants?
Make the right connections and pick up the relevant skills and it's much easy for the few students who don't make it to medical school to have a halfway decent Plan B.
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Barista!
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A good friend of mine has a gpa similar to that. He's solidly in the bottom half of our class. In 4 years I will be calling him Doctor. Other people have sweet finance, engineering, or computer science/tech jobs and will probably have higher lifetime earnings than me.
I completely agree that OP should go to whatever school he likes best and thinks he will be successful at. My comment was aimed at your last two points:
"Ivies are prolly stacked w/ hard core gunners, but premed blows everywhere. EVERYWHERE legit that is.
And don't buy into the Ivy door-opening BS. These are the same people who think law school or Wall Street are sure tickets to success. Most Ivies are liberal arts programs that are facing a serious wake up call."
For the first, instead of OP taking advice from someone who thinks that something is "prolly" true, they should take advice from people who have been through the path they could be taking and know what is "actually" true.
I don't really understand the last part of your second point, but I'm pretty sure my Wall Street friends are doing just fine... (not sure about law students, but the only people I know in my class going to law school have gotten into Duke, Harvard, and Columbia so I think they'll do okay).
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No vitriol, but you guys give off this vibe that going to an Ivy is an automatic no-brainer and that this person is set up for life as a result. Some of your posts sounds like it was taken right off the admissions brochure.
That's all I'm saying.
That's all I'm saying.
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Touche. But as someone who has gone to community college, state university, and Ivy, I can say that immediately when you set foot on campus at the Ivy, you feel at home and the support network is enormous. The state university I was at didn't do much for pre-meds and pre-med advising. At the Ivy, you'll be surrounded by your peers and people who are just like you, who'll understand when you make a Gatsby reference and laugh when you do something nerdy. Not saying that you don't have that at other schools, but in my experience, it's a much smaller subset of the student body at other schools.
I would modify this just a bit and say put more emphasis on major in what is most interesting to you and what you wouldn't mind doing for the next four years or so. Because at times, problem sets will start to become repetitive and boring, you'll come to see papers as a burden, and you really can't make it in a major you don't like. You'd just be miserable for quite a few years and college is supposed to be a great experience. If you major in something you like, you also won't have to worry about keeping GPA up because you'll really enjoy doing what you're doing and that's the one thing that will keep a GPA afloat. Also, a word of caution - most engineering classes are not considered as part of your science GPA while being insanely difficult so that's probably the hardest way to do pre-med although I have seen people do it. One person I know actually decided to go into industry after majoring in engineering - starting pay was 80-odd grand. Pretty sweet.
Yeah, it's definitely not that he/she will be set up for life but it will open many many doors. The support network, the alumni network, the sheer amount of money that Ivies spend on their students (state-of-the-art undergrad labs, databases, libraries, other resources, etc.), the advising, I could go on and on. These are simply facts, taken at face value. And if pre-med turns out to not be your thing, you always have finance, law, whatever else you want to do, actually, you'll be in a good position to do coming out of an Ivy.
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It's absolutely ridiculous to me that people are advising you based on your potential gpa alone. I went to a top LAC for undergrad and a mediocre state school to take my pre-reqs post bac. The people I met and the experiences I had in undergrad changed my life. The class discussions were amazing and I can't ever see myself being in a better learning environment again. The state school was like returning to high school. Learning was about taking exams not about deeply understanding concepts. The caliber of education was so different that I could never convey it in a forum post. Please go to the ivy.
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^ +1 to this post, couldn't have said it better.
Also, to the point someone else made about "Ivy not necessarily being the right fit..." - I agree that choosing a school just because it has an arbitrarily higher USNWR ranking is dumb, but you also change a lot in 4 years. I know I did. You may not realize what is ultimately the right "fit" for you until later down the road, after growing up a bit. A place that offers more resources, support, and inspiring classmates provides many opportunities to challenge yourself and become a smarter student and better person. Admittedly, going into college, I didn't immediately "click" with the environment at my school. I didn't NOT fit, but it took me some time to adjust. Looking back, I realized that going to a tough college really helped me to maximize my own personal potential - something I certainly would not have been able to do at some of the "safer" options I had. Do I think my school was the right fit now? Absolutely.
My advice is this - if you don't currently know that X school is THE best fit for you over another choice, and you haven't determined that Y school has ABSOLUTELY the wrong culture, I vote to go to the ivy, for many of the reasons that others have stated above. Blast me for "drinking the kool-aid" all you want, but that's my $0.02, also speaking from experience.
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Hey guys, I just found out I also got into Cornell and Hopkins (but I'm not that interested in Hopkins). So it's basically NYU vs. Brown vs. Cornell. I'm planning visits next week. The benefit of NYU is that it's close to home so I won't have to dorm since I've never experienced living out on my own.
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"This person", aka the OP, is not some overly impressionable automaton that needs your protection or sage teachings of, "choose the school that's right for you". Any high school senior with half a brain knows that platitude already, thanks. Some of us loved our ivy undergrad experience, and are simply weighing in. You already made your point that going to an Ivy for prestige-sake would be wrong. Point well-taken. But why come back and attack others' opinions as a "circle-jerk"? That's vitriol. Get it?
Ain't nobody got time for your sour grapes.
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-Providence > Ithaca in terms of restaurants and things to do.
-Cornell students seem more stressed than Brown students, in my opinion. They also are (unfairly, I may add) the butt of many Ivy League jokes.
-Brown has Alpert School of Medicine nearby, so you can shadow physicians and conduct biomedical research relatively easily, but Weill Cornell is hours upon hours away from the main campus.
-One caveat: Brown usually doesn't accept its own graduates for medical school, since it has its PLME students. However, a significant part of Weill Cornell medical students are Cornell University graduates.
College is the time to branch out geographically and to grow as an individual. Don't let your first day in medical school be the first day you are living out on your own. For that reason, I would discourage you going to NYU, unless family support is very, very important to you.
-Cornell students seem more stressed than Brown students, in my opinion. They also are (unfairly, I may add) the butt of many Ivy League jokes.
-Brown has Alpert School of Medicine nearby, so you can shadow physicians and conduct biomedical research relatively easily, but Weill Cornell is hours upon hours away from the main campus.
-One caveat: Brown usually doesn't accept its own graduates for medical school, since it has its PLME students. However, a significant part of Weill Cornell medical students are Cornell University graduates.
College is the time to branch out geographically and to grow as an individual. Don't let your first day in medical school be the first day you are living out on your own. For that reason, I would discourage you going to NYU, unless family support is very, very important to you.
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Cornell has better food though. I would argue both have similar placement for med schools, but Browns overall admit rate to medical schools in general is higher (80%ish vs 67%). Either way you really can't go wrong. Go to both admitted student weekends and see which you click with better.
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Is it bad that when I read the thread title, I thought to myself, "OP got into Brown"? Not exactly helping the stereotype that the only people that say they got into an "Ivy" are your Brown students...
You should go to the school that you are going to have the highest chance of doing well at. Whether or not you are going to medical school or not in the future should have no bearing what so ever. It will not impact your chances of matriculation in any perceptible way. It is all going to come down to you and how you fit into the school, which again comes back to... Go to where you will be the most successful because you fit the school, not the school that you think will help you manipulate the admissions process the best.
You should go to the school that you are going to have the highest chance of doing well at. Whether or not you are going to medical school or not in the future should have no bearing what so ever. It will not impact your chances of matriculation in any perceptible way. It is all going to come down to you and how you fit into the school, which again comes back to... Go to where you will be the most successful because you fit the school, not the school that you think will help you manipulate the admissions process the best.
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Ivy, non-Brown here 🙂
This part isn't necessarily self-consistent. First, I'd say whether or not you think you are really really really set on medicine has a huge impact on the type of things you should take into account. Ivy gives you a much better network/alternatives to fall back on if you decide medicine isn't for you.
First you say go to a school where you can do best at and then you say go to a school because you fit the school. To me, the former is a reason that would help you "manipulate the admissions process the best" because you're choosing a school to guard your GPA, essentially. There could be a school that completely fits you - say, if the criterion were being among people just like you and being intellectually challenged every day - but is not conducive to you performing well relative to other people at that school. So the phenomenon of being compared to high achieving people at an Ivy but fitting in versus guarding your GPA at another school and not fitting in as much.
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Doing well at is not talking about getting good grades. Doing well is about personal and professional development. This is not a hard concept. As an 18 year old entering undergrad, focusing on applying to medical school now is harmful to your future happiness, ability to develop and even get into medical school. Picking a school should be about you as a person being able to learn who you are, what you want to do with the rest of your life and continue your education. Matching a school's location, student body, lifestyle, classes, and opportunities to an individual will open doors in every direction. Focusing on an endpoint that statistically will not even be a particular student's end point is asking for a poorer outcome.
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You should clarify this point upon posting it then. It has the potential to be misinterpreted as doing well academically, since many people on this site are concerned with academics.
Definitely agree with the personal development part - not so much on the professional development part. That part also is not self-consistent. I'm assuming you're talking about development to become a professional in some field, which is the usual context that phrase is used in. Since your whole argument is based on not focusing on endpoints, then I think that the development on the student's part should only be personal in nature. If that means developing general career skills, then I totally agree.
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Lol this is true now that I think about it. HYP students tend to go more for "HYPMS" or "Top 5"
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To add a slightly different perspective, I did not go to an Ivy (though I did go to a decent private school). Number one is go where you will be happy. All of the Brown students I know are very happy, and it seems like a great place to be. Providence is fun and thriving. My advice would be to avoid places that are notoriously difficult to get a high GPA (I turned down UChicago for undergrad for that reason - amazing, incredible school, but I have no regrets there). Brown is not a school that is known for deflation or anything of that sort.
Also, as someone before mentioned, Warren Alpert will be a great resource: having nearby hospitals and ample labs will only help you have access to some awesome resources. NYU and Cornell are great, but I say go Brown.
Also, as someone before mentioned, Warren Alpert will be a great resource: having nearby hospitals and ample labs will only help you have access to some awesome resources. NYU and Cornell are great, but I say go Brown.
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Thanks everyone!
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It's college. It's going to be challenging no matter what.
