Premed rivals JHU

[dk333]

Which premed programs can rival Johns Hopkins other than the Ivies? Can Rochester, or Case Western?

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[ugradconfused]

duke? mit? washu?

 

[beaverfetus]

go where you'll be happy, you can learn mcat material, and can do research. All a "good" premed program means is that you will have stiff competition and adcoms may give you a minute amount of sympathy for having a slightly slightly lower gpa, and that's a maybe.

go where you'll be happy.

 

[kevster2001]

Not sure how you're basing a "premed" program but since you're so into rankings just look at a USNews Report, cross off the ivies and that'll be your list of good premed programs

 

[xcgirl]

Hopkins is a "great pre-med program" which means that competition is pretty bad, the curves on exams are awful, and your gpa suffers as a result. Yes, you do learn tons from amazing professors. yes, there are incredible opportunities. However, when you get to jr year with a 3.3 despite working your butt off, you start to think "what if I had gone to a state school and gotten a 4.0..."
I don't regret coming to Hopkins as it's been a great experience for me and I've gotten to do some amazing things. I just hope that adcoms are understanding about the competition and rough grading here.
It doesn't matter where you go to college, as long as you seek out the opportunities that are there. Even at Hopkins, the "great pre-med program" isn't dropped into your lap, you have to go find the opportunities.

 

[Stolenspatulas]

hopkins ugrad boasts that 90% or so of their applicants that are premed go to med school. however, that does not mean they get into their TOP choices. Duke boasts similar numbers. I went to Duke, and I can say strongly that Duke is a very very solid school for premeds. In terms of getting into top schools, I believe most schools respect Yale and Harvard the most (just by looking at enrolled students at top schools--- such as JHU).

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

hopkins ugrad boasts that 90% or so of their applicants that are premed go to med school. however, that does not mean they get into their TOP choices. Duke boasts similar numbers. I went to Duke, and I can say strongly that Duke is a very very solid school for premeds. In terms of getting into top schools, I believe most schools respect Yale and Harvard the most (just by looking at enrolled students at top schools--- such as JHU).

It seems pretty obvious to me that if you're the kind of person who fought hard to get the stats to get into a place like Yale/JHU/Harvard, you're likely to be the same kind of person when fighting to get the states to get into medical school.

So 90% getting into medical school is not that big of a deal in that context -- what else would you expect, really?

 

[mmmkay121]

hopkins ugrad boasts that 90% or so of their applicants that are premed go to med school. however, that does not mean they get into their TOP choices. Duke boasts similar numbers. I went to Duke, and I can say strongly that Duke is a very very solid school for premeds. In terms of getting into top schools, I believe most schools respect Yale and Harvard the most (just by looking at enrolled students at top schools--- such as JHU).

JHU students place pretty well.

http://www.jhu.edu/~careers/handouts/pgs2005.pdf (note: I believe they're going in order)

Most frequently attended med schools
1. Johns Hopkins
2. Harvard
4. Penn
7. NYU

 

[fahimaz7]

UGA is quite good. We have around 800 students/semester in Organic I and have top 15 programs in

immunology
cell biology
chemistry
genetics
microbiology
biochemistry

and the #2-3 vet school in the nation. Huge CDC collaborations as well.

Plus great scores on MCAT etc

 

[xcgirl]

Hopkins screens their med school applicants. If your gpa/mcat/ecs are sub-standard, you are told to go get a masters degree in bio from the school of publich health [notorious gpa-booster] and then apply. If you still insist upon applying, you will not get a committee rec [hence the 10% who don't get into med school]. Most Hopkins pre-meds are not going to apply if the office of pre-professional advising tells them not to.
That being said...We've had it drilled into our head from the beginning that we need a 3.5/30/clinical experience + volunteering. Pre-professional advising has some great ideas/connections you can use to get shadowing/research/volunteering experiences. I've been told by Hopkins Med AdCom and others that Hopkins "does a great job packaging their applicants" and I'm sure that it really does help to come from Hopkins.

 

[Mixtli]

I went to Hopkins UGA. Classes are tough and competitive, but you get what you work for. Hopkins is hooked up with lots of volunteer activities and research oppurtunities that you might not find elsewhere.

 

[Missterious1]

Not really sure what kevster is talking about... but I'm at an ivy and minus the fact that you're up against people who are superstar students, it's fine. They also do a good job of packaging applicants nicely, and I haven't heard about my school's pre med office refusing to write committee letters or anything like that.

I think something that is essential for a good pre-med program is a pre-med office that knows what they're doing... ie: does a good job of advising and packaging applicants and getting them where they want to go. Having a school that will write a great committee letter, collect and send your letters of rec, etc. makes life easier. I'm sure quite a few schools out there have this.

 

[blantant]

Hopkins screens their med school applicants. If your gpa/mcat/ecs are sub-standard, you are told to go get a masters degree in bio from the school of publich health [notorious gpa-booster] and then apply. If you still insist upon applying, you will not get a committee rec [hence the 10% who don't get into med school]. Most Hopkins pre-meds are not going to apply if the office of pre-professional advising tells them not to.
That being said...We've had it drilled into our head from the beginning that we need a 3.5/30/clinical experience + volunteering. Pre-professional advising has some great ideas/connections you can use to get shadowing/research/volunteering experiences. I've been told by Hopkins Med AdCom and others that Hopkins "does a great job packaging their applicants" and I'm sure that it really does help to come from Hopkins.

aha, truly the missing puzzle piece. i was wondering how they could boast 90% acceptance. hopkins, from what i hear, is also known for having too many uber-competative gunner-type premeds. yeah, sounds like a great pre-med program.

seriously, my advice to any highschool kid is to go wherever you'll be happy. there is no such thing as "premed programs", other than the ones that offer guaranteed admission to medschool to select undergrads. if you know that you're going to apply to medschool, your undergrad institution means close to nothing. the smart, ambitious Harvard types that get into medschool probabaly would have made it in regardless of if went to Podunk-Undergrad College instead of the Ivy league.

 

[blantant]

imho if you are active and take the initiative, you'll easily find volunteer activities and get good LORs wherever you go. maybe Hopkins, although generally harder and more competative, has a premed comittee that will take care of you if you are a strong candidate (basically meaning a high GPA).

 

[Stolenspatulas]

aha, truly the missing puzzle piece. i was wondering how they could boast 90% acceptance. hopkins, from what i hear, is also known for having too many uber-competative gunner-type premeds. yeah, sounds like a great pre-med program.

seriously, my advice to any highschool kid is to go wherever you'll be happy. there is no such thing as "premed programs", other than the ones that offer guaranteed admission to medschool to select undergrads. if you know that you're going to apply to medschool, your undergrad institution means close to nothing. the smart, ambitious Harvard types that get into medschool probabaly would have made it in regardless of if went to Podunk-Undergrad College instead of the Ivy league.

I would say you are wrong if the h.s. student is ambitious in his/her medical career. Going to po-dunk college will likely get you into a state or less-competitive medical school. that will then lead to a likely less competitive residency (which may mean his/her dream of going into a competitive field in medicine will come to an end). also, if the h.s. kid wants to do research as well as practice, he/she'll have an advantage going to a research-heavy med school.

So the bottom line is if you want to do primary care or something less competitive with your med degree, i totally agree with you. however if you're more ambitious, you should be ambitious the whole way.

 

[BigRedPremed]

The high acceptance rates of top schools' applicants into med schools is mostly due to them having the smartest, most driven students, not due to the strength of this mythical premed "program."

If you want to get into med school, liberal arts colleges are the way to go. They generally offer better undergrad education and better professor recommendations.

 

[mmmkay121]

The high acceptance rates of top schools' applicants into med schools is mostly due to them having the smartest, most driven students, not due to the strength of this mythical premed "program."

If you want to get into med school, liberal arts colleges are the way to go. They generally offer better undergrad education and better professor recommendations.

I heard about that Pomona school. wow. What a great place to study. I'd recommend it to any premed or just anyone who wants a great college experience.

 

[riceman04]

Which premed programs can rival Johns Hopkins other than the Ivies? Can Rochester, or Case Western?

Rice...of course I will plug my school...but it was kind of nice having smaller classes (made it easy to gain great research experience and to establish great relationships with your professors)...class size gives it a LAC feel while being a very small D-I school (overall only around 800 per matriculating class) class).


Plus being across the street from the largest medical center in the world and two med schools (one of which is top 10) is an added benefit.

Kids from Rice usually have their selection of med school acceptances from which to choose.

 

[FutureNeuroStud]

Rice...of course I will plug my school...but it was kind of nice having smaller classes (made it easy to gain great research experience and to establish great relationships with your professors)...class size gives it a LAC feel while being a very small D-I school (overall only around 800 per matriculating class) class).


Plus being across the street from the largest medical center in the world and two med schools (one of which is top 10) is an added benefit.

Kids from Rice usually have their selection of med school acceptances from which to choose.

Continue the school plugging...

Davidson College (Charlotte, NC) is a Top 10 liberal arts college. Our premed advisor is the president of the national association of such advisors. Thus, he really knows what he's doing. Overall, the professors are great and will really try to help you succeed. There are also opportunities for research, and if you can't find it at the school, a professor will gladly try to connect you with someone he/she knows elsewhere.

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

Hopkins is a "great pre-med program" which means that competition is pretty bad, the curves on exams are awful, and your gpa suffers as a result. Yes, you do learn tons from amazing professors. yes, there are incredible opportunities. However, when you get to jr year with a 3.3 despite working your butt off, you start to think "what if I had gone to a state school and gotten a 4.0..."

Yep that's what happened to me. Biomedical Engineering kicked my ass. We really don't have a "Premed program" at JHU, it's not like a major or declarable field of study like at some other schools. We follow the general course requirements set out by MSAR in addition to pursuing a degree. For some of us, like engineers, that means hell. Our premed office however, is one of the best in the country.

I don't regret coming to Hopkins as it's been a great experience for me and I've gotten to do some amazing things. I just hope that adcoms are understanding about the competition and rough grading here.
It doesn't matter where you go to college, as long as you seek out the opportunities that are there. Even at Hopkins, the "great pre-med program" isn't dropped into your lap, you have to go find the opportunities.

Totally agree. I don't regret coming to JHU or choosing the major I did. Everyone's got their own path to becoming a doctor, and for some of us it means gritting our teeth and plowing through hades. Competition and grading are pretty rough here, but I can't imagine it gets any easier in medical school.

Hopkins screens their med school applicants. If your gpa/mcat/ecs are sub-standard, you are told to go get a masters degree in bio from the school of publich health [notorious gpa-booster] and then apply.

This is totally true. 90% because they weed out the people who they think won't cut it. I actually did this masters degree in biochem from JHSPH, and yes it is as much a GPA booster as any graduate program. But two things actually made it worthwhile: first they actually treat it like a graduate program and not a post bacc, and second it does take quite a bit of work, in fact several people who were in my year failed some core courses and did not graduate.

If you still insist upon applying, you will not get a committee rec [hence the 10% who don't get into med school]. Most Hopkins pre-meds are not going to apply if the office of pre-professional advising tells them not to.
That being said...We've had it drilled into our head from the beginning that we need a 3.5/30/clinical experience + volunteering.

Hah. Also research. Imagine what it's like walking into JHU preprof office as a freshman and being told the 3.5/30/clinical xp + volunteering + research bit. No wonder premeds go crazy here.

Pre-professional advising has some great ideas/connections you can use to get shadowing/research/volunteering experiences.

In the past 6 years, they've had some excellent, excellent staff advisors. Some of them had to go, but hopefully they will get equally good replacements.

 

[NonTradMed]

Hopkins screens their med school applicants. If your gpa/mcat/ecs are sub-standard, you are told to go get a masters degree in bio from the school of publich health [notorious gpa-booster] and then apply. If you still insist upon applying, you will not get a committee rec [hence the 10% who don't get into med school]. Most Hopkins pre-meds are not going to apply if the office of pre-professional advising tells them not to.
That being said...We've had it drilled into our head from the beginning that we need a 3.5/30/clinical experience + volunteering. Pre-professional advising has some great ideas/connections you can use to get shadowing/research/volunteering experiences. I've been told by Hopkins Med AdCom and others that Hopkins "does a great job packaging their applicants" and I'm sure that it really does help to come from Hopkins.

aha, truly the missing puzzle piece. i was wondering how they could boast 90% acceptance. hopkins, from what i hear, is also known for having too many uber-competative gunner-type premeds. yeah, sounds like a great pre-med program.

seriously, my advice to any highschool kid is to go wherever you'll be happy. there is no such thing as "premed programs", other than the ones that offer guaranteed admission to medschool to select undergrads. if you know that you're going to apply to medschool, your undergrad institution means close to nothing. the smart, ambitious Harvard types that get into medschool probabaly would have made it in regardless of if went to Podunk-Undergrad College instead of the Ivy league.

The screening may be true for JHU, but not all schools with 90% acceptance rate into med school is like that. I attended a non-ivy league top 20 school and we send over 200 students (out of a class of 1200) to med school each year, making it a 90% acceptance rate and our school out and out say they will write recommendations for ANY STUDENT that passed their courses.

Also, I'd disagree that smart kids could get into any school no matter where they went to school. Check out who attended the undergrads for top schools, the top undergrads are disapportionately represented. That doesn't mean smart kids can't get into Harvard, but it does mean that they will be underrepresented. Even at our local state school, the best school with the biggest name in the state which has 1200 students send the SAME number of students into med school as the main podunk school in state which has 30,000 students. I don't think the state school sucks, but I also don't think they do the same job of sending kids to med school as the top tiered school in the state.

 

[IglooMaker]

So the bottom line is if you want to do primary care or something less competitive with your med degree, i totally agree with you. however if you're more ambitious, you should be ambitious the whole way.

The pursuit of primary care does not imply less ambition. Everyone has their own goals.

 

[ssquared]

I believe both Emory and William and Mary have high acceptance rates for medical school as well. I know W&M doesn't screen out pre-meds, and I'm pretty sure Emory does not as well. W&M has the highest acceptance rate for any public university...it's around 90% for students with above a 3.5 and 75% for those with a 3.0-3.49 (and if you've ever looked at the graphs included in the MSAR, that's way above the national average).

 

[CTtarheel]

Honestly, you need to be HAPPY in college and do well. You really can attend any medical school from any undergraduate school. The only thing i would suggest is to email the pre-med advisor and go see them when you visit the school, or attend a pre-med info session if they offer one. Big public schools in general have poor pre-med advising, which is OK, but just makes applying that much harder. Smaller private schools will do more to make sure you're on track, but then again, you may not need someone to hold your hand . . .

 

[Stolenspatulas]

The pursuit of primary care does not imply less ambition. Everyone has their own goals.

sorry to offend... but by ambitious i meant trying to achieve mastery of more difficult specialities by landing those more sought-out residencies. if you want to do primary care, hey, thats your ambition.

 

[somemaybedoc]

sorry to offend... but by ambitious i meant trying to achieve mastery of more difficult specialities by landing those more sought-out residencies. if you want to do primary care, hey, thats your ambition.

I'd say that Internal Medicine is one of the more challenging specialities on a day to day practice basis.

I've watched all types in a clinical setting and superspecialists just don't have as much to deal with.

Difficulty is not really related to competition IMHO, rather, all that competition indicates is desirability (based on pay, lifestyle, prestige, future outlook) relative to the number of residency spots.

 

[Stolenspatulas]

I'd say that Internal Medicine is one of the more challenging specialities on a day to day practice basis.

I've watched all types in a clinical setting and superspecialists just don't have as much to deal with.

Difficulty is not really related to competition IMHO, rather, all that competition indicates is desirability (based on pay, lifestyle, prestige, future outlook) relative to the number of residency spots.

dude, flat out... all im saying is that if you want a better chance for a competitive residency...for WHATEVER reason, lets say radiology or derm or neurosurgery or orthopedics... im saying that it helps to go to a top school that ranks high on the usnews research med school list. thats all im saying. i know that some specialities like radiology and derm are easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy compared to internal med. so by "difficult" specialities "i implied harder to get into"... or by "difficult" specialties, i was actually refering to those that would be more difficult (i guess one's i'm kinda interested in). i see i could've worded everything better.

 

[somemaybedoc]

dude, flat out... all im saying is that if you want a better chance for a competitive residency...for WHATEVER reason, lets say radiology or derm or neurosurgery or orthopedics... im saying that it helps to go to a top school that ranks high on the usnews research med school list. thats all im saying. i know that some specialities like radiology and derm are easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy compared to internal med.

Cool,

 

[Mixtli]

"Yep that's what happened to me. Biomedical Engineering kicked my ass. We really don't have a "Premed program" at JHU, it's not like a major or declarable field of study like at some other schools. We follow the general course requirements set out by MSAR in addition to pursuing a degree. For some of us, like engineers, that means hell. Our premed office however, is one of the best in the country."

Yeah man, I was BME at JHU. I felt there was a monkey on my back every semester because of the pre-med courses (Orgo II, Orgo lab, English, biochem, cell bio) not covered in major. Conceptually, med school material is way easier.