Which colleges to stay away from?

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I know that UChicago is hell for premeds. Are there any other universities like this? And which colleges are the best for premeds? Not necessarily easy but where the environment isn't so cut throat and you don't have to study 24/7. Thank you.

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The college that's best for a premed depends on the premed and what they want to major in.

In terms of cut throat environment, the general consensus is to stay away from UChicago, Cornell, UC Berkeley, Emory, and John Hopkins, among others.

What kind of schools are you looking for?

websites that really helped me with my choices were
collegedata.com
colleges.startclass.com

you can get a gist of what kind of schools you might want to apply to. after that, look at youtube videos, search around their website and see if they have the majors you like, look at the strength of those departments.

colleges.niche.com helps you gain an more honest understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of a college (although don't be completely scared off when you find a lot of negative posts, people tend to post most on the website when they are upset with their school)

I highly recommend applying to private colleges that meet 100% need, oftentimes they can be more generous than state schools.
 
Second Emory from personal experience. Seriously the best way I can describe it is like Gladiator Mice from Family Guy.
gladiator-mice-o.gif


I know people who had to spend years doing grade remediation out of Cornell and Chicago as well.

A quote from my professor on Day 1 of freshman General Chemistry:
"1 in 3 students will enter Emory a pre-med. Of them, 1 in 10 will make it to med school. It's my job to get rid of the other 9. "
 
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I know that UChicago is hell for premeds. Are there any other universities like this? And which colleges are the best for premeds? Not necessarily easy but where the environment isn't so cut throat and you don't have to study 24/7. Thank you.

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All of the advice I will offer you is disgusting. However, I am not the one responsible for creating a med school admissions system that fails to normalize transcripts to account for the varying rigor of colleges and majors. This is the fault of the faceless dingbats who work in med school admissions. Here are a few rules of thumb to follow.

First, avoid any college where your ACT or SAT score would fall below the 75th percentile. You want to be the smartest guy in the room when you walk into organic chemistry, physics, genetics etc.

Second, avoid any college that doesn't offer a year of algebra based physics with lab. Some elite private colleges only offer calculus based physics. Calculus based physics is a waste of time and a GPA destroyer. You should look at the colleges' schedule of classes to assure yourself that algebra based physics is offered every year. The failure to offer algebra based physics indicates that the institution really doesn't care about your success.

Third, compare the number of students who take organic chemistry with the number who take freshman general chemistry. If the fall off is greater than 40%, think twice about that college. The story above about the jerk teaching general chemistry at Emory is sad but illuminating.

Fourth, avoid no-party schools. The University of Chicago is a perfect example. You don't want to spend four years slugging it out with grinders. If you see a college library on Sunday is full of "students" nursing hangovers, you have found the promised land. Furthermore, if the student body is mainly composed of screw offs, you won't have to fight for research opportunities.

Fifth, avoid any college with mandatory placement exams in math and science. You want to start over again in math and science as a freshman. For the same reason, you should not take advance placement exams for credit coming out of high school.
 
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Second Emory from personal experience. Seriously the best way I can describe it is like Gladiator Mice from Family Guy.
gladiator-mice-o.gif


I know people who had to spend years doing grade remediation out of Cornell and Chicago as well.

A quote from my professor on Day 1 of freshman General Chemistry:
"1 in 3 students will enter Emory a pre-med. Of them, 1 in 10 will make it to med school. It's my job to get rid of the other 9. "
Haha, that sounds depressing. Were you top in your class to be able to even write an amcas app?

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All of the advice I will offer you is disgusting. However, I am not the one responsible for creating a med school admissions system that fails to normalize transcripts to account for the varying rigor of colleges and majors. This is the fault of the faceless dingbats who work in med school admissions. Here are a few rules of thumb to follow.

First, avoid any college where your ACT or SAT score would fall below the 75th percentile. You want to be the smartest guy in the room when you walk into organic chemistry, physics, genetics etc.

Second, avoid any college that doesn't offer a year of algebra based physics with lab. Some elite private colleges only offer calculus based physics. Calculus based physics is a waste of time and a GPA destroyer. You should look at the colleges' schedule of classes to assure yourself that algebra based physics is offered every year. The failure to offer algebra based physics indicates that the institution really doesn't care about your success.

Third, compare the number of students who take organic chemistry with the number who take freshman general chemistry. If the fall off is greater than 40%, think twice about that college. The story above about the jerk teaching general chemistry at Emory is sad but illuminating.

Fourth, avoid no-party schools. The University of Chicago is a perfect example. You don't want to spend four years slugging it out with grinders. If you see a college library on Sunday is full of "students" nursing hangovers, you have found the promised land. Furthermore, if the student body is mainly composed of screw offs, you won't have to fight for research opportunities.

Fifth, avoid any college with mandatory placement exams in math and science. You want to start over again in math and science as a freshman. For the same reason, you should not take advance placement exams for credit coming out of high school.
Thanks. Is the information about the people taking general chem and orgo readily available online? And what are thoughts on taking AP sciences in high school but not using the credit? I'm taking ap chem and physics now. I figured it could give me a little head start.

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Haha, that sounds depressing. Were you top in your class to be able to even write an amcas app?

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Hahaha not even close. I nearly didn't apply because my grades were so bad. That school take a lot of people who would've been fine premeds elsewhere and crushes them...which is unfortunate for people entering college wanting to go to med school.

The one plus I guess is that if ARE at the top of your class you can basically write your own ticket to the med school of your choosing. The people I know who completed premed with >3.6 all ended up at top 20 med schools.
 
Thanks. Is the information about the people taking general chem and orgo readily available online? And what are thoughts on taking AP sciences in high school but not using the credit? I'm taking ap chem and physics now. I figured it could give me a little head start.

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For the chemistry classes you want to see how many people actually registered for organic as opposed to general. This is probably not available on line. Ask to see these data when you visit the campus.

Do not take AP classes for college credit!!!!!!!!. Do you want to go to med school or do you want to finish in seven semesters? Don't be a fool.
 
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For the chemistry classes you want to see how many people actually registered for organic as opposed to general. This is probably not available on line. Ask to see these data when you visit the campus.

Do not take AP classes for college credit!!!!!!!!. Do you want to go to med school or do you want to finish in seven semesters? Don't be a fool.
I meant take the ap classes to get the knowledge, but not actually use the credits in college. So I would still take all the prerequisites but with a bit of a head start.

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Yea taking AP then retaking for credit is the best idea. That said if you want to use your AP's to satisfy random requirements your school has thats not a bad idea. I used AP US hist and AP world hist to satisfy my schools 8 credit history requirement so I could take the easier, non-gen ed classes.
 
All of the advice I will offer you is disgusting. However, I am not the one responsible for creating a med school admissions system that fails to normalize transcripts to account for the varying rigor of colleges and majors. This is the fault of the faceless dingbats who work in med school admissions. Here are a few rules of thumb to follow.

First, avoid any college where your ACT or SAT score would fall below the 75th percentile. You want to be the smartest guy in the room when you walk into organic chemistry, physics, genetics etc.

Second, avoid any college that doesn't offer a year of algebra based physics with lab. Some elite private colleges only offer calculus based physics. Calculus based physics is a waste of time and a GPA destroyer. You should look at the colleges' schedule of classes to assure yourself that algebra based physics is offered every year. The failure to offer algebra based physics indicates that the institution really doesn't care about your success.

Third, compare the number of students who take organic chemistry with the number who take freshman general chemistry. If the fall off is greater than 40%, think twice about that college. The story above about the jerk teaching general chemistry at Emory is sad but illuminating.

Fourth, avoid no-party schools. The University of Chicago is a perfect example. You don't want to spend four years slugging it out with grinders. If you see a college library on Sunday is full of "students" nursing hangovers, you have found the promised land. Furthermore, if the student body is mainly composed of screw offs, you won't have to fight for research opportunities.

Fifth, avoid any college with mandatory placement exams in math and science. You want to start over again in math and science as a freshman. For the same reason, you should not take advance placement exams for credit coming out of high school.

I think Obnoxious Dad brings up a lot of relevant and important points here, but the one thing I will disagree with him on (as I have before) is that you should avoid colleges where your ACT/SAT fall below the 75th percentile. I would say maybe if you're below the 50th percentile, it might be cause for concern, but, depending on the 1) college and 2) medical school, you /will/ get a boost for going to a better college. How much this boost affects your application and whether its worth it is up for debate, but I don't want you to turn down a place like Brown or Duke to go to your next door state school for the sole reason of thinking you won't get into med school at these places. Now, not every medical school will care where you went to college, but as @efle likes to point out, on a longstanding AAMC/AMCAS survey (which can be found in the essential compilation of SDN wisdom link in my signature), adcoms at private colleges marked selectivity of undergraduate institution as an important factor. Now, if you go to Duke/Yale/whatever and fail to perform well, yeah, you're likely going to be in trouble, but its likely that if you aren't performing acceptably there, you wouldn't be the "rockstar" of your state school either.

Now, there are perfectly valid reasons to choose your state school over a top college, but they go well beyond what is essentially portrayed as "I shouldn't go to Penn with my 2250 because it's not at the 75th percentile". That's a silly way to go to school and at this level of competition, SAT scores aren't going to be able to differentiate individual performance in college - that will come down to a whole host of other factors.

One other thing I might note is, if you are somehow able to see how many students continue onto organic chemistry from general chemistry, be aware that at some schools, gen chem is the weedout course while organic is the weedout course at other schools (and then at still other schools, both are weedout courses). A better statistic might be to look at 1) how many students who apply are accepted to medical school 2) does the premed committee screen applications 3) what percentage of the class comes in as premed. Some of these statistics are hard to find for some schools, so don't worry too much if you can't find them.

Ultimately, you should be going to a school that you feel you can do your personal best at, regardless of prestige or whatever. If you are in an environment where you can excel, everything else will likely fall into place. Fit matters.
 
As you can tell, WedgeDawg and I have had this debate before. He may be right that the weed out chemistry course at some schools is organic as opposed to general. However, by comparing enrollments in the two classes you will at least get some idea how the students are faring.

OP, you need to figure out what is most important to you. If your only ambition in life is to be a physician, all of my advice stands. Undergraduate college prestige may matter at elite private medical schools but it doesn't matter much at state institutions. Approximately 65% of the first year seats at allopathic med schools are offered by state owned institutions. If you look at the AMCAS tables about 82% of the seats at state owned medical schools are taken by state residents. If you have a state owned medical school in your home state it's highly probable that school will offer your best shot at medical school. You can bet your bottom dollar that a state medical school will not give priority to Ivy League graduates over the graduates of the flagship state university. Politics will simply not allow that.

As college enrollments shrink, the marketing spiel at private colleges will become even more fallacious. If you ask some "admissions counselor" at a private college about medical school acceptance rates, they will never tell you how many freshmen started out as premeds and how many of those freshmen got into med school four years later. They will duck and dodge that question forever.
 
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One other thing I might note is, if you are somehow able to see how many students continue onto organic chemistry from general chemistry, be aware that at some schools, gen chem is the weedout course while organic is the weedout course at other schools (and then at still other schools, both are weedout courses). A better statistic might be to look at 1) how many students who apply are accepted to medical school 2) does the premed committee screen applications 3) what percentage of the class comes in as premed. Some of these statistics are hard to find for some schools, so don't worry too much if you can't find them.
I also thought that the comment about chemistry was really odd. Engineering is big at my school and gen chem is required for all engineers. Then a good majority of these people that take gen chem have literally no reason to take orgo. So this statistic would be useless.
 
The schools I hear mentioned for the most soul-crushing premed experience are U Chicago, Hopkins, and Berkeley/UCLA, and Princeton, Cornell, WashU and MIT are mentioned a good bit as well. Brown and Harvard are notorious for inflated grading, and I don't usually see lamentations about attending Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, Stanford, etc.

The 75th percentile idea doesn't apply that well to many of these colleges though, since the entire interquartile range might be within the top 1-2% of scores (for example an ACT range of 32-34). Getting a 32 vs 33 vs 34 really doesn't predict much. Different story for somewhere with a big range, like say UCLA 25-31, where being towards the top vs towards the bottom is 97th vs 80th percentiles.

Your best bet is to ask current students when you visit. The kind of information you want, like how many people drop out of premed, isn't something the schools advertise.

they will never tell you how many freshmen started out as premeds and how many of those freshmen got into med school four years later. They will duck and dodge that question forever.
Agree with above. Don't believe all the stuff they tell you when you visit, its their job to sell the school to you. Get the scoop from students. One thing they will advertise, and which is legit, is that people who remain exceptional at top schools tend to have great admissions cycles. Just don't go in cocky and assuming that smartest in your high school will translate to straight As.
 
I think Obnoxious Dad brings up a lot of relevant and important points here, but the one thing I will disagree with him on (as I have before) is that you should avoid colleges where your ACT/SAT fall below the 75th percentile. I would say maybe if you're below the 50th percentile, it might be cause for concern, but, depending on the 1) college and 2) medical school, you /will/ get a boost for going to a better college. How much this boost affects your application and whether its worth it is up for debate, but I don't want you to turn down a place like Brown or Duke to go to your next door state school for the sole reason of thinking you won't get into med school at these places. Now, not every medical school will care where you went to college, but as @efle likes to point out, on a longstanding AAMC/AMCAS survey (which can be found in the essential compilation of SDN wisdom link in my signature), adcoms at private colleges marked selectivity of undergraduate institution as an important factor. Now, if you go to Duke/Yale/whatever and fail to perform well, yeah, you're likely going to be in trouble, but its likely that if you aren't performing acceptably there, you wouldn't be the "rockstar" of your state school either.

Now, there are perfectly valid reasons to choose your state school over a top college, but they go well beyond what is essentially portrayed as "I shouldn't go to Penn with my 2250 because it's not at the 75th percentile". That's a silly way to go to school and at this level of competition, SAT scores aren't going to be able to differentiate individual performance in college - that will come down to a whole host of other factors.

One other thing I might note is, if you are somehow able to see how many students continue onto organic chemistry from general chemistry, be aware that at some schools, gen chem is the weedout course while organic is the weedout course at other schools (and then at still other schools, both are weedout courses). A better statistic might be to look at 1) how many students who apply are accepted to medical school 2) does the premed committee screen applications 3) what percentage of the class comes in as premed. Some of these statistics are hard to find for some schools, so don't worry too much if you can't find them.

Ultimately, you should be going to a school that you feel you can do your personal best at, regardless of prestige or whatever. If you are in an environment where you can excel, everything else will likely fall into place. Fit matters.
Thanks for the reply Wedgedawg. With my current stats I cannot make it into ivy, but schools with good premed programs like case western and WashU are in my stats, with northwestern and vandy being reach. As I'm not overly smart and succeed through effort, I'm trying to decide if I can survive in those colleges :)

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The schools I hear mentioned for the most soul-crushing premed experience are U Chicago, Hopkins, and Berkeley/UCLA, and Princeton, Cornell, WashU and MIT are mentioned a good bit as well. Brown and Harvard are notorious for inflated grading, and I don't usually see lamentations about attending Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, Stanford, etc.

The 75th percentile idea doesn't apply that well to many of these colleges though, since the entire interquartile range might be within the top 1-2% of scores (for example an ACT range of 32-34). Getting a 32 vs 33 vs 34 really doesn't predict much. Different story for somewhere with a big range, like say UCLA 25-31, where being towards the top vs towards the bottom is 97th vs 80th percentiles.

Your best bet is to ask current students when you visit. The kind of information you want, like how many people drop out of premed, isn't something the schools advertise.


Agree with above. Don't believe all the stuff they tell you when you visit, its their job to sell the school to you. Get the scoop from students. One thing they will advertise, and which is legit, is that people who remain exceptional at top schools tend to have great admissions cycles. Just don't go in cocky and assuming that smartest in your high school will translate to straight As.
For the schools you mentioned, especially WashU, do the good premed advising program make up for the difficulty of the classes?

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Thanks for the reply Wedgedawg. With my current stats I cannot make it into ivy, but schools with good premed programs like case western and WashU are in my stats, with northwestern and vandy being reach. As I'm not overly smart and succeed through effort, I'm trying to decide if I can survive in those colleges :)

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Why would you even think about applying to a "reach" school? If you get into a reach school you will be competing with people who are better test takers than you are. I'm not sure about Vanderbilt but I know you have to be brilliant to get into Northwestern. You will be killing your medical career before it even starts.

Why would you pay $65,000 per year to be in Cleveland or St. Louis? That is just stupid. I understand that Wash U's campus is fairly nice, but have you ever walked around Case Western? Sheesh!

Go take a tour of your flagship State U. Talk to the juniors in biology about opportunities for research. Talk to the pre-med advisor there. See if they have an in-house MCAT review. After that compare the costs of going to the State U and Case. Over the four years Case will cost you about $260,000 and your state school will probably cost about $110,000 at most. See where the value is.
 
Why would you even think about applying to a "reach" school? If you get into a reach school you will be competing with people who are better test takers than you are. I'm not sure about Vanderbilt but I know you have to be brilliant to get into Northwestern. You will be killing your medical career before it even starts.

Why would you pay $65,000 per year to be in Cleveland or St. Louis? That is just stupid. I understand that Wash U's campus is fairly nice, but have you ever walked around Case Western? Sheesh!

Go take a tour of your flagship State U. Talk to the juniors in biology about opportunities for research. Talk to the pre-med advisor there. See if they have an in-house MCAT review. After that compare the costs of going to the State U and Case. Over the four years Case will cost you about $260,000 and your state school will probably cost about $110,000 at most. See where the value is.
I see your point about the money. But I would still go to a private college if it's better for premed. My state school, UIUC (Illinois) is a good school that I'm sure I can do well in.

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Have you looked at the score ranges for all these colleges? WashU and Vandy have scores equal or higher than most of the Ivies now (eg the 75th SAT for WashU is now 1570, ACT ranges for them and Vandy are 32-34 and 32-35). If your numbers aren't competitive for schools like Brown or Penn or Dartmouth, they also aren't for WashU or Vandy or Northwestern.

Would you mind sharing GPA/scores to get an idea what we're talking about? Any plans to retake tests or happy with your numbers?
 
I see your point about the money. But I would still go to a private college if it's better for premed. My state school, UIUC (Illinois) is a good school that I'm sure I can do well in.

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If you are an Illinois resident, you are sitting pretty. Are you aware that SIU only takes Illinois residents? The University Of Illinois has 315 seats and 78% (246) of last fall's class was composed of Illinois residents. Furthermore, Rush was 43% instate even though Rush is private. Illinois is a great home state for medical school applicants FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO DON"T BLOW IT. If you have a high GPA and an 80th percentile MCAT, you are going to get in somewhere. If you live south of Interstate 80, you will have a great chance of getting into SIU provided you get a high GPA.

There is no evidence that going to an elite private college will enhance your MCAT score. It's certainly true that the average MCAT score for applicants from MIT will be higher than the average score for applicants from Bemidji State, but the people at MIT were better test takers going into college. On the other hand, if you go to an elite private college you could come out of there with a 3.0 and no chance of getting into med school.

If I were you, I'd go to Champaign Urbana. Sand bag or avoid all of the placement exams. Find out who the easy graders are. Find out which professors will give you a good letter of reference in return for being their research slave. Save yourself and your parents $150,000. Good luck.
 
Have you looked at the score ranges for all these colleges? WashU and Vandy have scores equal or higher than most of the Ivies now (eg the 75th SAT for WashU is now 1570, ACT ranges for them and Vandy are 32-34 and 32-35). If your numbers aren't competitive for schools like Brown or Penn or Dartmouth, they also aren't for WashU or Vandy or Northwestern.

Would you mind sharing GPA/scores to get an idea what we're talking about? Any plans to retake tests or happy with your numbers?
Sure. GPA is 4.6 weighted and 3.6 unweighted. ACT is 34. My stats are good enough for my state colleges but probably not for the top ones like vandy, as you mentioned.

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If you are an Illinois resident, you are sitting pretty. Are you aware that SIU only takes Illinois residents? The University Of Illinois has 315 seats and 78% (246) of last fall's class was composed of Illinois residents. Furthermore, Rush was 43% instate even though Rush is private. Illinois is a great home state for medical school applicants FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO DON"T BLOW IT. If you have a high GPA and an 80th percentile MCAT, you are going to get in somewhere. If you live south of Interstate 80, you will have a great chance of getting into SIU provided you get a high GPA.

There is no evidence that going to an elite private college will enhance your MCAT score. It's certainly true that the average MCAT score for applicants from MIT will be higher than the average score for applicants from Bemidji State, but the people at MIT were better test takers going into college. On the other hand, if you go to an elite private college you could come out of there with a 3.0 and no chance of getting into med school.

If I were you, I'd go to Champaign Urbana. Sand bag or avoid all of the placement exams. Find out who the easy graders are. Find out which professors will give you a good letter of reference in return for being their research slave. Save yourself and your parents $150,000. Good luck.
Thank you for the advice obnoxious dad. I think my state school would be a better choice for me. I have a twin also applying to colleges, so it's not like my family is rolling in money :)

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??? A 34 is at least median at any school. Assuming you did some good stuff outside academics in high school, you should be planning to apply to like 8-10 of the top 20, state school(s), and a handful of lower match / safety.
 
??? A 34 is at least median at any school. Assuming you did some good stuff outside academics in high school, you should be planning to apply to like 8-10 of the top 20, state school(s), and a handful of lower match / safety.
Haha I don't know about that. My school is in a privileged area, and the average gpa/act of the students in my school to go into a given college is significantly higher than the average of that given school.

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Haha I don't know about that. My school is in a privileged area, and the average gpa/act of the students in my school to go into a given college is significantly higher than the average of that given school.

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Are you sure you're reading the data correctly? If you have some stat like "avg accepted ACT to Vanderbilt is 35" that doesn't mean you need a 35 or 36, it means a **** ton of kids at your school are getting 35+s and applying to Vandy. If you have a stat that says only 1/5 people with a 34 is accepted or some such, different story.
 
Are you sure you're reading the data correctly? If you have some stat like "avg accepted ACT to Vanderbilt is 35" that doesn't mean you need a 35 or 36, it means a **** ton of kids at your school are getting 35+s and applying to Vandy. If you have a stat that says only 1/5 people with a 34 is accepted or some such, different story.
I was looking at the average for the accepted students in our school vs. the average for everyone in Vandy. For example, average gpa for accepted students at vandy nationwide was 4.1 (considering the site I used is trustworthy), and our school's average gpa was 4.7.

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I was looking at the average for the accepted students in our school vs. the average for everyone in Vandy. For example, average gpa for accepted students at vandy nationwide was 4.1 (considering the site I used is trustworthy), and our school's average gpa was 4.7.

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Yeah and this stat can be worthless due to the sampled population.

Say Vandy will accept people with a 2200+. One year, everyone at your school scores 2300+, and many apply to Vandy. Following year, a kid with a 2250 looks and says "oh my score isn't high enough, avg accepted from here is 2300". See what I mean? Avg admitted is not a good gauge of competitive stats if your school churns out tons of people in the top fraction of a percent. You really need to know the % accepted that applied with a 34.
 
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What is the point of going to Vanderbilt and spending a fortune when this kid AND HIS TWIN can go to Champaign Urbana? This whole discussion is absolutely dumb. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would push this Vanderbilt nonsense on anyone. As a family, four years of college at Vanderbilt for this kid and his twin would cost $300,000 more than the two of them going to Champaign. Furthermore, if this kid has a 34 on the ACT he should be able to curb stomp most of the other freshmen in Champaign in his science classes. Why should he pay more to slug it out with a bunch of gunners? Where is the value in this?

The only thing you get out of Vandy/NW etc is some sort of narcissistic bragging rights. Do you want to be the next Ted Cruz? That jerk wouldn't study with guys in law school who hadn't gone to Harvard, Yale or Princeton for undergrad? Is this the compulsion here?
 
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I see your point about the money. But I would still go to a private college if it's better for premed. My state school, UIUC (Illinois) is a good school that I'm sure I can do well in.

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I'm graduating from UIUC now and I can assure you this school will not hold you back from getting into med school. There are tons of opportunities for research and extracurriculars. And if you are worried about grades, the university recently responded to a FOIA request and released data for the GPAs of every class in the last five years: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs199205/sp2016/discovery/gpa_of_every_course_at_illinois/?a=re
 
I'm graduating from UIUC now and I can assure you this school will not hold you back from getting into med school. There are tons of opportunities for research and extracurriculars. And if you are worried about grades, the university recently responded to a FOIA request and released data for the GPAs of every class in the last five years: https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs199205/sp2016/discovery/gpa_of_every_course_at_illinois/?a=re
All I'm seeing in that horribly designed graphic is that a **** ton of kids get weeded out freshman year by intro bio/chem.

Inb4 the argument of prestige vs. cost continues needlessly, shouldn't we wait until OP actually gets into some schools before debating their merits? Chances are he doesn't get into Vandy or NU (no offense, but when both their acceptance rates are plummeting towards the single digits, I wouldn't be very confident) and there will be no need for disagreement.
 
All I'm seeing in that horribly designed graphic is that a **** ton of kids get weeded out freshman year by intro bio/chem.

Inb4 the argument of prestige vs. cost continues needlessly, shouldn't we wait until OP actually gets into some schools before debating their merits? Chances are he doesn't get into Vandy or NU (no offense, but when both their acceptance rates are plummeting towards the single digits, I wouldn't be very confident) and there will be no need for disagreement.
Betcha the accept rates aren't 10-12% among applicants with a 4.6 / 34!
 
Betcha the accept rates aren't 10-12% among applicants with a 4.6 / 34!
Probably not, but it's tricky to predict undergrad admissions (even more so than med school results). Just because I'm still salty about this, I was rejected across the board at HYPSM-Stanford with a 2400....yet all of my counselors were confident that I was a shoo-in. When we're talking sub-15% acceptance rates, your chances (without special hooks) are always very questionable.
 
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What is the point of going to Vanderbilt and spending a fortune when this kid AND HIS TWIN can go to Champaign Urbana? This whole discussion is absolutely dumb. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would push this Vanderbilt nonsense on anyone. As a family, four years of college at Vanderbilt for this kid and his twin would cost $300,000 more than the two of them going to Champaign. Furthermore, if this kid has a 34 on the ACT he should be able to curb stomp most of the other freshmen in Champaign in his science classes. Why should he pay more to slug it out with a bunch of gunners? Where is the value in this?

The only thing you get out of Vandy/NW etc is some sort of narcissistic bragging rights. Do you want to be the next Ted Cruz? That jerk wouldn't study with guys in law school who hadn't gone to Harvard, Yale or Princeton for undergrad? Is this the compulsion here?
There are people who get better financial packages from private top 20s than state programs, make straight As in spite of the competition, and benefit from the school for reputation and other reasons (easier research, shadowing, better fit/enjoy the peer group more). The decision should be made cautiously but it isn't "absolutely dumb" for everyone.
 
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I wouldn't rule out private colleges just yet-- if you apply to any school that meets "full-need" or that's in the safety zone it's likely that you'll get even better FA than the FA offered at state schools.
 
There are people who get better financial packages from private top 20s than state programs, make straight As in spite of the competition, and benefit from the school for reputation and other reasons (easier research, shadowing, better fit/enjoy the peer group more). The decision should be made cautiously but it isn't "absolutely dumb" for everyone.

It's not just about the money. The key consideration is finding the easiest and surest path to medical school. Going to places where your competitors are better test takers than you are is a sure fire way of becoming a lab rat and kissing your med school dreams goodbye.

Going for undergraduate prestige is the idiotic conventional wisdom. It's the nonsense jammed down the throats of kids by counselors, teachers, parents, other kids and the trolls who inhabit SDN. It's fine if you want to get a doctorate and spend the rest of your life doing post docs for $40,000 a year, but it's not the way to get into 90% of American medical schools. Every college has to have a bottom 50% on the first day of school. No matter where you go, there's a lower half. Why be in that group? Why should anyone with a clear head and the desire to be a physician fight that battle? It may give you bragging rights in the high school cafeteria, but you won't be saying much 10 years later when you can't find a teaching job with a useless doctorate in physiology.
 
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It's not just about the money. The key consideration is finding the easiest and surest path to medical school. Going to places where your competitors are better test takers than you are is a sure fire way of becoming a lab rat and kissing your med school dreams goodbye.

Going for undergraduate prestige is the idiotic conventional wisdom. It's the nonsense jammed down the throats of kids by counselors, teachers, parents, other kids and the trolls who inhabit SDN. It's fine if you want to get a doctorate and spend the rest of your life doing post docs for $40,000 a year, but it's not the way to get into 90% of American medical schools. Every college has to have a bottom 50% on the first day of school. No matter where you go, there's a lower half. Why be in that group? Why should anyone with a clear head and the desire to be a physician fight that battle? It may give you bragging rights in the high school cafeteria, but you won't be saying much 10 years later when you can't find a teaching job with a useless doctorate in physiology.
Every college also has a top half, and fifth, and tenth. The kid who tries hard, can't stay above average, and drops premed did make a mistake, and this is a majority at many places. But the kid who makes use of the resources, graduates PBK, and gets a free MD at a top program did not choose wrongly. Also not a mistake for the kid who does well, decides medicine isn't for them, and can pursue other career options with the reputation and resources of an Ivy instead of Directional State U.

It's idiotic to tell high schoolers to blindly chase prestige, I agree, but just as ridiculous to claim the top schools are a mistake for everyone that enrolls.
 
Every college also has a top half, and fifth, and tenth. The kid who tries hard, can't stay above average, and drops premed did make a mistake, and this is a majority at many places. But the kid who makes use of the resources, graduates PBK, and gets a free MD at a top program did not choose wrongly. Also not a mistake for the kid who does well, decides medicine isn't for them, and can pursue other career options with the reputation and resources of an Ivy instead of Directional State U.

It's idiotic to tell high schoolers to blindly chase prestige, I agree, but just as ridiculous to claim the top schools are a mistake for everyone that enrolls.

That's right it's the majority at many places and the people who fall into that majority were the ones with less talent. The key here is to get into med school at the lowest cost and with the greatest ease. Period.

If this kid chooses to go to the university of Illinois at Champaign Urbana and then decides against medicine it won't damage his future. Check out the Alumni at UIUC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana–Champaign_people

This idolatry of places like Vanderbilt is just elitist narcissistic nonsense.
 
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The key here is to get into med school at the lowest cost and with the greatest ease. Period.
This idolatry of places like Vanderbilt is just elitist narcissistic nonsense.
Vandy would have been free for me, making it cheaper than my state options. I'm very happy I chose a similar private university instead of a state school or small LAC, where my sibling is miserable because there are few other people like them. There is more to college than med admissions, and for many people, more to med admissions than a seat at their state program.

Again, I agree with you on most of your opinions - it's stupid to pay sticker price and it's dangerous to assume you'll stay a standout student. But for some people, it can be cheaper, a better fit, and lead to the strongest application.
 
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I loved being an engineer, but it will lower your GPA and I've seen it break a lot of pre-med spirits
The sheer volume of non-related coursework (even though committees love the thought style it teaches you) can be time/energy drains
 
Sure. GPA is 4.6 weighted and 3.6 unweighted. ACT is 34. My stats are good enough for my state colleges but probably not for the top ones like vandy, as you mentioned.

@erics2814 , I'm not going to reveal too much about myself, but you have almost identical stats I had in HS and are from the same area. I'd say avoid UC, WashU and Northwestern's accelerated program. Gen admission at NW would be fine for you, as the students that are hard-workers but not geniuses tend to do better than the geniuses that don't work as hard (source is from multiple friends that went there). Assuming you've got some strong EC's, I wouldn't rule any school out just based on your stats...

Why would you even think about applying to a "reach" school? If you get into a reach school you will be competing with people who are better test takers than you are. I'm not sure about Vanderbilt but I know you have to be brilliant to get into Northwestern. You will be killing your medical career before it even starts.

This is flat out wrong. You need to be smart, but a 34 ACT with a 3.6 GPA certainly won't hinder OP's chances there, as I know many students with worse stats that went there for UG.

If you are an Illinois resident, you are sitting pretty. Are you aware that SIU only takes Illinois residents? The University Of Illinois has 315 seats and 78% (246) of last fall's class was composed of Illinois residents. Furthermore, Rush was 43% instate even though Rush is private. Illinois is a great home state for medical school applicants FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO DON"T BLOW IT. If you have a high GPA and an 80th percentile MCAT, you are going to get in somewhere. If you live south of Interstate 80, you will have a great chance of getting into SIU provided you get a high GPA.

If I were you, I'd go to Champaign Urbana. Sand bag or avoid all of the placement exams. Find out who the easy graders are. Find out which professors will give you a good letter of reference in return for being their research slave. Save yourself and your parents $150,000. Good luck.

:smack: This is such a ridiculously linear way of looking at college and a career and just bad advice on so many different levels. First, SIU considers pretty much any applicant north of I-72 (aka Springfield) out of state and won't consider most people from Central/northern Illinois unless they express strong interest in rural medicine, so talking it up to someone from northern IL is just silly. Second, out of the 8 med schools in IL, 6 are private, meaning going to a well-known or reputable UG will matter come application time. If OP goes to a mediocre IL school and then applies to an IL med school, they're going to know the reputation of mediocrity it carries. Even the DO school I attend weighs GPAs differently based on the UG the applicants attended. UIC is a very solid choice for med school and a gem for IL residents, but SIU is not a school I would recommend for many reasons. Third, sand-bagging an AP exam is just dumb. Do well on AP tests and get credit for gen ed requirements that OP don't want to take. If you take AP bio or chem, you can always just re-take the class at college. Finally, OP should go somewhere that he can do well and still enjoy himself. It's college, which is a time to explore and expand both your knowledge and yourself as a person. Following some cut and dry plan for the sole purpose of going to med school while spending as little money as possible sounds like a great way to ruin what could potentially the most influential years of OP's life.

All that being said, I agree that U of I is a great school and will not hold OP back when it comes time to apply to med school.


There are people who get better financial packages from private top 20s than state programs, make straight As in spite of the competition, and benefit from the school for reputation and other reasons (easier research, shadowing, better fit/enjoy the peer group more). The decision should be made cautiously but it isn't "absolutely dumb" for everyone.

This definitely needs to be considered. When I was applying U of I was awful at giving out scholarships. They were actually so bad that out of the 10 or 11 schools I applied to they would have been the most expensive for me to attend as an in-state applicant (and I applied to several elite private schools) and a girl from my high school that got offered full rides to multiple ivies got offered around 5k/year at U of I. Idk if it's still like that, but they were the perfect example of how awful Illinois' educational funding was (and is).
 
@erics2814 , I'm not going to reveal too much about myself, but you have almost identical stats I had in HS and are from the same area. I'd say avoid UC, WashU and Northwestern's accelerated program. Gen admission at NW would be fine for you, as the students that are hard-workers but not geniuses tend to do better than the geniuses that don't work as hard (source is from multiple friends that went there). Assuming you've got some strong EC's, I wouldn't rule any school out just based on your stats...

This is flat out wrong. You need to be smart, but a 34 ACT with a 3.6 GPA certainly won't hinder OP's chances there, as I know many students with worse stats that went there for UG.

:smack: This is such a ridiculously linear way of looking at college and a career and just bad advice on so many different levels. First, SIU considers pretty much any applicant north of I-72 (aka Springfield) out of state and won't consider most people from Central/northern Illinois unless they express strong interest in rural medicine, so talking it up to someone from northern IL is just silly. Second, out of the 8 med schools in IL, 6 are private, meaning going to a well-known or reputable UG will matter come application time. If OP goes to a mediocre IL school and then applies to an IL med school, they're going to know the reputation of mediocrity it carries. Even the DO school I attend weighs GPAs differently based on the UG the applicants attended. UIC is a very solid choice for med school and a gem for IL residents, but SIU is not a school I would recommend for many reasons. Third, sand-bagging an AP exam is just dumb. Do well on AP tests and get credit for gen ed requirements that OP don't want to take. If you take AP bio or chem, you can always just re-take the class at college. Finally, OP should go somewhere that he can do well and still enjoy himself. It's college, which is a time to explore and expand both your knowledge and yourself as a person. Following some cut and dry plan for the sole purpose of going to med school while spending as little money as possible sounds like a great way to ruin what could potentially the most influential years of OP's life.

All that being said, I agree that U of I is a great school and will not hold OP back when it comes time to apply to med school.

This definitely needs to be considered. When I was applying U of I was awful at giving out scholarships. They were actually so bad that out of the 10 or 11 schools I applied to they would have been the most expensive for me to attend as an in-state applicant (and I applied to several elite private schools) and a girl from my high school that got offered full rides to multiple ivies got offered around 5k/year at U of I. Idk if it's still like that, but they were the perfect example of how awful Illinois' educational funding was (and is).

A composite score of 34 on the ACT is at the 99th percentile. I don't know what your idea of brilliant is, but 99th percentile is pretty darn brilliant to me. Here is the link:
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/NormsChartMCandComposite-Web2015-16.pdf

I never said he should attend a mediocre school. I said that he should choose Champaign Urbana. If you have an extra $300,000 for him and his twin to go to Northwestern, send him a check.

You attend a DO school and you wouldn't recommend SIU. That's a good one. I am aware that SIU favors people who live in Southern Illinois but it's still a possibility. I suspect that you go to Midwestern in Chicago. As DO schools go it has a decent reputation, but you and I both know that an MD from SIU is worth more in the match than a DO from Midwestern.

My point about AP classes is that you should take the class in high school, but you should never take the exam for college credit. You should make the first year of college a substantive repeat of high school. Every A is gold and every B is lead.

Feel free to accuse me of being a captive of western linear thought. I plead guilty as charged.
 
A composite score of 34 on the ACT is at the 99th percentile. I don't know what your idea of brilliant is, but 99th percentile is pretty darn brilliant to me. Here is the link:
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/NormsChartMCandComposite-Web2015-16.pdf

I never said he should attend a mediocre school. I said that he should choose Champaign Urbana. If you have an extra $300,000 for him and his twin to go to Northwestern, send him a check.

You attend a DO school and you wouldn't recommend SIU. That's a good one. I am aware that SIU favors people who live in Southern Illinois but it's still a possibility. I suspect that you go to Midwestern in Chicago. As DO schools go it has a decent reputation, but you and I both know that an MD from SIU is worth more in the match than a DO from Midwestern.

My point about AP classes is that you should take the class in high school, but you should never take the exam for college credit. You should make the first year of college a substantive repeat of high school. Every A is gold and every B is lead.

Feel free to accuse me of being a captive of western linear thought. I plead guilty as charged.

I actually agree with most of what you're saying other than the bolded. I do not go to Midwestern (I wouldn't pay that kind of money for med school), but I do go to a DO school that is considered "top tier" for the degree. I also know multiple people from my UG that attend the DO school I go to and have several friends that went to SIU. Every friend at SIU other than 1 who is from that town and wants to practice medicine there says they highly regret going there and would have taken any school, even a DO school, over going there. Yes, an MD does make the path to many residencies easier than a DO degree, but my school has higher boards and a its match list is actually much better than SIU's, which is actually worse than many DO schools including Midwestern. The ONLY time I would recommend someone attend SIU is if they're from Southern IL and know 100% that they want to practice rural medicine. It's a great school if you want to be a PCP in the boondocks, it's terrible for everything else. So while the letters "MD" will carry more weight, the resources and curriculum leave very much to be desired when it comes to training good physicians.
 
I actually agree with most of what you're saying other than the bolded. I do not go to Midwestern (I wouldn't pay that kind of money for med school), but I do go to a DO school that is considered "top tier" for the degree. I also know multiple people from my UG that attend the DO school I go to and have several friends that went to SIU. Every friend at SIU other than 1 who is from that town and wants to practice medicine there says they highly regret going there and would have taken any school, even a DO school, over going there. Yes, an MD does make the path to many residencies easier than a DO degree, but my school has higher boards and a its match list is actually much better than SIU's, which is actually worse than many DO schools including Midwestern. The ONLY time I would recommend someone attend SIU is if they're from Southern IL and know 100% that they want to practice rural medicine. It's a great school if you want to be a PCP in the boondocks, it's terrible for everything else. So while the letters "MD" will carry more weight, the resources and curriculum leave very much to be desired when it comes to training good physicians.

Here's the latest match results for SIU.

http://www.siumed.edu/news/ReleasesFY16/Match_Day_3-18-16.html

To be sure many of the graduates will stay in Illinois for primary care. However, there are a number of graduates going to places like Wash U, Rainbow Babies, Stanford, UCLA, Iowa, Indiana etc. Furthermore, there are graduates going into urology, vascular surgery, emergency medicine, psychiatry & Ob/Gyn. This list is much better than the DO lists I've seen.
 
Here's the latest match results for SIU.

http://www.siumed.edu/news/ReleasesFY16/Match_Day_3-18-16.html

To be sure many of the graduates will stay in Illinois for primary care. However, there are a number of graduates going to places like Wash U, Rainbow Babies, Stanford, UCLA, Iowa, Indiana etc. Furthermore, there are graduates going into urology, vascular surgery, emergency medicine, psychiatry & Ob/Gyn. This list is much better than the DO lists I've seen.

A few things about this list:

Overall I'm still not very impressed for an MD school. They have a few solid matches, like the psych at UCLA, ortho at Cleveland, and apparently some studs going into anesthesia. However, my school has had matches that are just as impressive over the last few years as well (multiple derm at Mayo, path at UCLA and Cleveland Clinic, integrated plastics, etc.). So having 3 or 4 really great matches isn't all that impressive (also, they did not have anyone match at Wash U this year, not sure where you saw that one...). Having 1 person match vascular surgery says nothing about the school, it says that one person is a rockstar.

Saying they had people match emergency med, psych, and ob/gyn is meaningless. They're not competitive fields (though EM is becoming more competitive and some now consider it to be middle of the pack in terms of competitive fields), it's like saying "look how many people we had match into IM!!". So unless they're matching the majority of those people into a top 5 program in the field like the psych match at UCLA, that statement doesn't give much power to any argument. What is impressive about their list is that they had 4 people match urology (even though they were pretty weak matches) and that the weakest of their anesthesia matches was Indiana. Honestly, for an MD school, this is a pretty weak match list.

I'll finish by saying that while I think it's a relatively weak list (and is slightly worse or the same as a few of the better DO lists around, see Rocky Vista, KCU, TCOM, and one or two others), I'm sure part of this is due to the students the school is admitting, the fact that they essentially limit their applicant pool to IL, and the school's mission to train rural physicians. If you think I'm wrong, just look into the thread with all the match lists from this year and it'll become obvious to those familiar with residency programs that even the "average" MD schools regularly have much stronger lists than the one you posted.
 
@erics2814 , I'm not going to reveal too much about myself, but you have almost identical stats I had in HS and are from the same area. I'd say avoid UC, WashU and Northwestern's accelerated program. Gen admission at NW would be fine for you, as the students that are hard-workers but not geniuses tend to do better than the geniuses that don't work as hard (source is from multiple friends that went there). Assuming you've got some strong EC's, I wouldn't rule any school out just based on your stats...



This is flat out wrong. You need to be smart, but a 34 ACT with a 3.6 GPA certainly won't hinder OP's chances there, as I know many students with worse stats that went there for UG.



:smack: This is such a ridiculously linear way of looking at college and a career and just bad advice on so many different levels. First, SIU considers pretty much any applicant north of I-72 (aka Springfield) out of state and won't consider most people from Central/northern Illinois unless they express strong interest in rural medicine, so talking it up to someone from northern IL is just silly. Second, out of the 8 med schools in IL, 6 are private, meaning going to a well-known or reputable UG will matter come application time. If OP goes to a mediocre IL school and then applies to an IL med school, they're going to know the reputation of mediocrity it carries. Even the DO school I attend weighs GPAs differently based on the UG the applicants attended. UIC is a very solid choice for med school and a gem for IL residents, but SIU is not a school I would recommend for many reasons. Third, sand-bagging an AP exam is just dumb. Do well on AP tests and get credit for gen ed requirements that OP don't want to take. If you take AP bio or chem, you can always just re-take the class at college. Finally, OP should go somewhere that he can do well and still enjoy himself. It's college, which is a time to explore and expand both your knowledge and yourself as a person. Following some cut and dry plan for the sole purpose of going to med school while spending as little money as possible sounds like a great way to ruin what could potentially the most influential years of OP's life.

All that being said, I agree that U of I is a great school and will not hold OP back when it comes time to apply to med school.




This definitely needs to be considered. When I was applying U of I was awful at giving out scholarships. They were actually so bad that out of the 10 or 11 schools I applied to they would have been the most expensive for me to attend as an in-state applicant (and I applied to several elite private schools) and a girl from my high school that got offered full rides to multiple ivies got offered around 5k/year at U of I. Idk if it's still like that, but they were the perfect example of how awful Illinois' educational funding was (and is).
You're also from the North Shore area? I attend one of the Glenbrooks, if that rings a bell.

I'm planning to apply to mostly Midwestern target schools like UIUC and Case Western, along with some reaches like Northwestern. I've heard they all have good premed programs. As for the major, I love history but don't know what I'll do if I cant get into med school. I'm thinking of just majoring in one of the sciences.

May I ask why I should stay away from accelerated programs? I know my stats are too low for them, but is there any bad aspects about the programs?

Also, you mentioned that UIUC is a good premed school. My twin sister, who has a 4.8 and 35 ACT, wants to apply to UIUC engineering. I'm thinking we can get some sort of financial aid if we both go there. My father is a physician so we don't qualify for much financial aid at all, but we are not rich by any means :( I found lots of people in my school are like this.

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A composite score of 34 on the ACT is at the 99th percentile. I don't know what your idea of brilliant is, but 99th percentile is pretty darn brilliant to me. Here is the link:
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/NormsChartMCandComposite-Web2015-16.pdf

I never said he should attend a mediocre school. I said that he should choose Champaign Urbana. If you have an extra $300,000 for him and his twin to go to Northwestern, send him a check.

You attend a DO school and you wouldn't recommend SIU. That's a good one. I am aware that SIU favors people who live in Southern Illinois but it's still a possibility. I suspect that you go to Midwestern in Chicago. As DO schools go it has a decent reputation, but you and I both know that an MD from SIU is worth more in the match than a DO from Midwestern.

My point about AP classes is that you should take the class in high school, but you should never take the exam for college credit. You should make the first year of college a substantive repeat of high school. Every A is gold and every B is lead.

Feel free to accuse me of being a captive of western linear thought. I plead guilty as charged.
A 34 now is not what it used to be. I got a 31 on a diagnostic test with no preparation and I would say that is around the average. There are tons of people who don't take the ACT seriously and drop the nationwide average.

I'm thinking of following your advice about AP classes. I will be taking AP chem and AP physics next year but will definitely retake it in college. I tested out of AP BC Calc this year and I'm not sure I will retake that in undergrad. I'll be taking stats next year.

Just browsing on SDN I can tell how difficult it is to get a good GPA in college. I want to do the most I can in high school to make that transition just a little bit easier.

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You're also from the North Shore area? I attend one of the Glenbrooks, if that rings a bell.

I'm planning to apply to mostly Midwestern target schools like UIUC and Case Western, along with some reaches like Northwestern. I've heard they all have good premed programs. As for the major, I love history but don't know what I'll do if I cant get into med school. I'm thinking of just majoring in one of the sciences.

May I ask why I should stay away from accelerated programs? I know my stats are too low for them, but is there any bad aspects about the programs?

Also, you mentioned that UIUC is a good premed school. My twin sister, who has a 4.8 and 35 ACT, wants to apply to UIUC engineering. I'm thinking we can get some sort of financial aid if we both go there. My father is a physician so we don't qualify for much financial aid at all, but we are not rich by any means :( I found lots of people in my school are like this.

I'm not from the Northshore, but I'm very familiar with the Glenbrooks as I went to hs in the general area.

If you're a hard-worker in high school and commit to actually studying in college you'll do fine. There are very few schools where you could work your butt off and end up not doing great with the stats you've got.

I say stay away from accelerated programs because it's what the 'genius overachievers' that will kill your GPA will do. I knew the valedictorian of Northwestern's program a year above me (went to HS with him). He took the MCAT his sophomore year and got a 41. Legitimately could have gone to any med school he wanted to, but stayed at Northwestern because he basically had a full ride. They're great programs that churn out studs, even if you're average in them you should be able to get into med school. However, you'd essentially be taking extremely difficult classes and busting your butt to potentially be average. You'd be better off going somewhere that has a decent reputation where you know you'll excel and still have time to appreciate life before starting med school. Plus if you end up changing your mind about your career, a degree from an accelerated pre-med program will do you almost no good in the real world.

I don't want to get into personal details too much, but if you have any specific questions feel free to pm me and I'd be happy to answer as best I can, as I'm very familiar with the area you're looking at.
 
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