Which colleges to stay away from?

And if you decide medical school is not for you, DO NOT resort to the Plan B of the past, which is pharmacy school. Just don't.

(I became a pharmacist because I WANTED to be a pharmacist, not a doctor. I left active practice in 2012 when I realized it had become saturated and unrecognizable.)

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Seconding Berkeley on that one, I've heard plenty of things about their beginning Chem class as well as the instructors let alone the price tag for OOSers without FA.
And if you decide medical school is not for you, DO NOT resort to the Plan B of the past, which is pharmacy school. Just don't.

(I became a pharmacist because I WANTED to be a pharmacist, not a doctor. I left active practice in 2012 when I realized it had become saturated and unrecognizable.)

Out of curiosity, what do you do now?
 
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.

The match in physical medicine at Barnes Jewish is a match Washington U. You didn't know that? You say this list is not impressive for an MD school and I would agree. It is, however, much better than a typical DO school match list and you know it.
 
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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.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents and say this advice doesn't apply to everyone. If you do well in calculus, calc based physics is easier than algebra based. Algebra based forces you to memorize unnecessary formulas that could easily be derived or circumvented with very simply calculus. Calc based physics will only be a GPA destroyer if calculus already destroyed your GPA.
 
The match in physical medicine at Barnes Jewish is a match Washington U. You didn't know that? You say this list is not impressive for an MD school and I would agree. It is, however, much better than a typical DO school match list and you know it.

Ah, missed that one. Fair enough on the DO thing. For an average DO school it would be a strong list, but at the better DO schools this list would be relatively typical in terms of numbers of "impressive matches" and overall percent of people matching into competitive fields vs. primary care (it would be at mine). Also, it would certainly be common at more DO schools if there wasn't an inherent bias simply based on the letters after the name.
 
Just wanted to add my 2 cents and say this advice doesn't apply to everyone. If you do well in calculus, calc based physics is easier than algebra based. Algebra based forces you to memorize unnecessary formulas that could easily be derived or circumvented with very simply calculus. Calc based physics will only be a GPA destroyer if calculus already destroyed your GPA.

Why take calculus in the first place? Only 17 medical schools require calculus as a prerequisite. Here they are:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nss/nav/pages/advice/MedSchlMathReq08rev.pdf
 
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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Avoid Case. I fit the description of being an "average intelligence" student in math who succeeds through hard work. Case requires you too be smart and work hard; one of the professors there stated that the school's curriculum isn't all that much different that Ivy Leagues. I toured there and am not joking when I say literally 60 percent of the students are Indian/Asian (sorry if this sounds bad but it's the truth).

Be the big fish in the little pond like I plan to :)
 
Just dropping in, now that I've actually taken a few tests as an M1. Id venture to say that Emory undergrad was actually harder than med school (so far).

Seriously, don't go to Emory...it's not worth it lol.
 
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