How is pre-med going for your DC at a selective college?

[Anonymous]

DC is fine tuning their college list and will be on the pre-med track at whichever school they attend. Would love to hear stories about pre-med experiences at selective schools?

Weed-out classes manageable, tough or brutal? Is the environment collaborative or competitive? How is the pre-med advising? Are they happy despite the workload?

If comfortable, please provide the name of the school.

TIA.

[Anonymous]

Carleton College has been great for my kid.

Some prerequisites are hard(orgo will never be easy!), but there's a ton of support and small class sizes. Profs are accessible and students really use the office hours. Kid is doing very well.

Students are extremely collaborative. Work together on problem sets, etc. Classes aren't curved, so they're not competing against each other.

Advising is excellent. Full-time staff member to guide pre-health students. Students also are mentored by upper classmen if they want, and the pre-health club is active. Everyone can join.

Classes do fill up (max 30 students), and freshman may not get into things they want, but they can just work on distributional requirements or fun stuff to explore. Prerequisites have sophomore priority. Benefit of trimesters is that if you don't get something first trimester, you can often take it second or third. I have heard of these issues at SLACs and private T10 universities and state universities, so it's just something kids need to be aware of. But everyone graduates Carleton in 4 years, so it will work out.

[Anonymous]

I have a pre-med at an Ivy known for inflation, but I question that. Norm is to skip intro bio/chem so it all gets “real” right out of the gates.

Students are very collaborative, but the peer group is top notch so it’s very challenging to stay at the top. Never needed a tutor, now regularly go to office hours or TA sessions to ensure they do well in classes. They love it, wanted to be challenged, but can easily see now how there could have been a much easier path chosen.

Opportunities are plentiful, but kid was used to be the go-getter in HS and seizing it all, now they are all like that so competition is greater for everything.

Advising has been great, had 2-3 meetings freshman year versus some other schools start much later in engaging.

It’s a grind, I can see how you have to have a real passion to have the wherewithal to plug along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a pre-med at an Ivy known for inflation, but I question that. Norm is to skip intro bio/chem so it all gets “real” right out of the gates.

Students are very collaborative, but the peer group is top notch so it’s very challenging to stay at the top. Never needed a tutor, now regularly go to office hours or TA sessions to ensure they do well in classes. They love it, wanted to be challenged, but can easily see now how there could have been a much easier path chosen.

Opportunities are plentiful, but kid was used to be the go-getter in HS and seizing it all, now they are all like that so competition is greater for everything.

Advising has been great, had 2-3 meetings freshman year versus some other schools start much later in engaging.

It’s a grind, I can see how you have to have a real passion to have the wherewithal to plug along.

Thanks.

Would you share which Ivy this is?

Also, are there clinical opportunities available?

[Anonymous]

Go with a large state university with a teaching hospital

[Anonymous]

What’s a “selective” college?

[Anonymous]

Premed at Davidson has been wonderful for DS. Class sizes are small so lots of individualized attention, particularly in labs. Getting courses has been relatively stress-free, with the exception of an intro course. DS found research this summer with a professor. Overall, very pleased.

[Anonymous]

Super cutthroat at UCLA. Hard to get into required classes. Lots of kids competing for ec positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Super cutthroat at UCLA. Hard to get into required classes. Lots of kids competing for ec positions.

I definitely don’t presume to know, but I’ve always wondered if top publics are worst in terms of having gunners and not enough opportunity to go around. At top privates it seems competitive but enough to go around. Is it better to go to mid-level public and be the big fish with less gunners?

[Anonymous]

Mine is at a top school, with lots of premed and lots of grade DEflation. Keeping grades up is difficult, but the resources at the school are amazing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine is at a top school, with lots of premed and lots of grade DEflation. Keeping grades up is difficult, but the resources at the school are amazing.

Which school?

[Anonymous]

My kid isn’t pre-med but most of their friends at their T-25 are. Lots of anxiety over getting into certain lab sections, hard to get into pre-med extracurriculars, and the anxiety over getting a pre-med internship (research, shadowing) seems to start right after first year orientation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s a “selective” college?

For premed, there is really no need for a selective college. You can do it in any Slacs that have a decent premed advisory. WASP all have superior premed outcome. But even a t25 lac would works for premed.

[Anonymous]

Premed, at Penn, Bioengineering. Premed classes (chem, orgo, bio calc) include both engineering and college of arts and sci kids, then the actual engineering courses are separate. The classes are not too big, many E classes are under 20. the intro science courses are 80+ per section unless the honors is taken. The so called weedouts have not been at all. They require a lot of work to stay above the mean, wherein "above the mean" is A- and above, usually the top 30-40%. Another 40-55% get B range. Cs are rare. So no one really gets weeded out. People are very collaborative in classes and labs but grading means they are all put on curves in comparison to each other. That is how all schools do premed courses it seems. There are some honors options that are small classes and those have means of A- but require a huge amount of hours every weekend. Mine took a math one because it was fun for them. The different sections of physics and orgo have to have equivalent grading distributions at the end of the semester so which professor does not matter a lot. The regular premeds have it much easier than engineers as they take only 4 courses a semester not 5. Kid knows many BioEng who have above a 3.8 after 2 years in it, not many at all have above a 3.9. Only one has less than a 3.5. Penn Engineering is known for deflation compared to the college but compared to the average premed the courses are fairly similar. Humanities kids are inflated relative to others because those courses have an A- or A given to about 70% of the class. premeds take them as electives. Some are deceptively heavy on reading and writing requirements but the easy grading helps.
Advising is good if the student puts the work in and listens to advice. Some do not want to hear they should spread out courses after freshman year--ie leave orgo for junior year and biochem for senior, plan to take gaps. Most of them are doing well and plan on no gap years for grade reasons, though some plan intense research years to try to get into MD-PhD or aim for T10 Med schools. Basically everyone above a 3.4 gets into med school from Penn, from data. The problem is in a group like that where getting in to med school is not seen as too hard, it leads to gunning for top schools, hence chasing 3.8+. A family member went to JHU 3 years ago and described premed almost exactly the same, down to the means and the top-school-gunning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Super cutthroat at UCLA. Hard to get into required classes. Lots of kids competing for ec positions.

how is that allowed? everyone gets into required classes at top privates.