Reply to Premed undergrad and rigor?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Premed undergrad and rigor?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s commonly said prestige does not matter, and most say cheapest option with highest GPA and MCAT you can. I get that logic.

I can also understand how high SAT/ACT led to prestigious undergrad schools which led to high MCAT and that’s the correlation to strong med school application success.

I could also see top schools covering more in-depth thus making MCAT prep easier or is it truly directional school orgo is same as T5 orgo and it truly does not matter?

[/quote]

I am part-owner of a med school admissions consultant group, all docs from UVa and above undergrads, all MD schools in the top75 some T5, yet we mentor everyone even a current pharmD student who started at a no name undergrad. There are very large differences in the course content of the basic premed courses, including orgo, at non-flagship state schools (ie well below traditional T50)/lesser known lacs and T20/T10 LACs.  Top students who have the basic smarts to score above 512 on the mcat have to study significantly more (9-12 months)than a similar student at a T20 or 30 (2-3 months) to be hitting goal scores. 
“Similar” is based on SAT(1400 is a good baseline score indicating a 512 is possible with study) and high school prep(stem AP experience and scoring more 5s than 4s in those areas). 
Additionally students from the much lower ranked schools have often taken the wrong classes sometimes due to lack of premed advising and other times due to poor advice. We recommend masters in sciences for many, and waiting on mcat until the background is better.

For the parents who often reach out before undergrad is chosen, we say pick the most rigorous school (highest academic reputation& has premed advising) where the kid has a good chance to be above the mean in stem classes. For some that is  VCU, for others that is William&Mary/UVa, for others they can go to ivies and have no trouble being top half. [/quote]

Thank you for sharing. I was intentionally vague in my post as I didn’t want to sway the conversation too much. Everything you said is what makes complete sense to me. It’s interesting that this other consultant group seems to preach the opposite. I do like that they encourage a path for all, even if it looks a little different, but the blanket statement that all of these schools and courses are the same just never made sense to me.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics