Reply to Is pre-med at UChicago a bad idea?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DD sounds similar to yours and is now a junior majoring in a STEM field at UChi. She's completed (as part of the sequence of classes needed for her major) all of the pre-med classes. The grade deflation situation and rigor is real although it is not, as you said, "busy work. Med schools/internship opportunities are aware of the situation at Chicago and take that into account. Kids are nose down a lot of the time as lectures + labs + discussion groups take a lot of time and the problem sets are no joke. She does finds time to work out and "goes out" maybe once a week. She was dead set on UChi, but had she had a slightly less strenuous option she was considering we might have pushed her in that direction knowing what we know now. But then again, she's happy and has found her people and she's definitely being challenged![/quote]

I'm curious which school you considered to be "slightly less strenuous" than UChicago.[/quote]
I don't want to get into a debate about whether or not the schools she didn't pick are more or less strenuous because that's really off topic from the OP's question. My point was that if DD had wanted pre-med, I'm not sure Chicago is the best fit. I think it's more the research university + quarter system + size issue. There's no time to catch your breath with the quarter system. DD has not found professors to be as accessible as her brother has at a SLAC. There's more competition for lab internships and, because it's harder to establish relationships with professors, that adds an extra layer of stress. While professor (vs TAs) actually lecture, she has a lot of interaction with TAs and those are the people with whom she's formed relationships. She's now had two or three truly sadistic professors who will give whole exams on content not covered or included in the study guides so the mean grade is 20%. Yes, there's a curve but not an F to an A. I'm not sure how that would play out for someone applying to med school.

But, again, she is happy. She found her people. She participates in RSOs and fun traditions/events. She loves her house and the campus. She does, however, spend significantly more time than her high school friends (who are STEM majors at other universities) studying/in the library. [/quote]

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