Good D3 schools for pre med?

maybe its semantics wrote:

a few thoughts.

2) top medical schools rank undergrad selectivity among their very top factors in admissions. so, if youre set on d3--basically nescac, swat, haverford, clarement colleges are your best bets.

Unequivocally false. This person has no clue what they are talking about.

spider curious wrote:

If OPs only goal is to get into med school, pick a school where it will be really easy to be top of his class and offers some extra opportunities to show leadership qualities. Going to a "good school" is meaningless for med school admissions.

Hear, hear!

To build on that: Major in whatever you enjoy and can get good grades in (just make sure you cover the prereqs for med school). Too many premeds are under the impression that they have to be hard-science majors. Not only is that not true, it's "anti-true": med schools, especially the better ones, actually like to have a variety of academic backgrounds among their students.

former dee three wrote:

Unequivocally false. This person has no clue what they are talking about.

not unexpectedly, a letsrunner with lots of confidence, but no sense of the actual state of the world.

the most important academic metrics for private med schools:

• UGPA: Cumulative

science/math

• MCAT total score

• Upward or downward

grade trend

• UGPA: Cumulative total

• Performance in a postbaccalaureate program

• Selectivity of

undergraduate

institution

maybe its semantics wrote:

former dee three wrote:

Unequivocally false. This person has no clue what they are talking about.

not unexpectedly, a letsrunner with lots of confidence, but no sense of the actual state of the world.

https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/7c/fb/7cfb5f43-f9cd-4a5a-bdad-36e735b5844a/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf#page=12

the most important academic metrics for private med schools:

• UGPA: Cumulative

science/math

• MCAT total score

• Upward or downward

grade trend

• UGPA: Cumulative total

• Performance in a postbaccalaureate program

• Selectivity of

undergraduate

institution

Your link is broken but you are still unequivocally wrong.

See here, pg 15 of "Using MCAT Data in 2021 Medical Student Selection:

Of note, academic metrics that are of highest important, according to admissions committees, are GPA, GPA trend, MCAT, and completion of premed course requirements.

Lowest importance includes selectivity of undergraduate institution, undergraduate major, graduate or professional degree, completion of challenging nonscience courses.

typical letsrunner wrote:

You have to remember. Power 5 scholarship or Ivy League only. Otherwise go home, maybe go to community college and be a nurses assistant. D3 is baby college.

Your punctuation is poor. Probably best if you refrain from your witticisms as the flawed execution means people laugh at - rather than with - you.

nope. you and i appear to have very different understandings of the word "unequivocal."

as you'll observe at FN3 in your table, private and public institutions make these decisions very differently. your table comes closer to summarizing the views of public institutions. but as you'll note, my observation was about the top med schools--the vast majority of which are private. and as you'd note from my link, if you could open it, the private schools are fairly "unequivocal" that selectivity of the undergraduate institution is among the most important considerations.

maybe its semantics wrote:

nope. you and i appear to have very different understandings of the word "unequivocal."

as you'll observe at FN3 in your table, private and public institutions make these decisions very differently. your table comes closer to summarizing the views of public institutions. but as you'll note, my observation was about the top med schools--the vast majority of which are private. and as you'd note from my link, if you could open it, the private schools are fairly "unequivocal" that selectivity of the undergraduate institution is among the most important considerations.

I'll yield, you are correct. I find that shocking and somewhat contemptible- there are many excellent reasons why one would choose a state school over a selective "elite" school, and it's disappointing to see students penalized for that.

i agree with you. and while you may have been saying it without saying it, ill just say more explicitly--the various socioeconomic and racial implications are appalling.

If you're PR is 18:30, you are going to need to look for schools with no time standards. I would suggest looking through meet results for teams with 40+ runners to get an idea of what teams would let you on. At my school, our coach would not accept anyone slower than 17:30 5k.

Off the top of my head, St. Olaf is a nationally competitive team that won't turn away any runners.

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

That time will be very limiting if you want to be part of a team.

sman wrote:

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

Sorry I’m dumb and didn’t realize you are going into your senior year. Yeah 17:xx is definitely doable for you this year. Like I said, 17:30 should be good enough for any D3 team, but if your school cancels your season just keep in mind that there are some national contenders who don’t have any time standards.

Think about it wrote:

sman wrote:

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

17:30 should be good enough for any D3 team.

Nope

Think about it wrote:

[quote]sman wrote:

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

Like I said, 17:30 should be good enough for any D3 team

This is a pretty common myth for D3 programs. For 80% of D3 that is good enough, but for the top 30-40 teams you will need to run around 16:30, 10:00, 4:35, or sub 2:00. For the top 20ish teams even faster. Trust me on this, as a 16:40, 10:20 high school runner, I got turned away by 75% of the coaches I contacted because I wasn't fast enough.

as a doctor, this^ is all you need to know

my key advice would be to find a school where you can thrive academically, extracurricularly, and socially/mentally -- this may mean a public school close to home, a private school where you feel you really "fit in" with the student body, or whatever. it will make the pre-med process significantly easier

I know D3 wrote:

Think about it wrote:

[quote]sman wrote:

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

Like I said, 17:30 should be good enough for any D3 team

This is a pretty common myth for D3 programs. For 80% of D3 that is good enough, but for the top 30-40 teams you will need to run around 16:30, 10:00, 4:35, or sub 2:00. For the top 20ish teams even faster. Trust me on this, as a 16:40, 10:20 high school runner, I got turned away by 75% of the coaches I contacted because I wasn't fast enough.

I was not aware. Pretty sure my school was the only team in the conference with walk on standards, and I would consider ourselves in the top 30.

The advantage of going to a smaller D3 school is that many of them provide significant support to pre-med students, because it's good for admissions and for alumni fund-raising.

My school, one of the better academic southern D3 schools, sends a lot of people to med school, including three or four of my teammates. Pre-med types got a lot of help from the faculty, at least after the first three semesters. And some pressure -- generally, profs would not write recommendations for students who did not, in their opinion, have a solid shot at getting into med school, and the students knew this.

I think D3 is better. My D1 was a giant filter. It worked but was impersonal.

I went to a top 5 public Ivy. There were almost no formal programs for Med school aside from an advisor you saw 20 minutes twice a year. You simply took standard MCAT courses and got the grades. There wasn’t that much pressure-you simply had to learn the material at a deep level. Because there was no set program and I was too busy running to take a prep class, I was shocked at how my classes had prepared me for the MCAT. By and large, the material seemed a little less hard than my courses. I ended up not going to Med school and took an NSF for statistics (I majored in math, as many have suggested, you don’t need hard science). Although I enjoyed the laissez faire nature of being a pre-med at State U, what is needed is to teach people the soft skills it takes to be a doctor-empathy, maturity, motivation, etc. There is none of that at a big school and I hope you can find it at a d3 with a good advisor. By the way, there is not a day that goes by without my wishing that I didn’t run D1 and semi-slack my way through a big school and live on a van traveling most weekends. You should be glad that you are running D3!

I know D3 wrote:

Think about it wrote:

[quote]sman wrote:

The 18:30 is outdated though. I think I could run a 17:xx rn and hopefully sub 17 by the end of xc.

Like I said, 17:30 should be good enough for any D3 team

This is a pretty common myth for D3 programs. For 80% of D3 that is good enough, but for the top 30-40 teams you will need to run around 16:30, 10:00, 4:35, or sub 2:00. For the top 20ish teams even faster. Trust me on this, as a 16:40, 10:20 high school runner, I got turned away by 75% of the coaches I contacted because I wasn't fast enough.

Second this, I ran in the low 16's and in the 4:20's several years ago and there was one D3 team who was indifferent towards me. I met the recruitment standards at all of the others I applied to, though.