Good schools for Pre-Med!
Hi! I’m a junior in high school and I have as wondering about good schools for pre-med that give good merit aid. I have a 36 in every section on the ACT (not a Superscore) and a 4.0 unweighted gpa. When I graduate I will have taken 12 AP classes and all core classes were honors, gifted, or AP. It’s not official but I will be a National merit semi-finalist and hopefully a finalist. My extracurriculars are meh, but I do play the piano fairly well. What are some good colleges for pre-med that would give me a bunch of merit aid that don’t have bad grade deflation? Preferably somewhere where I can continue piano easily with a science major.
Duke! We have a hospital right on campus, the hands-on DUEMS program, and countless internship opportunities. Also, it's a well respected school with a high med school acceptance rate. Merit aid is pretty good since it's a private school.
Also, I'm sure if you are interested in the military at all, but the ROTC programs at Duke are like a secret hack to admission. The ROTC commanders will advocate for you to the admissions board, and there is an entirely different selection timeline (secret ED2 option in February) for ROTC scholarship winners. It's basically like a toned down athletic recruitment process. ROTC scholarships can pay for full tuition, plus a monthly stipend for books. And, the military can also cover your med school costs. Military medicine is awesome (so many options, and many benefits), and it is always on the forefront of technology, thanks to governmental funding. If you're interested, all three branches open scholarship applications in June/July.
Vanderbilt also has their ROTC commanders advocate to admissions. Other schools do as well, but I'm the most familiar with these two. (I'm a current Army ROTC cadet at Duke on the premed track).
Hope this helps.
Thanks!! I visited Duke and I loved it, but I thought it was impossible for me to go to since I need a lot of merit aid. I know a girl who got a full ride there, but she has been doing astrophysics research since middle school and wins national science fair stuff with it. I posted a question similar to this on a college search forum (not sure if I am allowed to name it) and basically everyone told me big scholarships at prestigious universities are about impossible for me to get since my extracurriculars aren’t great and I should look at other schools. Unfortunately I would need to get the cost down to about $25k including room and board but I won’t qualify for much, if any, need based aid. I am not in JROTC and am not interested in the military, thanks though! I do have one question about Duke: is the atmosphere very competitive? I like my high school except that the students are competitive and everyone is very stressed about school all the time, myself very much included. I don’t want to repeat that environment
WashU, Rice, and Northwestern are top programs for pre-med, and your grades are great!
Thanks!
Generally private schools offer more scholarships compared to public schools due to public schools usually already having a default lower tuition. It really depends on the area you’re in and how far you’re willing to go!
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