Choosing Premed School: Princeton vs. JHU (BME) vs. Penn vs. Rice

[DonutDog1212]

The May 1st deadline is approaching and I'm having trouble making a decision. Was hoping the SDN community could give me some insight. I'm a premed student choosing between Princeton, JHU, Penn, Rice and some other schools. From my current perspective:

Princeton:
Most "prestigious", for what that's worth
Not great for GPA

JHU (BME):
Very interested in BME, top program in the country
Not great for GPA

Penn:
Most balanced, academic and social
Some grade inflation

Rice:
140k cheaper because of scholarships
Some grade inflation

Visitied all the schools. Not super picky based on fit. Could see myself going any of these places. Would making myself miserable trying to maintain a good GPA at Princeton or JHU BME be worth it? Or should I take the easier route and money at Rice? Does choosing a more prestigious school matter for med school and future success?

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[WedgeDawg]

This is a tough choice.

Honestly, if I were in your shoes, I would choose Penn. Penn is a solid school for essentially whatever you want to do and is a solid pre-med school with an affiliated hospital and research opportunities. You'll have a good support/advisory system, access to a lot of health-related resources, and probably have a solid college experience to boot.

Princeton will get you where you need to go. You do have to deal with the grade deflation, but Princeton is one of the schools where having a lower GPA than normal will still be fine as long as your MCAT is strong (and given your college choices, you are probably a pretty decent test taker). However, it has the disadvantages of being a possibly more competitive environment than Penn and not having an affiliated medical school or hospital which will make healthcare or research related ECs tougher to do. IMO, the GPA issue + access to Penn's research and hospital network puts Penn>Princeton for me, but if you really want to go to Princeton, you will not be making a bad choice.

Rice wouldn't be a bad option either - it's a solid, well respected school, but it also has the issue of not being affiliated with a home hospital, and you suffer a bit in prestige (if that matters to you - it might matter to some med school admissions departments a small bit). If you didn't get the scholarship, I would say cross it off, but cheaper is definitely good.

I wouldn't go to Hopkins BME. 1) it's Hopkins which isn't conducive to a well-balanced premed environment 2) it's Hopkins BME which is one of the toughest (but best) BME programs in the world and 3) you won't have resources at Hopkins that you won't have at Penn. Again, Hopkins is not a bad choice per se, but it's the worst of the bunch for your goals in that it will make life harder than it needs to be.

So I vote Penn>Princeton=Rice>Hopkins

Just my 2c

 

[_ Aquarius _]

Wait... you consider Rice to be an "easy" school? Wow. Ok, then.
And anyway if you managed to get into these schools you should be smart enough to manage a fairly good GPA. Besides, in my eyes even if you get a GPA that isn't as high as usual it should balance out considering these are the some of the most prestigious schools in America.

 

[app1]

Lol at "easier route at Rice" and "grade inflation". If you go there, or ask anyone who did, you will find out neither of these statements are close to true. You should pick based on where you feel the most comfortable and which will leave you with the lowest student loan burden.