Solipsis,
To answer (or not) your questions:
1) The current premed office does not keep statistics. It's one of the (rather large) short-fallings of the current office. There is, however, a new pre-health advisor starting this fall, and I trust things will change as soon as that person gets his/her bearings. But, anecdotally, post-baccs do well in their acceptances. If you go to the yahoo groups page that keeps getting brought up in these posts, under the 'Database' portion of the page, there is a database of a long (though still only partial) list of the schools to which postbaccs were accepted this year - it will give you a good flavor as to where folks go. But, certainly students do very well in getting into all the NYC schools, SUNY schools and generally schools in this area (Jefferson, Drexel, etc). The list is not limited to this area, but it seems a lot of folks do like to stay around here.
2) Dr. Alaie does not write LORs/evals. For the exact reason you mentioned (i.e. the class size being huge), Biology is the one class in which you are not expected to get an evaluation from the professor. Instead you get them from your recitation and lab TAs. Her office hour lines are not horrendously long, as recitation and lab TAs also hold office hours.
3) Whether a school is competitive in nature or not has mostly to do with the type of student body it boasts. Hunters students, especially the post-baccs, are of a very collegial nature. Undergrads too, as they are generally not from a privileged background (as most or at least many Ivy kids are), and they have worked hard to get where they are. Also, not all the classes are THAT huge. Bio 100 is enormous for a few reasons: 1) only 1 prof teaches it 2) Starting this fall, there is only 1 section - which means that all 700 students will be in the auditorium at one time. They used to be split up over two sections 3) Many undergrads take the class to fill their core science requirement - meaning many students in the class are NOT pre-med. Therefore, although the class is large in number, that number does not reflect the number of pre-med students. The rest of your classes will be smaller in size. But, you will still need to make an effort to get the professor to get to know you so s/he can write you a meaningful evaluation at the end of the semester.
Post-baccs are all in the same boat, and at Hunter they like to support one another through this usually somewhat scary albeit exciting adventure. You'll get a feel for that right away on the yahoo group. That's exactly why Hunter is special - students help and support each other. We all want the same thing (that is to get into med school), but there is no reason that everyone can't achieve that same goal.
Good luck.
solipsis said:
thanks for this great thread. it's a fact that
hunter is among best postbac programs out there.
i hope to start this fall.
my questions are:
1. what range of medical schools do postbacs
after completing the program? do we have data
on this? there are data for some years back,
but these are discontinued.
2. dr. alaie-petrillo. as you know, she teaches
huge classes. i'm sure all want a LOR from her.
700 students. 1 professor. am i expecting
endless lines during office hours? how is she
really going to get to know you (and vice-versa)
given the size of the classes?
let me phrase it another way. how is the program
noncompetitive when 1. it is inexpensive and good
and 2. huge number of students attend, and all
seek the same goal?
