Which postbacc should I choose?

[chris24j]

Hello, I am a senior, about to graduate Brandeis University this May. I want to get into med school but thought taking a gap year or two to strengthen my credential would be a good idea. I decided to apply to SMP to do so.

I am 22 years old (23 in May) Asian Male, 3.43 tGPA and 3.51 sGPA. With 30 on MCAT. I am a rower (have been since freshmen year) and have minor clinical experience (nothing significant)

I applied to 4 SMP programs and I wanted to see what people thought were the best choice for me, assuming that I get into all of them.

I applied to BU MAMS, Tufts MBS, Drexel MMS, and Columbia IHN.

Now I’ve done some research on my own and these are my conclusions.

BU MAMS is a very good program with strong history and records. They have amazing success rate for their students and great faculty. From what I gathered, they do have one of the most well put-together program. The curriculum is very rigorous and it is known by many medical school to be so; this is nice since it shows credibility and strength of the program. I considered this to be my top choice.

Tufts MBS program is also great but when I visited, it didn’t seem as well put-together as BU. One of the reason was that while BU and Drexel devoted the entire meeting and information session to Medical/pre-health program, Tufts held a lot of other program information session as well. Now I know that is not the best way to judge a program, but it felt like Tuft program put this MBS program almost as a side-project of a bigger school as oppose to the attention that BU and Drexel seemed to have put in their programs. Besides that Tufts allows a bit more relaxed program while still offering Tuft medical school level courses. This is great since I believe that my resume is the weakest point and it will allow me to work on it during the first year, while BU and Drexel (and Columbia I think) recommends you not to have anything but their coursework for the first year of their programs. For these programs, I think I would need to work harder during the second year to strengthen my resume with more clinical experience. Tufts, on the other hand, allows me to do so during first year as well.

Drexel felt very similar to BU program in their intensity and level of attention they put into these program. Only problem I had was that you have to attend the lecture online. It also doesn’t have as great of a success history as BU (tho to be fair, BU is exceptionally great). Good thing is that this program is cheaper than the other three, so it is something to think about.

Columbia IHN sounds great. It has the name-value and rigorous coursework. I don’t know about its history as well, however. One of the problem is that it is only 1 year program and for another 1 year, I will have to find something completely new to do while applying. Bigger problem is that it requires me to write the thesis during the summer (in 3 months or so) during which I will want to retake the MCAT and start applying to medical school. That summer is going to be extremely busy and miserable. It is also in NYC so it is going to be terribly expensive. I am visiting this school in couple of weeks so I will get a better idea for it, but it sounds like it is going to be the most difficult)

While Drexel is the only program that offers guaranteed interviews for students who meet certain criteria, all programs do offer higher interview percentages to a point where it might as well be guaranteed interviews. So that is a mute point for me.

So given this, which programs should I choose if I get into all of them? (like ranking would be great).

Is there any information I missed or gotten incorrect?

Please let me know what you think.

TL;DR

Which one should I choose? BU MAMS, Tuft MBS, Drexel MMS, Columbia IHN?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[zarfot]

Some thing to keep in mind is that Columbia IHN - 1) isn't a SMP although it shows up on the AAMC as a post-bacc and 2) because it's a nutrition masters - it isn't exactly the best for pre-meds. It's a lot of nutrition and you're not going to be getting the same rigorous upper level science coursework that you would at a SMP (where you're taking exact same med school courses) or pre-med geared post bacc (histology, immunology, virology, cell bio/molecular bio, anatomy/physio, genetics).

Also - you may not need a straight up rigorous SMP where it's high risk-high reward/you get graded against medical students' average (typically people with subpar GPAs such as ~ 3.0 uGPA apply to these to show that they can handle the med school coursework - it's a hard 1 year audition to prove to medical schools and getting ~3.5 in these will really ruin your chances at MD).

I'm in a similar boat and Asian female/higher MCAT/decent GPA and the options I researched were more geared towards people who need some upper level science coursework in a post-bacc (small class size, dedicated faculty, but rigorous program coursework) to boost up their average credentials.

Programs like Duke - MBS, Johns Hopkins - HSI, Tulane - ACP*, Temple ACSM**, Wake Forest Pre-medical Post-baccalaureate specialization of the Biomedical Sciences – MS Program, Loyola MAMS (90-95% success rate) have very high success rates. Programs that were pre-med oriented and had >90% of their students get into med school was a safer option than BU MAMS/Georgetown SMP/Drexel (because there have been people who have used it to get into med school, and others who have failed due to the nature of the courseload + large class size (100+) = not everyone can get catered individual mentoring.)

** ACSM has direct linkage into their med school
*ACP - need a WL from a med school to apply, but out of their class this year 15/16 were going to the Tulane med school

But to answer your question: BU MAMS/Tufts > Drexel. I would also look at the rate your SMP thread (one of the recent pages has a listing of all the ratings for schools and you can see the positive/negatives listed out from prev. students).

 

[chris24j]

Some thing to keep in mind is that Columbia IHN - 1) isn't a SMP although it shows up on the AAMC as a post-bacc and 2) because it's a nutrition masters - it isn't exactly the best for pre-meds. It's a lot of nutrition and you're not going to be getting the same rigorous upper level science coursework that you would at a SMP (where you're taking exact same med school courses) or pre-med geared post bacc (histology, immunology, virology, cell bio/molecular bio, anatomy/physio, genetics).

Thank you for the responses. The only program I got in so far is Columbia IHN. I know it isn't a traditional SMP but still it is an option to definitely pad out the resume and after all, it is a graduate level coursework so I thought it might still be appealing.
But I think BU is definitely on the top of my list. Can you perhaps elaborate about the high-risk/high-reward concept? I do understand BU/Drexel/Tufts are like so, but from what I've understood, SMPs are usually designed to be high-risk/high-reward, isn't it? What are some example of SMP that isn't high-risk/high-reward? what kind of benefit does it give that are different from BU or Drexel? Is then Columbia IHN one of them?

 

[chris24j]

My experience of Columbia was quite negative:

Pros: campus is like a museum, my adviser was great.

Cons: culture is not groovy - its the most pretentious place I've ever encountered - fees are beyond ridiculous, and its in New York.

Thank you for your insight.
Are you a alumni of the program or Columbia in general?
That is disappointing to hear. I think atmosphere is really important. It is super expensive.
If you are an alum of the program, what was the success rate was like with your class? (like what % got into Med school?)
Do they have something like a "guaranteed interview to Columbia Med school? (I know they say they don't but I know a lot of these programs do put you in a different application pools for their own med school and gives certain bonus so that they accept about 10% of the people from the program. Is there anything like that?)

Please let me know

 

[zarfot]

High risk high reward as in:

1. You have 150-160 people in the class taking the same courses as medical students (generally speaking)

2. Only 20-30 MD spots/interviews will go to people in the SMP program, maybe less/more depending on the school SMP.

3. While you're competing against SMP students some of these programs grade against the curve - medical students get high pass/pass/fail type of grading system while your curve is dependent on beating the average.

So doing well in the program 3.8-4.0 will show to med schools that in the SMP (audition), you can keep up. But get a bad test grade/course grade - 3.5 will hurt you and your chances of the admissions. So people who have 3.0 or lower GPAs might do a very tough SMP to show that their undergrad GPA was caused by other factors and not from lack of academic ability.

I really think Columbia would be a waste of time. It's a great program, but not for what you need which is showing you can excel at upper level science courses. Admissions officers have said they overlook say MPH - bc although it might be at a good school, it doesn't show anything about your ability to do well in the upper level science classes. Same idea for IHN.

Find a post bacc program (not a SMP bc your stats don't need that, you're barely there - just need some extra resume boosters in science classes) that has a small class size, direct faculty mentoring, and ask directors of the program about success of their students getting into med school + the average grad GPA of students in the program. Loyola MAMS has a good program, very reputable.

 

[nokia stuff]

What's your 2k? That's the only relevant info that they need to know!