<p>First, the "top" BS/MD programs in terms of being associated with selective medical schools are probably Wash U and Rice.</p>
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<p>Second, look for a place where you believe you'll excel - not just as a student (although of course that too) but as a person. Where can you find room to grow? To learn to nurture others, to demand the most out of yourself? To understand how to work and inspire confidence and professionalism - all these things are less tangible aspects that I think you can feel when you walk onto a campus.</p>
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<p>Third, there are, in fact, specific things to look for. I have a particular thread which I love - it's how I earn my Blue Devil stripes. The point is not "Come to Duke!" (well, that too) but just gives you a basic idea behind what things you ought to look for:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147457%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147457</a></p>
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<p>Fourth, reading through old posts on this forum may lead you to one of three conclusions: prestige helps you, grade inflation helps you, and your choices doesn't matter at all. All three of these hypotheses have grains of truth without being completely correct.</p>
<p>On prestige, notice we are discussing medical students competing for residencies, but the logic probably holds:
[quote]
Bluedevilmike: The general consensus is this: they have a list of "good schools" and list of "other schools"...</p>
<p>If you are from a "good" school, and your application has no glaring flaws, then you get an interview. If you are from an "other" school, and your application does not have any glaring HIGH points, you do not get an interview. Once you get an interview, that becomes the most important component of their decision, although other things still matter.</p>
<p>Special features - either good or bad - might be board scores, class rank, a second degree, etc. </p>
<p>Bigredmed: That's a great way of putting it. What I have tried to say all along, whether it's undergrad, or medical school, or even residency, if you do well, then where you went is not likely to impact your chances. Doing well is a panacea for almost everything.
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<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=164956%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=164956</a></p>
<p>On grade inflation:
[quote]
bluedevilmike:If undergrad GPA was all that mattered, and undergrad institution didn't matter at all, then you'd see that among undergraduate schools, all the kids admitted would have the same grades. After all, if school doesn't matter, then isn't a 3.65 the same, no matter where you get it from? A 3.65 from nowhere state should be the same as a 3.65 from Berkeley, a 3.65 from Duke, and a 3.65 from MIT.</p>
<p>Empirically, this simply isn't what you see... adcoms really are paying attention to undergrad institution... Notice that this is not [perfectly] correlated with prestige.
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<p>On whether it matters at all:
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Bigredmed:[Don't] look at prestige as a deciding factor - that name recognition... But there are plenty of other factors that undergraduate institutions provide that vary from school to school... These are probably hard to quantify in a really meaningful way. And the schools that really do well in these categories may or may not line up with the prestige rankings...
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[quote]
norcalguy:Clearly the caliber of students is the single biggest reason for why schools like Duke or Stanford have a higher acceptance rate than state schools but that doesn't discount the obvious advantages of going to a top school.
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