<p>"It's probably much easier to get a PhD than to get in to medical school."</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>Certainly, you don't have to be brilliant to get a PhD -I've known incompetent human beings with PhDs... different PhD programs attract different caliber students, just like undergraduate institutions, and some people really do go to grad school because they're scared to leave school. PhD and med school are different -med school requires memorization of lots and lots of material, whereas to be a good grad school student it helps to be a good comprehensive reader and creative. This is probably why Swarthmore med students have been interviewed saying they difficulty starting out in med school. Obviously the issue is more complicated than a simple number -I happen to be partial to institutions that emphasize the scientific process of discovery in every classroom moreso than extensive memorization, but that is probably because my highschool took that approach. I definitely think there is some correlation between caliber of students and how much critical thinking professors demand from the students as undergraduates, but it's not a linear correlation. Perhaps a way to find out would be to ask a few well-known researchers how they would evaluate a candidate from x, y, z institutions, and see if there is any concensus?</p>
<p>I think another good way to gauge the strength of a program might be to look at where students with a given GPA are going....</p>
<p>You don't have to be brialliant to get into med school, much less graduate. Sure, you have to be able to memorize lots of information, but as a graduate student, life is not easy. There are qualifying exams which must be passed or one is kicked out of the program, there is a massive dissertation to write, and there is massive research to do for that dissertation, amongst other things. Are these things "easy?" I don't think so. It's not as if someone asserted that getting a PhD is much easier than getting an MD, which is questionable, but saying to GET a PhD is easier than to get IN TO medical school? That's absurd.</p>
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This is probably why Swarthmore med students have been interviewed saying they difficulty starting out in med school.
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<p>You are going to have to provide a source for that one. I've probably read more published articles about Swat grads than the average bear and I've never seen anything remotely like that.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, first-year med school is pretty much universally difficult.</p>
<p>I suspect anyone who has had a good liberal arts education will find medical school a letdown intellectually. Instead of being asked to think, you are given thick books and told to memorize them, regurgitate on command, then forget. Not very stimulating.</p>