<p>In general, most self-respecting majors at most self-respecting majors will not hand out A’s like candy just because all premed students want A’s. (If they really do so, it would just dilute the values of the GPAs their students present to the acoms of med schools.)</p>
<p>The classes at most med schools are small (100-150 at most med schools), and there are much fewer med schools than colleges (where the class size could be an order of magnitude larger easily.) If you do the math, the probable conclusion you may reach is that, when every thing said and done, only the top X % of the students in your major at your school will have a decent chance to get in somewhere.</p>
<p>To put it bluntly, the applicant is compared against other applicants “with the same background” only – to a certain extent. The fact that the professor gives different grades to his students only gives the students an opportunity to excel in this particular area called GPA. If he gives out a very similar grade, the students essentially just lose one opportunity to help them get into a med school; they need to rely on something else like ECs (Does your parent happen to have a close friend who is a distinguished researcher or he himself is one?! Would you rather like to be in a world that who you know is more important than what you know? You will get to this kind of world later in the life, and should count your blessings when the world you are in is still not like this before you leave the school.)</p>
<p>It is unlikely for you to find a college where both the percentage and the absolute number of students who get into med school are extremely high. I think med schools know how to pick the top X percents of students from a respectable major at a given college, no matter what the average grade of the students from this major/college is. — And there is an equalizer called MCAT.</p>
<p>Grade inflation pre-dates the recent med school craze by many, many years. The data demonstrate that grade inflation really took hold in the late 60’s-early 70’s when professors starting grading more leniently to help draft-eligible young men maintain their student deferments. (Or whatever alternate theory you prefer.) But the fact remains the average GPA for college students increased significantly during the the late 60s-early70s. Recent average GPA increases (last 20 years) pale in comparison.</p>
<p>Please see [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://gradeinflation.com/) for a discussion of historical trend in college grading for the past 85 years.</p>
<p>BTW, grade inflation is not a universal phenomena. Some schools have maintained a remarkably consistent spread of A’s thru F’s for tha last 85 years.</p>
<p>I think they are doing a fine job myself. I know that some engineering majors don’t think so, but I can live with that. And yeah. My kid is one of those mathy sciencey kids, too. Comes easy to her. Literature? Not so much.</p>
<p>People here are trying to give you an accurate, realistic description of how applying to med school works, so please familiarize yourself with the actual data:</p>
<p>I’ve done plenty of research on the pre-med path and yes the 3.9 GPA comment was a hyperbole. But my overall point remains valid though since the first round of computer screening disproportionally affects hard science/engineering students more.</p>
<p>I know an individual who designs computer screening screening software used by medical schools and the bar is set lower than you seem to think-- usually around 3.2-3.3 GPA (although the exact value can vary according to the parameters chosen by a specific school). I don’t see that as being particularly discriminatory towards engineering/hard science majors.</p>
disguy, Even if the quoted statement is true, there are still enough hard science/engineering students who make the cut, and med schools still have plenty of qualified science/engineering students to select from.</p>
<p>Many years ago, somebody told me that the way a top college compose their incoming class is somewhat similar to the way an orchestra selects their players. Med school admission could be similar.</p>
<p>They need L violin players, M viola players, N cello players, etc. So they will select L top players who play violin, M top players who play viola, and so on. If you are a violinist, you only need to compete against other violinists.</p>
<p>Similarly, each year, some engineering students will get admitted to a given med school. A biology major will not take away a slot that is intended for an engineering type student. But med school would not want to admit too many engineering majors either, just because engineering major is hard. This is irrelevant to med school when it tries to compose its class, as they select the admitted students with the engineering background from the pool of engineering students who apply to their school.</p>
<p>I also want to emphasize another point (that curm and other CCers have made above): Each field has its challenging aspect, especially when you want to be, say, the top 10 students among a class of 80 students. In several of DS’s UG class, e.g., cell biology,or immuno, there are massive amount of info that needs to absorb within limited time. Many students came to each class extremely well prepared even before the professor starts to teach a particular topics. DS used some the following waysto describe some of his fellow students: capable of studying almost 13 hours a day, barely sleep, never see her stop studying a certain subject. Do you think it is easy to be a top 10 students among a class of 80 in such an environment? The fact that they are not engineering students does not mean it is not hard.</p>
I don’t know if that is true but if it is they sure need a LOT more biology majors as they make up close to 50% of the matriculants. My guess is your theory may be true but not according to major. I would think the EC’s, research experience, type of volunteer work and other factors would be more likely to be the criteria.</p>
<p>^ An orchestra needs more violinists than oboe players too :)</p>
<p>After all, there are more biology majors who apply to med schools. To compensate this, there are more bio majors who are admitted.</p>
<p>If I remember it correctly, although there may be some outliers, by and large, the admission rates for different majors are not that different. (Outliers: Music majors: a higher rate, some premed/health vocational majors: a lower rate. Biology majors: actually at a slightly lower admission rate, likely due to the fact that a slight higher percentage of bio majors are not-so-good premeds.)</p>
<p>I believe that I could have exaggerated it a bit when I responded to another CCer’s complaint about the hard science/engineering majors being disadvantaged. Other factors you mentioned are important too.</p>
<p>Actually, just thought of this: Being an engineering major could be a disadvantage in these other areas you mentioned mostly because of time commitment (to their major) issue: The way some engineering coursework is set up leaves very little time for anything else because the goal of these engineering majors is to prepare their students for this career in just short 4 years. So if they are overwhelmed just by the coursework, they have less time to get involved with other necessary activities you mentioned at the same time. If they are not overwhelmed, they are more competitive applicants in the eyes of med school adcoms.</p>
<p>You could make the same argument if you attend either a college or a major in which you are overwhelmed. However, a top college could possibly give out a better grade on average to compensate this. Another related factor is that, at less competitive schools, their premed students could be mostly competitive students in their schools.</p>
<p>This is a controversy issue that has never been resolved (that is, we could never have a consensus here): Whether a student should go to a competitive school (or major), esp., a premed factory one (school and/or major), or a less competitive school/major? If only anybody would know its answer.</p>
<p>I majored in psychology and loved it, however people who had upper-level bio classes are having an easier time right now than I am. Just keep that in mind (and take upper level classes ).</p>
<p>Judging by the applicant to matriculation percentage there doesn’t seem to be much variance in any major except specialized health. Here are the percentage of applicants vs matriculation of the categories that AAMC reported for 2011.</p>
<p>Biological Sciences 52.05% applicants 51% matriculated
Humanities 4.55% 5.14%
Math/Statistics .008% .0099%
Other 17.36% 16.94%
Physical Sciences 10.63% 11.98%
Social Sciences 11.63% 11.84%
Specialized Health 2.9% 2.16%</p>
<p>Almost every major had 43-49% of the applicants accepted except Spec Health which only had 32.8% accepted. FWIW, Humanities had the highest percentage accepted at 49.47% (Math was third also behind Physical Science majors).</p>
<p>"I majored in psychology and loved it, however people who had upper-level bio classes are having an easier time right now than I am. "
-Nope, not at all. No UG super dooper hard classes are of any help whatsoever at Med. School. The most helpful so far has been Spanish, great communication and interpersonal skills, including writing, Anatomy in UG was a bit helpful because of vocabulary and Private Art lessons outside of k - 12 to sharpen visiul recognition and some ability to draw. No other things has been identified as helpful so far and D. is in her last academic (lecture) block. She starts rotations in March of 2013. She claims that Med. School academic level is so much higher than UG that any comparison is basically impossible, according to her they are not comparable.</p>
<p>My kid says that some areas were covered at a more basic level in med school than at her upper-level UG classes. That made her first year slightly less traumatic than that of some of her classmates. The speed at which the “water” was coming dang near drowned those with less science preparation. She has great appreciation for what a non-science major went through first year. By second year that advantage was all but gone.</p>
<p>maybe none of YOUR DAUGHTER’s upper level courses were helpful to her at HER medical school. But the classes I took at Brown on biochemistry, cell biology, immunology, physiology, endocrinology, comparative biology, parasites, and neuroscience were all helpful at periods throughout the 1st two years.</p>
<p>^I agree. Biochemistry, physiology, and genetics have all be helpful for both my first and second years. I’m sure others have too, but those 3 immediately pop to mind. I went to my state’s flagship for UG. It’s really unfortunate that absolutely none of her knowledge from undergrad transferred to med school; makes me wonder what level her upper-level science classes were taught at, because surely her knowledge of chemistry and physiology should have helped her with renal phys (for example). Heck, I thought med school was tough when I came into it knowing quite a bit about most of the topics covered (I think the only topics I’d never covered before related to neurology); I bet it was especially overwhelming for her to discover that undergrad was essentially worthless from an academic point of view.</p>
<p>brown,
I have only one kid in Med. School. I can only tell about her UG and her Med. School, I do not have 20 other at various school, isn’t it understood that we are all sharing OUR experiences?
BTW, renal was D’s favorite, she said she was the only one, others liked heart and lungs better. Unfortuantely, she is not considering it because of 8 years in residency. Anyway, we do not count Chem. at all. Chem. somehow is part of her brain, she did not have to study Chem. for MCAT. I have aske many times about UG background and expecially that she was neuro minor and currently has neuro block, so I was especially wondering about that one expecting for sure that the answer will be Yes, it helped to have that many neuro classes. The answer is ALWAYS the same, UG material and Med. School material are not comparable, they exist in different dimensions, none of UG has helped.
However, she does not think at all that " undergrad was essentially worthless from an academic point of view.", not even close, looking back and comparing herself to many others from Harvard and other Elite colleges, she thinks that she went to UG that matched her perfectly and could not be any better. Boy, she misses it so much, goes back frequently. BTW the department that she was in UG is highly ranked nationally, of course we did not know when she decided to attend, we did not check any rankings, she liked pretty campus and thought that program fits her perfectly and it did and on top she got a job tutoring Chem (SI) for 3 years, what better could it be?</p>
<p>I do not believe that many posters understand we are just random med students or parents of them sitting at home or work or school. I also feel that your posts are often unintentionally worded as absolutes without any reference to the fact that you are stating one person’s opinion and it may unintentionally mislead someone into thinking that if they are going to med school, undergrad academically is a waste of time or that they shouldn’t bother challenging themselves academically because it’s useless anyway and GPA is too important.</p>
<p>^As I said, cannot speak for everybody, only for my own experience. All kind of other statistics that includes thousands of others could be found on internet. I believe that CC is for sharing personal exeriences, why we would repeat Internet things here or why we would attack each other for having ceratain backgrounds? It does not erase this specific experience. does it? Whatever we have is what we share, and thank goodness, we are all different.</p>
<p>Sorry for saying that "undergrad academically is a waste of time ". I guess I am getting dementia big time because I cannot remember at all that I ever said that. UG was very very challenging for my D. who happened to graudate #1 from private prep HS. OK, take it back, yes, English class was a waste of time in her case, she does not like to read all these novels, and she is a very strong writer, so yes, she learned nothing in her college Honors English and regretted the time that she spend reading boring (for her, not somebody else) books. Other than that, some classes were easier than others, but I remembering advising everybody to always have a balance of 2 -3 very difficult classes and the other easy or easier classes. Well, I do not know what she learned in Gen. Chem. as she was hired on a spot because all her grades were over 100%, but she did not have to spend much time for Chem. Again, everybody has their own set of easier and harder subjects. And again, if we start putting disclaimers on every single statement, our posts would be a mile long, then who would read them?</p>
).</p>