<p>See this link;
MCAT</a> scores and GPA comparison - medical school details</p>
<p>A kid with a 3.4 from Brown and 10's on the MCAT might be considered. Just a thought.</p>
<p>^^ yeah BigG, but considered for what? UIC Med school? Most kids going into BRown, hopkins, Harvard, etc, aim for the best and toughest Medical schools out there.</p>
<p>and a 3.4 with 10's on the MCAT is not going to get this kid into those top med schools. unless he/she discovered the cure for AIDS</p>
<p>What the advising office does at Hopkins and other top schools with high acceptance rate is essentially look at your BCMP and test grades. They will tell you straight up what you have to do to meet the average mean accepted GPA and MCAT scores and once you have that, you are then ready to apply. </p>
<p>Organic chemistry, calculus 2, physics 101 etc.. are weeder courses in it of itself. YOU as an applicant can obviously see that you are probably not in good shape so why adamantly push to get advising office to put a stamp of approval onto your resume when you are not good to begin with.</p>
<p>If you can't past the advising office whose staff consist of former deans of admissions, clinicians, medical researchers, faculty, etc... ppl who have vast experience in medical admissions committees.... What are the chances that you will get admitted into a school with a 4% acceptance rate with the mean accepted students GPA of 3.7 and MCAT score of 36?? Very little chance.</p>
<p>What I'm saying here is... If you are a premed whose trying to get into med school with subpar scores and grades. There is actually a legit reason why the advising offices tells you to apply the next admission cycle. It's simply because you grades are not good enough and you are probably wasting your time getting into med school (again, like I said, med school admissions is not a "crapshoot") lol. </p>
<p>Listen to the ppl who knows the ins' and outs' of the med world... and maybe you will save HOURS stress and $3000 in med school app fees, and save time where you could have spent polishing your resume for the next time you apply to med schools.</p>
<p>I definitely would trust the word of Phead here over the words of people who have never attended some of these top institutions as Pre-Med.</p>
<p>Honestly, if you are telling your pre-med advisor that you want to apply to Harvard or Hopkins med with a 3.4, you are going to get either laughed out or a nice slap or reality. That's what a GOOD admissions counselor would do.</p>
<p>There are tons of good medical/ pre-medicine schools... such as Michigan State University or University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. Though one that seems to be respected by many is John Hopkins University, downfall... it's in Baltimore.</p>
<p>^^ UofMichigan downfall, it's freezing. Big whoop-deedoo? Why are you just singling out JHU? Every school has its problems, including places like Columbia--proximity to Harlem, UPenn--ghettoest parts of Philly, etc.</p>
<p>You act like Baltimore is hell. Have you even been to all of the different parts of Baltimore recently? It's just like any other city of its size. It's certainly no NYC, but no need to use that as a reason to scare away people, imo.</p>
<p>and mind you, JHU is located in some of the nicest parts of Baltimore with a campus security that has been ranked #1 in the country.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Brown isn't really known as a prestigous place for medical education
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Brown's PLME program is probably one of THE most selective programs in the country -- I don't have the latest stats but according to their admissions website, the average SAT score is 2188 (making this subset of students amongst the highest in the country), and admissions rate for the '06-'07 class was 4%: Brown</a> Program in Liberal Medical Education</p>
<p>So just try and argue that the students who enroll in that program aren't amongst the top pre-med / med students in the country. </p>
<p>If you can't acknowledge this, you either have an anti-Ivy / Brown bias / agenda or are otherwise completely misinformed.</p>
<p>It's JOHN*S* HOPKINS University. >:-)</p>
<p>UMichigan is a terrific premed school. Yeah, Hopkins was rated "hottest premed school" for 2008 by USNews and JHU is actually located in Charles Village, a top 10 neighborhood in the US, ranked #1 for campus safety. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Brown's PLME program is probably one of THE most selective programs in the country -- I don't have the latest stats but according to their admissions website, the average SAT score is 2188, and admissions rate for the '06-'07 class was 4%: Brown Program in Liberal Medical Education</p>
<p>So just try and argue that the students who enroll in that program aren't amongst the top pre-med / med students in the country.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>no doubt Brown's PLME program is highly selective. I know girls who got into Princeton, Amherst, and Brown PLME... she was that smart. </p>
<p>There are other member who said it before, if you are smart enough to get into Brown PLME, you are probably smart enough to get into better med schools. The key niche here is that you don't have to take the MCATs, which is probably the only way you can compare premeds from different schools across the board. Brown med students aren't rated that highly by residency directors either, the most crucial indicator for how good med students are...</p>
<p>Brown premed students in PLME are so smart, that is the reason why Brown created a PLME program to begin with. To snatch up the brightest and ignorant premeds who don't know any better :-P Before other med schools snatch them. It's true. Brown PLME probably has some of the most incredible ppl in it right now.</p>
<p>Regardless, if you are good enough to come out of Brown's PLME, chances are you're going to be a pretty damn good physician and well respected within the medical community - the point of my bringing up the PLME program was to counter the earlier claim that:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Brown isn't really known as a prestigous place for medical education
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Which is completely incorrect given that a spot in Brown's PLME program is one of the hardest to attain and is one of the most sought after programs for those who KNOW they want to go to med school. You can try and attach all the caveats you want, it won't change the facts that:</p>
<p>1) Those who attend and graduate from Brown's PLME are amongst the absolute best and brightest
2) It is absolutely one of the most selective / prestigious programs in the country</p>
<p>The title of this thread is "Best Medical/Predimecal Schools?" -- and Brown's PLME program is absolutely on of the best. Period.</p>
<p>Brown PLME students do not undergo the stress of studying for the MCAT's nor do they have to compete for A's against hundreds of other vicious premeds striving to get into the top med schools like Harvard or Hopkins med...</p>
<p>Brown PLME is neither a med school nor is it a premed program. It's in it's own special category since guaranteed acceptance into med school does not qualify you as a "premed" student the way most people define as "premed".</p>
<p>Brown med students get crap ratings from residency directors and dean of admissions and med school deals. That is why they are rated 3.1/5 in the peer section of USNews report. </p>
<p>Brown PLME's can't be compared against other premed students since they don't take the MCATs... SAT's become irrelevant after freshman year anyways since the point of SAT's is to gauge freshman grade performance for the first year in college. The relevance of SAT's declines as time goes by.</p>
<p>^^^ none of what you have written counters points 1) and 2) of my prior post.</p>
<p>hmmm, the_prestige...unless I'm mistaken, PLME students only count for a small portion of Brown Med School students...so while the PLME students might be the brightest of the bunch, that doesn't speak for the REST of the med school.........</p>
<p>as for Brown for pre-med, I'm sure it is a fine institution...but it does not offer the experiences a Pre-Med would get at places like Harvard, Hopkins, Duke, etc in terms of researching at the nation's finest hospitals and labs and opportunities for Internships and working at some of the finest places as well.
No one is saying PLME sucks. It's just that, the Brown Med school is not all that impressive. It's probably average to above average among all med schools, which accounts for its 3.1 rating out of 5. </p>
<p>If you want selective and top-notch, Northwestern HPME easily trumps Brown's PLME as does Rice's Baylor program. Both of them are far more selective than Brown and offer undergrads a shot at medical schools that are regarded more highly than the Brown Medical School.</p>
<p>PLME is great if you can get in...but honestly, like Phead said, if you CAN get into PLME, when you DO apply for Med School, you could probably get into places like Duke, Harvard, Hopkins etc. Why throw that possibility away by going to Brown????</p>
<p>
[quote]
Which is completely incorrect given that a spot in Brown's PLME program is one of the hardest to attain and is one of the most sought after programs for those who KNOW they want to go to med school. You can try and attach all the caveats you want, it won't change the facts that:</p>
<p>1) Those who attend and graduate from Brown's PLME are amongst the absolute best and brightest
2) It is absolutely one of the most selective / prestigious programs in the country</p>
<p>The title of this thread is "Best Medical/Predimecal Schools?" -- and Brown's PLME program is absolutely on of the best. Period.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Brown's PLME program is one of the better BA/MD programs but not one of the better med schools. The reason being, most of the top med schools see no need to select the best and brightest out of high school when they can select the best and brightest out of college. A large percentage of Brown's med students are PLME and were selected back when they were HS seniors with high grades, high SAT scores, and good EC's. Meanwhile, any top med school also has low acceptance rates (generally in the 2-5% range) and they also select students with high grades, high MCAT scores, and good EC's. The only difference is that they're making their selection after college whereas Brown is forced to select most of its med students out of HS. So, yea, it's very conceivable that the med students in Brown's med school are not as good as the med students at top med schools (particularly when you factor in the fact they could take their premed prereq's P/F and they didn't have to take the MCAT).</p>
<p>Notice my original post makes no comment about Brown's combined program, only the quality of its med school and residency programs. They're just not prestigous unless you consider mid-tier to be prestigous. For a HSer interested in combined programs, Brown is God. For a med student looking at med schools, Brown is eh.</p>
<p>the<em>prestige,
You are overrating the caliber of PLME students. Here are the stats for PLME admission:
Brown Program in Liberal Medical Education</p>
<p>Two quick observations:
1. the average SAT score is 1461, not much higher than Brown's average (probably around 1430 or so).
2. Out of the 1974 PLME applicant, 157 were accepted to Brown's other degree programs. Admit rate is 8 percent and actually LOWER than Brown's RD admit rate! This means that, the PLME applicant pool, believe it or not, may actually be weaker than the non-PLME pool! The only reason that PLME's average SAT is higher than non-PLME's is the lower admit rate. Wow!! This may explain why the PLME SAT average is high but not as sky high as one may expect for an honors program within a top school.</p>
<p>For comparison, HPME's SAT average is 1533. Norcalguy mentioned that most of the top med schools see no need to select the best and brightest out of high school when they can select the best and brightest out of college. As Northwestern's Feinberg has become increasingly selective, the size of HPME has become smaller (the average for HPME hasn't gone up as a result though, due to the random nature at that level and the little diminishing return).</p>
<p>What are the pro's of con's of doing pre-med at small private university or LAC compared with state schools?</p>
<p>prestige:</p>
<p>
[quote]
^^^ none of what you have written counters points 1) and 2) of my prior post.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There is no need to since it is illogical to conclude that the PLME acceptance rate makes Brown a de facto top med school.</p>
<p>You are confusing medical education -- a graduate school function -- with undergraduate education, the 'premed' function. Is the Brown PLME program pretigious? Heck yeah. Indeed, most of them are bcos they are harder than heck to get into. But, the PLME students who continue on to Brown's med school (I'm guessing a few change their plans or apply elsewhere), do not comprise the whole of Brown's medical education, i.e., its med school. ANY med school in the US is a fine med school, but that doesn't make them all highly-ranked. By definition, ~65 of the US med school HAVE to be ranked in the bottom half of all med schools.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, of the Ivies, a premed would be smart to choose Brown (regardless of PLME) bcos it probably offers the best chance of maximizing As....the choose your own curriculum, pass/fail, and easy drop policies allow students ultimate flexibility with their schedule.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But, the PLME students who continue on to Brown's med school (I'm guessing a few change their plans or apply elsewhere), do not comprise the whole of Brown's medical education, i.e., its med school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Even if Brown's med school is made up of only PLME students, it wouldn't be one of the top-med schools. The reason why Northwestern's Feinberg decided to reduce the size of HPME is because they concluded the size they had before diluted the caliber of its incoming class, despite the fact that HPME's SAT average was already quite a bit higher than PLME's. It seems to me people tend to overrate the group that get into these accelerated med programs or underestimate the level of competition for med school admission or both. When I was at Northwestern, most HPMEs that I met did well in their classes but a few did struggle to get Bs in bio or orgo. These students would have trouble to get into many med schools, let alone a top-25 med schools like Northwestern. Feinberg's decision to shrink HPME's size is to reduce the number and impact of such students, especially when the school admission has become more and more competitive (the average GPA/MCAT for class of 2012 are 3.79 and 35.1, according to school's website). This isn't to say HPME of any size would be bad and HPME does allow the college to get some of the best of the best HS kids. There's a tradeoff and balance and they have decided that 30, instead of 50-60 they had before, is the appropriate number for now. </p>
<p>People also have this notion that if you can get into HYPMS, getting into top-tier med school is gonna be a given when it's far from that. Most average students from HYPMS probably do not get into top-25 med schools. At MIT, over 20% do not get into <em>any</em> med school! As norcalguy mentioned before, top med schools don't have such programs because it puts them into competitive disadvantage when they can get the best of the best out of college. Doing well in HS and on SATs don't necessarily mean you will score well in MCAT and get As in college courses.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Even if Brown's med school is made up of only PLME students, it wouldn't be one of the top-med schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Exactly. The PLME's (and HPME's) were the creme of the crop back when they were applying to college but not the creme of the crop in med school. After looking at the statistics, med school officials concluded that the students in combined programs generally did slightly WORSE in their first year than their traditional counterparts at the same med school. It's not hard to see why. Given a 3.8/35 college student vs. a 3.9/2200 high school student, it's much more likely that the 3.8/35 college student is the better student simply because many of these 2200 SAT score high school students will never achieve a 3.8 GPA or a 35 MCAT score. Add in the fact that students in combined programs usually didn't have to prepare as rigorously as traditional college students, it's not hard to see why combined program students do worse (though not substantially) than the students who got in the traditional way.</p>
<p>This combined with the fact traditional med school admissions is becoming more competitive (to put it mildly), many med schools are either closing their combined programs or severely curtailing them as Northwestern is doing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Given a 3.8/35 college student vs. a 3.9/2200 high school student, it's much more likely that the 3.8/35 college student is the better student simply because many of these 2200 SAT score high school students will never achieve a 3.8 GPA or a 35 MCAT score.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes. Also, many HS students that do well and "appear" to be the brightest are just the ones that mature earlier and are more disciplined in HS. There are many who are just as smart but screw around in HS and then get their act together in college. These students are often found in what many considered lower-ranked schools. They catch up and even surpass many that are in the top colleges.</p>
<p>norcalguy:</p>
<p>Don't know where your statistics originate but they are not from Northwestern. HPME students have consistently performed at or above the level of their non-HPME Northwestern Med School colleagues for the near half century the program's been active. As Sam Lee points out, those entering the program, even by standards of competing programs like PLME and schools like HYPSM and Caltech, have extraordinary stats - median SATs of 1533 and SAT II's in the 770s are unmatched. </p>
<p>Ultimately, as a grad of the program and close to large numbers of other NU grads both in and out of HPME, I'll tell you that there are a clearly disproportionate number from HPME that end up in academic medicine and in leadership roles in medicine. Just this year, one of Northwestern's 4 Gates-Cambridge Scholar's is an HPME senior, typical of the quality of students found in the program since its inception.</p>