<p>I do think, in the long run, having P/F your first semester or your first year helps. Almost all of the stories of GPA woes I've seen has to do with some kid getting a 2.7 or 3.0 their first year and then 3.7-4.0's after. I rarely see downward trends. This isn't surprising since freshman year is usually a transition period from HS to college.</p>
<p>Hey, don't get me wrong. I support the MIT first-semester policy. If anything, I think it should be re-extended back to the entire first year (hence covering 2 semesters, just like how it was in the past). </p>
<p>But what would be even better is if MIT instituted a retroactive P/N policy. In other words, students would be able to see their first-semester grades, and then choose whether to have them presented as P/N or pure letter grades. To curb possible abuse, perhaps it could be a forced package deal; you have to choose to have all your first-semester grades presented either as all letter grades or as all P/N. This seems to solve the problem of those students who do very well in their first semester but can't present those strong grades because they are forced to hide behind the P/N shield that they don't want. </p>
<p>Now of course one counterargument would be that adverse selection would take place, in that only those students with strong grades would choose to present them, and so med school adcoms might eventually assume that anybody who presents P/N grades is doing so only because they must have gotten bad grades. However, frankly speaking, I don't think med school adcoms are that smart.* Even to this day, they don't seem to know that some schools are harder than others and some majors within the same school are harder than others, or if they do know, they don't care. Hence, if they still haven't learned this rather trivial piece of information (or, more accurately, that they don't want to learn it), I rather doubt that they would be smart enough to figure out P/N adverse selection. </p>
<ul>
<li>{As I've always said, for the purposes of med school admissions, it is a sad truth that it is better to not take difficult coursework at all than to take them and get bad grades for med school adcoms won't care why you have bad grades. All they'll care about is that you have bad grades and will hence reject you in favor of somebody who took easy classes at an easy school. Sad but true.}</li>
</ul>
<p>
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they don't seem to know that some schools are harder than others
[/quote]
</p>
<p>An interesting phenomenon came to light a while back at Boalt. (I know Boalt is a law school. Bear with me.)</p>
<p>It turned out that Boalt kept detailed charts of all its admits and their eventual law school performances. It would then go back over their charts and do undergraduate-school-specific regression -- whether formal or just by eyeball, I don't know -- and adjust undergraduate GPAs accordingly.</p>
<p>So while Boalt did in fact adjust undergrad GPAs, it was not actually a difficulty adjustment; it was a future success adjustment. These overlap quite a bit but are not necessarily exact correlates.</p>
<p>For example, it's well-known that MIT is more grade-deflated than Brown. (Statistics from law school applicants confirm this.) However, it's also known that MIT admissions flutter around 70% and Brown's are around 90%.</p>
<p>(*It is well-known that this number is easily manipulated, but let's pretend it's a real number for the purposes of this hypo.)</p>
<p>So why wouldn't Cornell Med take a 3.6 from MIT over a 3.7 from Brown? Is the admissions committee that lazy, that they can't adjust for the grade inflation? Or are they only obsessed with US News rankings, which use undergraduate GPA?</p>
<p>Both probably have some truth.</p>
<p>Also, however, I suspect a third factor. (I refuse to speculate on which factors I think are most important.) They don't adjust the more-impressive MIT GPA possibly because MIT students, even with more-impressive GPAs, do not on balance become the kind of medical students that schools want.</p>
<hr>
<p>I first began wondering about this hypothesis from observing my classmates. Again, this is all just by eyeballing, not a formal regression. When you control for some basic gender and racial demographics, a pretty clear pattern emerged: the higher a student's undergrad school was ranked, the less that kid studied. It was a very bizarre phenomenon. (With plenty of exceptions, obviously.)</p>
<p>So I wondered if this was a difference that tracked back to undergrad. And lo and behold, I noticed that my friends from Penn and Stanford and Harvard had GPAs around 3.5 while my friends from Tulsa and Louisville and New Jersey all had perfect 4.0's and were valedictorians.</p>
<p>There were three explanations that came to mind. One was that my school is simply prejudiced against kids from low-ranked schools. Two was that students from elite colleges have higher-enough MCATs to offset the grade difference. Three was that maybe, contrary to popular belief, schools like Harvard are actually grade deflated, for all the whining that surrounds them.</p>
<p>Fourth was the hypothesis above: maybe, for whatever reason, 3.5's from Harvard simply make better medical students than 3.7's from MIT.</p>
<p>(Point two, of course, makes me wonder how grade inflation should be defined. Maybe points 2 and 3 are identical, which would be my suggestion.)</p>
<hr>
<p>Finally, one last bit of anecdotal evidence: the mean GPAs for admitted MIT students are actually ABOVE the national average, not below them. Combined with above-average MCATs, the average MIT student who gets into medical school is MUCH more qualified, on paper, than the average student overall.</p>
<p>In other words, you would think MIT students would get a "your school is hard" bonus. That's what a stupid admissions committee would do. But MIT students don't just not get a bonus, they actually receive a penalty.</p>
<p>The obvious explanation is that MIT students stubbornly only apply to top-ranked medical schools. That's definitely sensible, but is it enough to explain the data? MBM actually suggested that MIT might turn out to be a grade-inflated school after first-semester grades were blacked out. My intuition says that that's probably not a major effect. It might be just that MIT's premed advising is really catastrophic, that their professors on the whole write terrible recommendations, or that MIT isn't near any hospitals so their kids can't volunteer. Of these, I suspect only the elite-med-school-apps theory is true.</p>
<p>One other possibility is this: medical schools have found, over time, that an MIT kid needs a 3.7 to do as well as a Penn kid with a 3.3. Did the MIT kid have to work harder for that 3.7 than the Penn kid for the 3.3? Sure. But maybe -- remember, I'm hypothesizing here -- that isn't what matters. Maybe medical schools have found that 3.6's from MIT just don't perform all that well relative to what their inflation-adjusted GPA would be in a Platonic world.</p>
<p>Look, i think the main factor that counter all this grade inflation is the MCAT. So dont worry about who is getting it easier and stuff, the MCAT will show- i think?</p>
<p>Well, but that's exactly my point -- the MCAT doesn't seem to be making up for it. MIT kids have higher-than-national-average GPA's and MCAT scores when they get admitted. So they're grade deflated, get penalized, AND have higher MCAT scores to boot.</p>
<p>Sorry, need to edit my post #263 above:</p>
<p>
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Originally:In other words, you would think MIT students would get a "your school is hard" bonus. That's what a stupid admissions committee would do. But MIT students don't just not get a bonus, they actually receive a penalty.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Instead: In other words, you would think MIT students would get a "your school is hard bonus." This is what an intelligent admissions committee would do. Or maybe their grades would not be adjusted at all. This is what a stupid admissions committee would do. Instead, MIT kids seem to receive an actual penalty!</p>
<p>I am at a loss for how to explain this, although of course the schools that MIT students apply to will play a part in the explanation.</p>
<p>I've been having a lot trouble deciding between The University of Michigan and Duke for pre-med. Mainly, I'm wondering whether it is worth the extra money to attend Duke over UMich. Also, if med school admissions do primarily look at undegrad GPA in a vacuum, then I'd probably actually be better off at Mich (or so I'm told). Also, I'd appreciate any comments on (where I can find stuff about) the quality of Duke premed (chances of admission, advising, etc.) compared to other top schools (Ivies, etc.). I'm also considering Rice University, WashU St Louis, Cornell, and Northwestern. Any advice or comments??</p>
<p>1.) "if med school admissions do primarily look at undegrad GPA in a vacuum." No. While they don't make as much school-to-school adjustment as they probably should, they don't make none, either.</p>
<p>Anecdotal, but consistently I find a bias against engineers and hard science majors in med school admissions. There is an element of touchy-feely favoritism, liking people who are not too quantitative in their orientation and course selection. Since clinical medicine is much more people work than it is scientific, docs on the admissions committees worry that engineers, physics majors, and the like are wired-headed geeks with limited interpersonal skills, or interest in interacting with patients. This may not be fair, but that is what they think. So when they see applications from MIT and Caltech, they think these people would be great in the lab, but not so good as clinical docs. </p>
<p>For the reasons above, I suspect that the penalty is even greater than the simple numbers would suggest. It is likely that many of the MIT and Caltech kids who do get into medical school, and particularly those who get into top med schools, not only have high grades and MCATs, but they are also headed into research careers. Many, I think, are entering MD/PhD programs, others HST programs, and many of the remainder were accepted as future researchers. If correct, and I agree it would be hard to check, those graduates of these tech colleges who want to enter regular clinical practice may be at a strong disadvantage.</p>
<p>have you checked out GW medical school ranking; why is it so low...i've always heard such awesome things about it??</p>
<p>Are you from DC?</p>
<p>GWU is a great school that stresses clinical proficiency. Year after year it gets more applications than any other school in the country (roughly 14,000 applications for 170 spots). It's in a great location (DC). It has a great international medicine program (something like 1/3 of its students do away rotations abroad). If you want to do research, it's close to the NIH. The hospital is shiny and new. However, because it gets so many applications, GWU values fit. It looks for students who are devoted to either a) international medicine or b) work with the underserved. It's willing to take students with lower GPA and MCAT scores. Since it is not a huge research school and it does not select for GPA/MCAT (as opposed to WashU), it's ranking is very low. In fact, it's unranked.</p>
<p>Can somebody (Sakky preferably) rank the ivys in terms of how good their premeds are? Also including their Med school success rates and grade inflation/deflation.</p>
<p>Thanks
(looking in particulary to UPENN and Columbia)</p>
<p>Does anyone know of any colleges that have any or all of the courses for an anesthesiologist? I am having trouble finding a college.</p>
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Does anyone know of any colleges that have any or all of the courses for an anesthesiologist? I am having trouble finding a college.
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</p>
<p>That's because there is NO college that will prepare you to be an anesthesiologist. That's what medical school and residency are for.</p>
<p>Hi, i have started to research schools for my undergrad as i am a junior in highschool. i was wonder what would some good colleges for preparation for mcat as well as medical school.
ps. i have around a 3.6 to 3.7 GPA, involved in sports, do voulnteer and charity work, interships with businesses and medical offices(plastic surgeons, which i want to become), and have not talken the SAT but am aiming for 1300 plus. not that impressive but i will work my ass off in college.</p>
<p>Hi! I'm Alex and I'm new to collegeconfidential and I wanted to know if Williams College has a good pre-med program?</p>
<p>correction on my question....i am aiming for a 2150 plus because of the writing part.
PLEASE SEE POST 276!</p>
<p>How do Columbia and Brown fare in terms of the quality of their pre-med programs and acceptance rates? Is one better than the other, or about the same?</p>
<p>inrwewarinf.</p>