Best PreMed Programs

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
21

<p>Or perhaps I like engaging in self-delusion:) I attend Cornell University and would prefer to believe that medical schools do give credit to students attending rigorous schools.</p>

<p>I have one final explanation to make. Going to Cornell's Career Services website, they offer this disclaimer:</p>

<p>"If you are comparing Cornell's acceptance rates to other colleges, keep in mind that Cornell does not prevent any student from applying and includes in the Cornell data all those who applied. "</p>

<p>Perhaps, the factor that is more important than any of our previous explanations is whether any of these statistics reflect students that have been screened by the university. Any statistics of schools that screen their applicants will obviously display a much higher acceptance rate than schools that will let anyone apply to medical school.</p>

<p>Many of these schools that engage in grade inflation do so to make their applicants look good. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that they would doctor their applicant statistics to make themselves look good.</p>

22

<p>First things first. MIT does not have a medical school.</p>

<p>I have a simple counterargument to the contention that MIT and Berkeley are engineering powerhouses and therefore might give short shrift to premed students. Stanford is also an undisputed engineering powerhouse, yet Stanford premeds get into med-school at roughly the same rate as that of HYP. That seems to disprove the notion that merely being an engineering powerhouse means that you provide for your premeds.</p>

<p>Furthermore, consider your contention that perhaps Berkeley and MIT don't run good premed advising. I would call that a case of sampling on the dependent variable. My point is that is that there are certain schools out there that are very friendly and supportive of their undergraduates, and this manifests itself in the form of easier grading, easier workload, better advising, and so forth. Basically, these schools will bend over backwards to set up their undergraduates up for success. And then there are other schools that are not particularly helpful to their undergraduates - like Berkeley. Like MIT. Like Caltech. Their attitudes seem to be something on the order of "here are the academic resources. If you do well, good for you. If you don't, oh well, too bad." And that manifests itself in harsh grading, difficult coursework, less advising, and so forth.</p>

<p>Now, we can sit here and argue about which style truly is better. For example, one could say that it is better to go to MIT because it will make you tough and hardy rather than going to Harvard to be coddled. But for the purposes of this discussion, that's neither here nor there. What we're talking about here is what is best for getting admitted into medical school. And the bottom line is, the data indicates that if you want to maximize your chances of getting into med-school, it is better to go to a school that will coddle you, like HYPS, then a school that won't coddle you, like MIT or Berkeley or Caltech. Whether you think that's right or wrong, that's the reality of the situation. At the end of the day, if you want to be a doctor, then you want to go to a school that will maximize your chances of getting into med-school. </p>

<p>Furthermore, I see that you have conceded that engineering is a difficult major for a premed student. Then that calls into question whether med-school adcoms really will perform any "GPA compensation" for any situation. For example, it has been asserted that Cornell tends to grade hard, and so med-school adcoms will supposedly add a 0.3 to the GPA's of any Cornell premeds due to GPA-compensation. The point of this supposed GPA compensation is to equilibrate the grading scale of Cornell enough so that Cornell is no longer considered to be a difficult premed school. Yet engineering also grades hard, so if the adcoms are compensating Cornell premeds, then shouldn't they also be compensating engineering premeds so that engineering is no longer considered to be a difficult major? </p>

<p>Only 2 possibilities exist. </p>

<h1>1 - Either the adcoms have in fact decided to compensate for school, but not by major. This I would consider to be highly capricious and arbitrary, for the fact is, grade disparity is much more of a problem from major to major than from school to school. If the adcoms really wanted to compensate applicants in the name of fairness, then they should compensate engineering students such that engineering would no longer be considered a difficult premed major.</h1>

<h1>2 - No significant compensation exists ,whether by school or by major. This, I think, is the truth.</h1>

<p>Look, the reality is that med-school admissions are highly numerical. Most rejectees are rejected even before their application has been read by a human being. What happens is that med-school applications are handled in 2 rounds. In the first round, you send a consolidated record of your academic achievement from AMCAS to the med-schools you are considering. The adcoms of those med-schools will then only select the most promising candidates and invite them to submit a round-2 application, which is the "real" application. If you're not invited, then you can't submit the round-2 app.</p>

23

<p>First of all, I do not believe the .3 constant that is added to Cornell GPA's. That is just ludicrous. </p>

<p>Secondly, I agree with your conclusion that it is better to go to HYPS than Berkeley or MIT but not with your reason. You believe it is because of the grade deflation. I think it is because of the lack of advising (especially true at Berkeley), lack of support for undergrads, among other factors. You correlate lack of advising with grade deflation. I do not. There is a difference between having high standards and refusing to help your students. </p>

<p>Third, you are quite correct about the AMCAS procedure. However, many schools do not use AMCAS and secondly, MIT/Caltech applicants will be able to hold their own with MCAT scores in the numbers game.</p>

<p>Right now your argument centers around just a few schools without real breakdowns of whom the applicants are beyond just average GPA's. Are these applicants prescreened? Are these applicants engineers? Perhaps Stanford discourages its engineers from being premed while MIT does not. With just 100-200 applicants per school per year, discouraging or screening off just a couple of people from the premed applicant pool can dramatically change the acceptance rates.</p>

24

<p>I would also like to know what the * next to Princeton's purported acceptance rate is for. Cornell and MIT are very explicit in giving background on their acceptance rates in terms of describing their applicant group but Princeton is not, outside of the asterisk. (Note that only 6% of Princeton's applicants are SEAS).</p>

25

<p>I would argue that the lack of support or lack of advising at a place like MIT is probably a red herring. MIT's advising system and undergrad support is not appreciably different from that of Harvard's and Stanford's (Yale's and Princeton's are better). At Harvard and Stanford ,just like at MIT, undergrads complain about the distance of the administration and the emphasis on the graduate students over the undergrads. Harvard and Stanford don't exactly offer great undergrad advising. Yet the fact is, it's still better to go to Harvard or Stanford than to go to MIT if you want to go to med-school. </p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. About 92% of MIT undergraduates will successfully graduate in 6 years. About 92% of Stanford undergraduates will successfully graduate in 6 years. This is despite the fact that a far higher proportion of MIT students study difficult majors like engineering. Hence, I would argue that MIT might offer MORE advising and support than Stanford does, at least as it relates to helping its students to graduate. Yet the fact remains that we both agree that it is probably better to go to Stanford than it is to go to MIT if you want to get admitted to med-school. I believe this demonstrates that it's probably not advising/support that is the problem. Grading seems to be more of an explanatory factor than the advising/support.</p>

<p>You also say that the MIT/Caltech premeds can present strong qualifications just with strong MCAT scores. That is of course true. But that is not the point. The point is that, all things being equal, you want to present high grades instead of low grades. The fact is, if you can get into MIT, you're a strong student, and so you will probably get a high MCAT score. But it is obviously better to have both a strong GPA and a strong MCAT score than to have a weak GPA and a strong MCAT score. If you go to MIT, you run the risk of having the latter happening to you, and so you may be better off going to another school (i.e. HYPS) where you will probably get the former. </p>

<p>The prescreening thing is a red herring when we're talking about HYPSMC or Berkeley. None of HYPSMC or Berkeley performs prescreening.</p>

<p>The notion that some medical schools do not use AMCAS is also a red herring, because these non-AMCAS schools also use numbers as a first cut, and will throw away the applications of those students who don't have sufficient numbers before those applications are even read. The bottom line is that whether you are talking about AMCAS or non-AMCAS schools, the conclusion is the same. If you want to survive the first cut, it is clearly better to present a strong MCAT and strong GPA instead of a strong MCAT and a weak GPA. </p>

<p>The engineering gambit once again only goes to show that it is better to do what you have to do to get high grades. Don't think that going to a difficult school and/or studying a difficult major is going to win you points with the adcom. It won't. In a perfect world, it shouldn't matter whether you study engineering or go to a difficult school. If you study engineering and get low grades, then in a perfect world, the adcom would know that you are studying something difficult and will compensate you accordingly. They won't. Bottom line. If you want to maximize your chances of admission, then don't study something difficult. And the corollary is, obviously, don't go to a difficult school.</p>

<p>Finally, the notion of Stanford prescreening its engineers raises a host of questions all in itself. We don't know if Stanford does that, and I highly doubt that it does (knowing a bunch of Stanford engineers who are or were also premeds, if Stanford does such a thing, I think I would have heard of it by now), but let's presume for the purposes of this discussion that it happens. Is that really 'good' advising? I would think that truly good advising would be to take those students who want to be both engineers and premeds and help them achieve that goal, rather than convincing them not to do it. Telling your students that they shouldn't do something rather than helping them achieve that thing seems to be a feature of bad advising, or at least, bad undergraduate support. Yet you have argued that Stanford is better than MIT because of Stanford's purportedly better advising and support.</p>

26

<p>Soooo.... what's the best program in the land?</p>

27

<p>Probably Harvard. Either that or one of those combined bachelor's/med-school programs that not only guarantees you admission to a top medical school, but also gives grants you the bachelor's degree in the interim of the program, thereby giving you the opportunity to apply to other medical schools, and is also easy to maintain the minimum required grades to remain in the program. Guaranteed admission to a top-flight medical school provided you remain in the program is tremendously valuable, as long as it is easy to remain in the program. You'd then be able to apply to truly elite med-schools like Harvard or JHU, knowing that if you don't get in, you can just continue on in the med-school that is part of your current program.</p>

28

<p><a href="http://pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/base/national-37/1106424240216080.xml&storylist=pahomepage%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/base/national-37/1106424240216080.xml&storylist=pahomepage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>What's the effect on their acceptance rate due to this "crackdown?"</p>

29

<p>Hi!!! I have applied to numerous schools...my top ones being Harvard, Duke, Vanderbilt. Is Harvard hands-down the best for med-programs? How do Duke/Vanderbilt compare? any insight to these schools would be GREAT. also....any advice on doing ROTC in college ??? THANKS!!! pls email me <a href="mailto:brie-3@earthlink.net">brie-3@earthlink.net</a></p>

<p>also, out of curiosity, what do you think my admittance chances are for these schools? 4.8 weighted GPA (our school gives 5's for A's in Honors/AP, and I have 3 AP, 2 Honors, and a required religion class), 1470 SAT, 750 writing SATII, 660 in bio and MathI. 4's on AP bio and AP gov tests. active in swimming, part time job, clubs. ...I am kind of paranoid and just looking for comments. thanks :)</p>

30

<p>Like I said before, Harvard is probably the best unless you get into one of those combined bachelors/MD programs. Harvard is (obviously) highly prestigious and is also quite grade-inflated, especially relative to some of its peer schools like MIT, and that grade inflation is very useful in getting into med-school. Duke is also quite inflated as well. I don't know anything about Vandy's grading. </p>

<p>As far as your chances are concerned, I would say that Harvard is very much a longshot. Duke may be a match, and you look pretty good for Vandy.</p>

31

<p>Duke does not have grade inflation in premed classes, trust me. And it's a reach with those stats</p>

32

<p>ay_caramba-- i agree. Its definitely a reach-reach-reach.. with those stats.</p>

33

<p>Duke may not have grade inflation in premed classes. But overall? Hey, looks pretty inflated to me.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/duke.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.gradeinflation.com/duke.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

34

<p>plushenko, ay_caramba, are you trying to tell me that I don't have a shot at any of those schools? I know several people who have been admitted with lower SAT scores than I have...I am a bit insulted. My SATIIs weren't the best, but aren't those used mostly for placement?</p>

35

<p>just go wherever you want, don't base it on statistics.</p>

36

<p>brie-3, if you are insulted, you shouldn't have asked in the first place.. cuz we are only offering our honest opinion. Don't feel that way.. and ignore my comments if that makes you feel better.</p>

37

<p>First you said

[quote]
also, out of curiosity, what do you think my admittance chances are for these schools?

[/quote]

Then you said

[quote]
plushenko, ay_caramba, are you trying to tell me that I don't have a shot at any of those schools? I know several people who have been admitted with lower SAT scores than I have...I am a bit insulted. My SATIIs weren't the best, but aren't those used mostly for placement?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>First of all, as plushenko said above me, don't ask if you're going to be offended with anything less than a "yes you're in!"</p>

<p>Secondly, calling a school a reach for you doesn't mean that you have no shot.</p>

<p>Thirdly, just because you know other people that have lower SATs than you who got in means nothing; admission is much more than SATs</p>

<p>Fourthy, yes SAT IIs do matter in admission</p>

<p>Fifthly, as I said before, Duke is a reach for you.</p>

38

<p>Hey I got into a BS/MD program at MSU. I have the option of attending this or the Air Force Academy. I absolutely am sure that I want to be a doctor however I am not sure I acn be one at the USAFA. ANy suggestions?</p>

39

<p>I can definitely give you advice on this. I would definitely take the program at MSU, unless you are really set on going to the Academy. going to USAFA is more or less the "long road" to becoming a doc. you can do it, but it is EXTREMELY competitive. something like 2% of the graduating class gets to go to med school. email me if you want to talk more about it---I had the option of going to either AF/Naval, but I personally do not feel that that type of lifestyle would be something I would enjoy. I am going to do AFROTC at Duke though, and the ROTC program is a much better way to get your education paid for and have a guaranteed job after graduation, all while living a normal college life.....its just that at the Academy you might not get to do what you want....its like you put yourself at the disposal of the government and they will place you where you are most needed. one of the liason officers told me that even though I might want to enter the medical field, at the Academy, the AF could put you in another occupation if there is more demand in that area. ok, well email me <a href="mailto:brie-3@earthlink.net">brie-3@earthlink.net</a> or AIM brie3brie if you want to discuss anything else....hope this helped. Oh, and I was meaning to put a post up to all of the people who told me I didn't have a shot at the schools I applied to. WRONG!</p>

40

<p>sakky--thanks for your comments earlier. what are your thoughts on Duke and their programs?</p>