<p>All the top 30 U’s will provide you with an excellent pre-med education. What makes Brown so attractive is the grading scale. A below average student at Brown will still have a 3.6 GPA…good enough to get into med school. Avoid grade deflation schools at all costs. An above average student at JHU with a 3.35 will have a hard time getting into med school.<br>
Next avoid grade deflation majors. You are better off with a 3.8 GPA in the humanities than a 3.2 in engineering. </p>
<p>Brown does not force grade distributions to fit a bell curve, does not have distribution requirements or core courses forcing you to take things you don’t want to, and thanks to some other quirks, (no +/-, no Ws, below C is failing, failing doesn’t appear on transcript), can make it easier to get a higher GPA. That doesn’t mean that you can just waltz on to campus and BS your way to a 3.6+ GPA as the above post (maybe unintentionally) implies, but it’s true that you don’t have to worry about a few super geniuses next to you tanking your grade or that no one will want to study with you for fear of hurting their own chances at an A.</p>
<p>In terms of Duke, I will say that after following the Belle Knox story, my view of them has definitely changed.</p>
<p>The number one priority of a quality pre-med program is to HELP YOU GET INTO medical school and not weed you out. Like it or not, pre-meds need to play the GPA game and should attend universities that statistically give them highest likelihood of achieving a high GPA. Universities like to talk about the percentage of applicants accepted but the real question is how many survive to apply.<br>
High school seniors don’t understand attending a university full of top 1% test takers then being graded on a bell curve is suicide for pre-med students. Majoring in biomechanical engineering where the average GPA is 3.0 will only decrease the statistical odds of med school acceptance.</p>
<p>^All fair points. </p>
<p>My point is that your post before this could be read by someone (particularly a high schooler) as “it’s really easy at Brown to get an A.” There are many courses where despite not having a bell curve, it’s still incredibly difficult to get an A. The difference is that at other schools, in addition to learning the material, you must also ensure you learn the material better than X% of your peers. Thanks but no thanks, I prefer to be graded on my own abilities - not those of the people who happen to be taking the class at the same time as me.</p>
<p>That being said, if your #1 priority in college is to get into med school, then you’re probably not going to be the most desirable pre-med applicant. Medical schools are looking for individuals who are driven by goals and passions beyond medical school itself. I get what you’re saying, just cautioning young people about to enter college from abandoning passions and dreams and desires because “med school” looms as that will probably do more harm than good.</p>
<p>what does the bella knox story have to do with the pre med at duke?</p>
<p>Hey I want to go to law school and I was accepted to brown. Is this a good school to transition into a law school</p>
<p>@spuding102</p>
<p>The Belle Knox story doesn’t directly relate to pre-med but it relates to the general campus atmosphere. A school that’s going to vilify and threaten to rape/murder a girl for doing porn through an anonymous online forum is a school I wouldn’t recommend regardless of field of interest.</p>
<p>@fiske2009 </p>
<p>I don’t know too much about law school - I do have several friends who’ve gone to Harvard and other T14 law schools and the fact is Brown is awesome regardless of what you study.</p>
<p>@alicejohnson,</p>
<p>I never applied to duke in the first place, I am 5 years out of college. The forum I am referencing is one that Duke themselves described as a forum that is frequented by duke students (Collegiate ACB) - and the source of the whole story before it got national attention. The Brown section of ACB had literally one post on it when I checked at the time that the belle knox story first emerged. The school simply doesn’t engage in that kind of behavior.</p>
<p>I know the response on Brown’s campus would not have been what it was on Duke. We are the school of sexpowergod, femsex and M sex, nudity in the upspace, naked donut run, naked parties, Brown Bares, the Poler Bears, Brown/RISD drag show, and I knew several girls who stripped at clubs in providence or boston with no fanfare from the student body. I know a girl who did an art project that was a collection of photos of every bed she slept with a guy in on campus. It didn’t get picked up by any media like the Karen Owen thing. The fact is we’re a very sex positive school, more sex positive than most. We were number 4 on trojan’s sexual health rankings vs. Duke’s 32 (for whatever that’s worth). </p>
<p>Did I say that the person shouldn’t go to Duke? No. The person brought up that they are thinking about both schools and i said that the Belle Knox “scandal” had changed my opinion of the school. Someone asked for clarification and I provided it. Feel free to say I’m overstating it, but let’s not paint this as some awful cheap shot because I can’t talk about anything else. I would have chosen Brown over Duke 100 times out of 100 before any of it happened in the first place, just now I have a sour taste in my mouth over Duke that I didn’t have before.</p>
<p>fiske2009, that’s changing the topic from med school so start a new thread. That will be a good separate topic.</p>
<p>“Brown does not force grade distributions to fit a bell curve” – are you sure this applies in all departments? Engineering used to grade on a curve. </p>
<p>And for anyone who thinks it’s easy to get an A at Brown, search this forum. There was a thread started, I believe this year, by someone who was shocked at how hard it was in some classes to get an A.</p>
<p>fiske: yes. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>EN9 (or I guess ENGN0090 now) was definitely not graded on a curve. I should probably have been more precise in what I mean which is that the vast majority of classes are not on a bell curve (at least none of the 32 I took plus the ones I shopped were) and it’s certainly not an institutional policy like at some other schools. None of the pre-med pre reqs (physics, chem, bio, math) nor the upper level bios that I took were on curves.</p>
<p>Many high school students understandingly look for a university that will open the doors of opportunity for them as they pursue grad school and/or a competitive job market. They mistakenly look at a university’s USWNR rank, grad school ranking, or reputation to help make that decision.
They should check out a recent study by Sam Swift published in PLOS ONE. The study summary is go to a university with grade inflation and avoid those with grade deflation to improve your statistical odds of grad school admission or of getting that Wall Street job.</p>
<p>If you want to save for med school, then you might want to save money during undergrad</p>
<p>@i<em>wanna</em>be_brown I think at most schools the same response would have happened. Maybe not at Brown since Brown seems (from what Ive heard) very liberal and open to everything (I tend to associate it with Berkley in the 60s and 70s, correct me if I am wrong) but at many other schools it would have. But we will never know what the response of the Brown community would be since a pornstar has never (to my knowledge) been ousted there.</p>
BUMPing this up in the wake of the results being released! Congrats to all who were accepted!
BUMPing in honor of ADOCH!
@Iwannabe_Brown, thanks for this thread. I am have a DS headed to Brown in the fall. He’s not gonna be pre-med but my older CD is at one of the most dreaded bell curve grading schools (UChi). 100% agree that it is tortuous undergrad experience w/lots of stress and a constant state of gpa focus for pre-meds there. Classmates are actually collaborative, not competitive, but mostly bc they simply bond over the suffering. Many very smart capable kids fade out of premed, unfortunately. And the brilliant science teachers just don’t care–they are there for the research.
Bumping for the waitlist admits
Wrote this 4.5 years ago:
Oops, sorry guys:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/10/28/applicants-struggle-structural-flaws-pre-health-advising-system/
In light of this article - do you still think Brown is the best college for premed? Do you think Brown will change its premed counseling based on the criticism by current students? FYI I have a premed hopeful (PLME would be even better) ds who loves Brown who is waiting to hear on admissions this Spring.