Brown PLME vs. Princeton

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
41

<p>brown does not externally publish this data, but each school reports it differently and each school is guilty of inflating their numbers in different ways.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>it's well known that all pre-med classes have curves and that a C is disqualifying for med school (except in unusual circumstances). actually, in most cases getting more B's than A's is disqualifying. curves in are based on simple bell curves in which the exam means are set at a B, and a C is one standard deviation below the mean. assuming a normal distribution, this means at least ~83% will not get the necessary A, and more than a third will get a disqualifying C (or worst). After competing like this in 8 pre-med classes, the vast majority of students that start college as pre-meds are not qualified to apply by their junior year. in most stats (such as the one in the link you gave), these students are not counted.</p></li>
<li><p>pre-med offices at all of the ivies strongly discourage students w/ science GPA's below 3.6 to apply</p></li>
<li><p>by definition, the national mean on the MCAT is set at 24. most ivy pre-med offices discourage students to apply if their score is below 30 (the national average of students accepted to med school is 27)</p></li>
<li><p>about 50% of students applying to med school from ivies take a "gap year" between college and med school to do research, get a masters degree, pursue a fellowship, are engage in some other activity that will boost their chances of acceptance. many schools do not count these students in their stats.</p></li>
</ol>

42

<p>At the risk of hijacking this thread:</p>

<ol>
<li>If the grades were distributed as you suggest-normal distribution with a B mean, C set at 1 SD below the mean- then 16% would get C's or worse, not 33%</li>
</ol>

<p>Given data that Brown reports, it is not possible that grades are on a normal distribution and are assigned a B mean with C one SD below. For example, C's and NC's (the equivalent of F's) accounted for less than 9% of Life Sciences course grades in 04-05. Nowhere close to 1/3 getting C's or worse you suggest, or the 16% that would be found if the mean and one SD below were B and C. </p>

<p>By the way, 46%, not 17%, get A's in Life Sciences courses, same as in physical sciences. </p>

<ol>
<li>I don't have data for premeds at all the Ivies by grade distribution. However, the AVERAGE GPA of Princeton students accepted to medical school is below 3.6 (pre deflation data), so there must be lots of students with GPA's below 3.6 appying to medical school, "discouragement" notwithstanding. </li>
</ol>

<p>"Eighty-six percent of 2004 Cornell applicants with a 3.4 or above gained admission to a U.S. allopathic school." Of course many of these may have had GPA's well above 3.4, but... </p>

<p>"The average GPA of Penn applicants who are successful in gaining admission to medical school is around 3.45." Again, hard for the average of those accepted to be 3.45 if if few apply with gpa's below 3.6.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I have no data. I don't know. Shame if true, since one does not need an MCAT total that high to get in.</p></li>
<li><p>I don't know about the proportion in the Ivies who do this, but is it certainly common. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>None of the above have anything to do with whether the acceptance rate of princeton students who apply to medical school is 80% or 93%. Even if most students who enter Princeton as premeds change plans and never apply, even if those with lower gpa's apply over discouragement from the advisors, even if those with MCAT's below 30 are discouraged, even if many wait until after they graduate to apply, Princeton still reports an acceptance rate for class of '05 greater than 90%.</p>

<p>Now remember that someone accepted into PLME is likely to be a top student among either Brown or Princeton admits. So these people are unlikely to bail out of the premed track due to poor grades.</p>

<p>Does anyone know the GPA's of the PLME's at graduation from Brown?</p>

43

<p>I can tell you right now that 46% is NOT the A mark in ANY class I have taken thus far, not even close. More like, 30-35%. That may even be high for some. Even if overall 46% of grades are As, that just means that if you are taking two classes in life sciences, you're only like to get an A in one, since that would show that the grades awarded overall are 46% As, but you still hvae to do better than that mark by quite a bit to get the A.</p>

44

<p><a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/annrep/2005%20PDF/TABLE21.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Institutional_Research/annrep/2005%20PDF/TABLE21.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

45

<p>You didnt read what I said-- if overall 46% of grades awarded are A's that doesnt mean that the 46th percentile gets an A.</p>

46

<p>Guaranteed admission to medical school sounds awfully inviting to me...</p>

<p>Right now you might think, "Eh, what's the big deal?" But when you start applying to med schools senior year (or afterwards if you take time off), you'll wish you had a guaranteed acceptance in hand.</p>

<p>This coming from someone who'll be applying to law schools towards the end of this year...</p>

47

<p>Modest. I agree. If 46% get A's, then you have to be in the top 46% to get one. This would be 54th percentile. This is way different than the 17% A's (83%ile) asserted above.</p>

<p>This is getting off the mark for this thread. My point is simply that anyone accepted to PLME is a top student coming in to either of two colleges at which the vast majority of the students who apply to medical school are admitted. Someon who is a top student coming in is likely to be an excellent student when applying to med school later. Excellent students from both Brown and Princeton are very likely to be admitted to medical school. </p>

<p>Brown notes that it is among the top five colleges nationally in the admission rate of students applying to medical school (how they know this they do not say). Since many schools report admissions percents higher than 80, Brown's must be higher than 80% in order to be in the top 5.</p>

<p>The major question about Princeton is whether its high rate will persist as the grade deflation efforts reduce the gpa's of graduating students. This could have the effect of knocking more students out of the med school range. Since Princeton publishes extensive data about the med school application sucess of its students, it will be easy to detect a deflation effect if it occurs. Past results may not predict future performance. Students with professional school aspirations who are considering Princeton should take this into account.</p>

48

<p>Well you have to keep in mind that those in med. school admissions are well aware of the recent grade deflation at princeton, and thus will look at gpa, transcripts, and so on accordingly.</p>

<p>That said, I doubt it has any landslide effect on "future performance" of students "with professional school aspirations".</p>

49

<p>It's important to be careful in how we interpret medical school admissions statistics for various colleges.</p>

<p>These statistics do not tell us what we really want to know, which is "Of the kids who enter College X with the intention of going to medical school, what percentage actually end up there?"</p>

<p>What they tell us is "Of the kids at College X who apply to medical school, what percentage actually end up there?"</p>

<p>This is a very different thing.</p>

<p>Vast numbers of kids enter college with the intention of being pre-med, take the first few pre-med courses, find out that these courses are very difficult, get bad grades in them, and choose a different career path. These kids do not show up at all in the med school admissions statistics because they never actually apply to medical school.</p>

50

<p>that's a good point marian, and more or less the one i was trying to make. some do drop out of the rat race, and decide the toil isn't worth it. </p>

<p>in my experience, many of them are told their grades/MCATs aren't good enough by the pre-med advisors and so they never apply. </p>

<p>to the best of my knowledge, every ivy sends all of their med school apps from a single pre-med office. students have to apply to their school's pre-med office to apply to med school, and this office puts together the letter of recommendation (a composite of three letters from professors plus the pre-med advisors personal impressions from required interviews), and is reponsible for "packaging" the overall application. often, they even require you to submit your essay to them beforehand so they can look it over. </p>

<p>anyone who has ever applied to med school from an ivy can tell you its a tightly controlled process.</p>

51

<p>
[quote]
those in med. school admissions are well aware of the recent grade deflation at princeton, and thus will look at gpa, transcripts, and so on accordingly.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Perhaps, but the narrow range in GPA's of admitted students from different colleges suggest that any adjustments for varying grading standards are slight.</p>

<p>The best way to control for students who drop out of the premed path due to low grades is to compare the average gpa of those admitted to medical school from a given college to the average gpa of all students at that college. Do you need to be at the 90th percentile in gpa? the 70th? the median? The closer the mean gpa of sucessful med school applications is to the median gpa for all students, the more it is realistic for a typical student at that college to expect admission to medical school. Some colleges publish this information. Many do not, but it may be available from the pre med offices.</p>

<p>As far as I know, all the Ivies say that they assist any student who wants to apply to medical school to do so. They do not limit there support to those who are likely to be admitted. Some other universities, Hopkins for example, have been criticized for inflating their admissions numbers by withholding support from students who are not sure bets for admission.</p>

<p>A model of disclosure is Amherst, which reports 87% of "well-qualified" applicants were admitted on their first application. Well qualified is defined as a science gpa of at least 3.1 (not a typo, 3.1), and MCAT of at least 28 (again, not a typo), with no score below a 9. <a href="http://www.amherst.edu/%7Esageorge/guide1.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amherst.edu/~sageorge/guide1.html&lt;/a>
Over the same period of time, 49% of Amherst students had senior gpa's of A- or higher.
<a href="http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/%7Eastudent/2000-2001/issue15/news/02.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2000-2001/issue15/news/02.html&lt;/a>
In other words, about half of Amherst students had gpa's well above the threshhold for well qualified for medical school admission. So acheiving this is hardly unusual for Amherst students. </p>

<p>Assuming that they are academically similar to Brown students, and that dcircle is right that those with gpa's below 3.6 at Brown are discouraged from applying, then either the Brown grading standards are far more harsh (but the published data does not support this), or Brown students with 3.5 gpa's are being wrongly counseled not to apply to medical school (but this apparently does not happen at Princeton).</p>

<p>"Of the kids who enter College X with the intention of going to medical school, what percentage actually end up there?" I agree that is part of the crucial question. The other part is "of those who change plans, how many do so due to poor grades, and how many simply decide that medicine is not for them?" I don't know of any college that reports this. I suggest it would be a great idea for Brown to follow this and, in a few years, start letting people know what the results are.</p>

<p>To summarize: </p>

<p>Brown students have high gpa's on average. </p>

<p>At academically similar schools that report their medical school results as a function of gpa, the gpa needed to be a well qualified applicant is lower than the overall gpa mean at Brown.</p>

<p>One does not need anything close to a 3.6 to be a realistic medical school candidate from one of these colleges. In fact, 3.6 is well above the average gpa of accepted applicants from each of the schools for which I have cited data.</p>

<p>People who are admitted to PLME and to Princeton are highly likely to be admitted to medical school, from either university, if they stay with the program.</p>

<p>People who are unlikely to be admitted to PLME, but who are admitted to Brown and graduate with grades close to, but below, average for either college are also highly likely to be admitted to medical school.</p>

52

<p>Of course, if you want to go to Harvard, Hopkins, Stanford... then astronomical GPA's and MCAT's are required just to be taken seriously. </p>

<p>But very few doctors across the country attended the handful of the most prestigious medical schools. </p>

<p>And they are still called doctor.</p>

53

<p>
[quote]
many of them are told their grades/MCATs aren't good enough by the pre-med advisors and so they never apply

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Which is why showing actual data is so helpful, particularly if students are being told they are wasting time and money by applying with gpa's below 3.6. It is just not true.</p>

54

<p>afan, to clarify, the 3.6 GPA is for the "BCPM GPA" (i believe this stands for biology, chemistry, physics, and math)--it is calculated separately from a pre-medical students overall GPA. i'm not sure if this is equivalent to amherst's "science GPA", but if you go to one of the self-reported stat sites like mdapplicants.com you will see that the BCPM GPA of accepted students is almost always a 3.6, even when the overall GPA is less.
other important points are that the amherst data is 1) dated by 7 to 11 years, 2) you don't know how many applicants in the "qualified group" had the bare minimum qualification of 28 MCAT and 3.1 GPA--my guess is that it is very few</p>

55

<p>It was the BCPM gpa from amherst.</p>

<p>The data for med school admission and for median gpa are from the same time period. Med school applications are less competitive now than they were then (more medical school slots now, but fewer applicants).</p>

<p>I don't know how many had the bare minimum either. Cornell has posted a chart that showed admission percent as a function of gpa and MCAT. I don't have the link, but people with gpa's well below 3.6 were often admitted.</p>

<p>As the Brown and Princeton grade distributions show, lots of people get A's, and almost everyone else gets B's in science courses.</p>

<p>Remember that we are talking about getting in med school somewhere, not necessarily getting into a top 5 place. </p>

<p>The problem with mdapplicants is precisely that it is self-reported and self-selected. It may not reflect the real national standards. I searched mdapplicants.com for accepted students with gpa 3.2-3.59. There were 728 such people self reported as accepted on this site. There were only 2 from Brown, perhaps that reflects the counselling they receive. There were</p>

<p>11 Columbia
12 Cornell
13 Dartmouth
10 Harvard
6 Princeton
11 Penn
6 Yale</p>

<p>Overall, there were 21 from Brown who reported med school acceptance.
There were 141 accepted students from all colleges who reported their science gpa. 37 of these had science gpa's under 3.6</p>

<p>On the other hand, one can get national data from the aamc.
Nationally, the mean science gpa of admitted medical students is 3.56, which means that a large number (roughly half) have science gpa's lower than this. The national SD is 0.35, so, if normally distributed, about 20% of matriculating medical students have science gpa's of 3.21 or less.
<a href="http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2005/mcatgpastatemat.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2005/mcatgpastatemat.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Look at the data. Telling someone that they need a 3.6 to get into medical school is just bad advice. I believe you when you say that some Brown students are told this. I do not believe that it is true.</p>

56

<p>you can enter PLME, and not go to the brown med school...</p>

<p>here's how I see it;</p>

<p>go to brown, and either</p>

<p>a. work your ass off to have a great GPA and MCAT, and apply to better med schools, with brown to fall back on just in case</p>

<p>or</p>

<p>b. relax, take what you enjoy, maintain the minimum PLME gpa, and enjoy your undergrad years</p>

<p>you could also go to princeton and repeat step a, but without Brown med school to fall back on "just in case"</p>

57

<p>Exactly Brass. I would add that, going either to Brown or to Princeton is likely to end up with medical school admission for someone who wants it.</p>

58

<p>I just wanted to point out that sometimes, everything cannot be explained based on pure stats. I mean, there are other factors in life that are also equally important. Due to college life and experiences, I can tell you that many of the brilliant students are underperforming and also struggling despite being more than qualified in highschool. We cannot underestimate such factor...</p>

59

<p>Pro raises another good point. Some students with top records in high school get to college and struggle academically, particularly in premed. Why? I suspect that many of them were never that interested in being doctors, but were following the dictates of their parents. Others were great at high school academics, but could not make the transition to the college level of intensity and independence. Some of these students unfortunately leave college thinking that they would have done well in medical school only if they could have been admitted. However, academic sucess in medical school is predicted by academic sucess in college. So the people for whom the tension, anxiety. pressure, and level of work required is a bad fit are better off finding this out in college than after they have invested a huge amount of time and money going to medical school. </p>

<p>If you really don't want to be a premed, then do you really want to be a medical student? </p>

<p>PLME is definitely the lower risk option. Just realize that Brown does not admit to PLME people whom it doubts would be sucesssful premeds anyway. They predict PLME's would have been people they would have accepted into medical school had they done regular premed. They are usually right.</p>

60

<p>I don't think it matters what you major in as long as you take the 10 or so classes required for med school application.</p>