<p>I had the honor to attend the 519th convocation of U Chicago last weekend. While D is not a MD student there, I had a chance to review the graduating(2014) MD class of Pritzker, here is some interesting stats:</p>
<p>Using the CC list of top LACs and Top Univ.+Ivies The distribution of UG college graduates for those MD students are as follows:</p>
<p>Top Lacs 5
Top Uni+Ivies 50
Total number of Graduates 102</p>
<p>That is over 50% of the graduates of Pritzker are from CC designated "Top Uni and LACs"</p>
<p>Using Pritzker as an example, that means High Concentration of students from Top Universities are going to top tier MD Schools. Does it mean that if you are from "no name" school has no chance for top MD schools? No, but the probability is much lower. Some of the "Lesser Known Schools" are Hampton, Boulder, Idaho State, Crieghton, Furman, Wheaton, Drake and Spellman. The rest are all over the map, with UIUC 9 students on the top and mostly state flag schools.</p>
<p>Northwestern, WUSTL and Chicago each with 9 students have the highest concentration from top CC Univ.</p>
<p>Your thoughts?</p>
<p>U of Chicago’s med school is looking for very specific students. Son and his peers from his ivy were interviewed and accepted to Harvard, Penn, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Cornell and Duke and not one of them were interviewed at Chicago…</p>
<p>Quickest rejection anybody receives is from Chicago!</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Based on D’s experience, Chicago rejects most applicants right after they pay application fee. On the other had, D. turned down acceptance to Northwestern for another Medical School (which is lower ranked and more expansive). Still another point, D’s Medical school class (next week she is done with 3rd year) includes many from the very top schools (Ivy’s, Stanford, JHU) and good number with advanced degrees (again from some very top places) and they ARE not ahead of my D. in any kind of aspect, she is not inferior in any sense, while having only BS from the in-state public and also being one of the youngest. In fact, dealing with many in study groups and rotations, she discovered that she is ahead in social maturity, communication skills and was told numerous times by all involved (attendings, residents, patients) that she has great bed manners and overall great to have her on the team. She attribute it to the fact that she was exposed to a variety of people at her state public UG while others were among very homoginuous, very intense and very goal oriented student body. There is nothing wrong with these characteristics, but they also indicate narrow minded personality in most cases and unfortunately sometime with the very big elbows that they do not hesitate to use.
Forget top UG, choose whatever fits you the best to insure being happy for the next 4 years, which in turn will insure high GPA, decent MCAT. ECs opportunities are everywhere, D’s UG did not even had a Medical school at the university.
Many people do not understand the reason why top UGs are overrepresented at the top Medical schools. It reflects the type of students, who have been already pre-selected at Ivy’s and such. It does not reflect the success of specific UGs in placing their graduates into Medical Schools. To prove it from another prospective, D’s UG Honors program at her in-state public has 100% placement into Medical schools year after another. Why? Because these 200 pre-se;ected students had to have ACT=31+ and be in the top 2% of the HS class. With this type of stats most of them could have been attending Harvard. In fact, while being in Honors, D’s perception was that vast majority (all?) were valedictorians primarily from private and some from public HS. In addition, a good number of them did not survive the first Bio class, so they fell off and never applied to a Medcial School. I do not know a single pre-med out of my D’s friends who are currently not in a Medical school and some had very very good choices, including Norhtwestern and Cleveland Clinic (free Medical school with only 30 spots).
Best wishes in everything.</p>
<p>Chances for a No-Name School to Attend Top Tier Med School</p>
<p>I do not know what the chances for a student coming from any particular “No-Name School to Attend Top Tier Med School” are. How any one “top tier” med school weights any one factor (GPA, MCAT, name at top of college diploma, ECs, etc) is not known unless some adcom at a particular top tier school would be willing to divulge. Even then I think their answer would apply to only that particular top tier school and not necessarily to all top tier school’s decision making processes. </p>
<p>According to NRMP, graduating from any US med school is a more important factor to surveyed residency program directors (PD) than graduating from a well known med school. I have to believe that med schools operate similarly in their admission decisions. Just as residency PDs question whether an applicant can fit in and handle the demands of the residency program by scrutinizing an applicant’s med school performance in the first 3 years, med school adcoms will look at the similar college performance factors (GPA, MCAT, LORs, etc) in making their decisions. Will some med school adcoms give bonus points to a student coming from a well known college v No Name U? Yes they probably will. How many bonus points, how few, and what weight these bonus points has, who knows? And all things being equal, maybe the bonus points gets the student from a well known college the offer over the kid from No Name U. But that’s the problem for med school adcoms. All things tend not to be equal, especially when you get into the more subjective aspects of an application (ECs, LORs, PSs,interview, etc.) which is why you see students from “all over the map.” An issue like having a diverse class (URM) might also be added into the decision making process. Maybe I’m naïve, but I just don’t think that med school applicants are rejected out of hand just on the basis of their decision as a 17/18 year old high school student to attend No Name U. </p>
<p>"An issue like having a diverse class (URM) might also be added into the decision making process. " -
- I would like to be a bit more specific about diversity. Most kids (mine do) think about skin color and socio-economic diversity as irrelevant and they simply do not see skin color and differentiate much between rich and poor. At least both of my D. (Medical Student) and GrandD (HS-er at extremely competitive HS - 33 applicants to one spot in freshman class) have completely different issue looking for diveristy. Both are at the very selective places (at different levels) and were facing with the same exact problem - looking for ‘non-intense, none-big-elbow, not so much goal oriented" people who possess a wide range of interests and are fun to be with. Do not get me wrong, both are exceptionally good students and hard working individauls in everything that they pursue (a lot!!), but they do not want to focus on this while being with their friends, enough is enough. GrandD. said that the only reason that she is on the gymnastics team is because these are the kids who she can talk “normally” while if bothered her a bit that most of them did not have as good grades as her. Both are always looking for personality diversity, they are way way beoynd noticing skin color, different features and different level of money in parents’ pockets.
It is extremely important to surround yourself with the real diverse crowd. And it is not much possible to do so at the very top UGs that admit very intense and goal oriented kids many of who will walk over you to get where they want to be. But there are exceptions there also. However, others might want to be surrounded with the “intellectual” peers and not think much about the flip side of this coin. It is fine, whatever fits a person. </p>
<p>what is a no name univ? a school outside of the top 50? that seems silly. is Purdue a no name?</p>
<p>I think a no name would be one that is so regional/directional that no one outside the area knows about it.</p>