<p>I'm currently in the college search process, and I'm looking for a pre-med/engineering/science school that will boost my GPA so that I can get into a good medical school.</p>
<p>Do you have any suggestions?</p>
<p>mostly LAC's and other small private schools so ask around - dartmouth, northwestern, brown, and WashU come to mind among others...</p>
<p>and some big privates like Harvard have major inflation</p>
<p>stay away from the selective publics (they'll give you C's indiscriminately and not hesitate to fail you) like Berkeley, Umich, and U Virginia and other schools known for grade deflation - (Cornell, MIT, Caltech)</p>
<p>Grads schools and med. schools know the profiles of each school and will understand that an A at one school may be the equivalent of a B in another school, same as in the HS Profile when you apply for undergrad. So, basically, I wouldn't put too much energy into this thought process. Prehaps admit rate to medical school for the particular college may be more telling.</p>
<p>Ummm... the fact that you're looking for an easy way through college to get high grades (rather than actually wanting to work for them) makes me question if your actually cut out for med school or if you should be a doctor.... don't mean to bust on you but seriously, it sounds like you've got the wrong ideas here. </p>
<p>On a second note, dogs basically put it right by saying that admissions boards know which schools have inflated grades and certainly take that into consideration when looking at stats.</p>
<p>Actually you're both 100% wrong. The vast majority of the time, they take prestige into account before difficulty (so Harvard ahead of Cornell ect). They don't seem to put much weight on difficulty of attaining your grades (EG at your school in your major), but even prestige and difficulty combined combine for almost nothing. Its actually almost 100% numbers driven - GPA and standarized test.</p>
<p>For example, look at the grad boards here and look at the engineers' difficulty in getting into med and top law schools (even when they're in hard majors at hard schools like MIT).</p>
<p>hmmmm....how does that explain the dramatic decline in so-called prestige school admits to grad., medical, and law schools? (see post under this topic in earlier parent forum with statistics) Several top schools that are moving away from inflated grading are reporting doing so partly so that grad. schools can have a genuine sense of which students are doing the best work.</p>
<p>WASHU and Northwestern have grade inflation? Are you sure?</p>
<p>Maize & Blue -- Your comment about LACs having grade inflation is wrong. If anything, they're known for NOT having grade inflation. It's what frustrates many LAC students especially when they go up against Harvard, Yale, Brown, NW, Dartmouth, Penn and WUSTL for grad schools. Fortunately, most grad school adcoms know who inflates & who doesn't, so the LAC students get a reasonably fair shake in the deal. As for Harvard, it's notorious for grade inflation. Something like 55% of its senior class this year is scheduled to graduate at least cum laude, but that could be an underestimate.</p>
<p>There have been complaints on other boards about Hopkins, both grade inflation and cheating-especially amongst premeds, but really if your looking for a light program stay away from engineering. Unless your planing for graduate work in engineering, with pre-reqs, MCAT, volunteer crap, you maybe needlessly hanging yourself.</p>
<p>Schools that are known for grade deflation are still sometimes top 10 as feeders for great grad schools and professional schools. How can you explain 7.44% of Swarthmore grads per year matriculating at a Top 5 Med, Business, or Law school, if it's entirely numbers driven?</p>
<p>From what I have I read and heard most med school admission boards don't adjust for grade inflation/deflation as much as they should. That's why most believe MIT is a bad option for premed in comparison to say, Harvard or Stanford, both known for grade inflation.</p>
<p>top liberal arts schools do have grade deflation, thats why some of them have over 90% four year graduation rate. at most schools, with the way the curve works, u will always have at least 10% people that won't graduate due to grades, and 5% due to other reasons.
MIT people do pretty bad in med school admissions. Frankly, after applying to various internships and research programs, I now know that they don't care which school u are from.Maybe a +/- 0.2 for the prestige and difficulty of the school, but an engineer from MIT with a 2.5 gpa is probably more qualified than someone from apalachian state with a 4.0. People from TTTs don't realize how difficult things can get, but they will probably get the better jobs/med/law.</p>
<p>So what about theses schools: " dartmouth, northwestern, brown, and WashU". Do they really have grade inflation?</p>
<p>At Dartmouth it is much less rampant than at say Harvard.</p>
<p>Paulhomework, contrary to your post, there is little grade inflation at Stanford. They grade on a curve for the most part. A grade of 95 will be a B because others got 96 (a B+), a 97 (A-), a 98 (A) or 99/100 (A+).</p>
<p>I hear tho for sure, northwestern and washu are actually very competitive and grades aren't that easy if ur in the sciences</p>
<p>Collegeparent-grading on a curve does not preclude you from having grade inflation. You can curve the median/mean for the class to whatever grade you want. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford</a>
Average GPA of 3.44 in 1992.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard</a>
Harvard was at 3.39 as late as 2001.</p>
<p>Nocalguy, grading on a curve most certainly does perclude you from grade inflation?! Get some current information and then come back to me. Stanford almost 15 years ago?!? And I stand by my earlier comment about Harvard.</p>
<p>This is probably controversial but as a faculty member who has taught at one of the institutions on this thread I can assure you grade inflation is alive and real...the attitude at some places being.."if students are good enough to get in, they all deserve A's"...</p>
<p>To the OP- when applying to grad school what matters is what's inside your head, not what's on a piece of paper. You can have a 4.0 but if you bomb your MCATs no med school is going to open its doors for you!</p>