<p>Fine, bluebayou, maybe I didn't use the best example. But you know what I'm getting at. We both know that med-school admissions are highly grade oriented, such that it is better to get high grades at a no-name school than to get bad grades at an extremely difficult school.</p>
<p>So how about this. I'll change the example. One guy went to a no-name school, or a combination of no-name schools (i.e. 2 years at a CC, 2 years at, some no-name university) and has straight A's. Another guy has a 2.5 in engineering from Caltech. I think we both know that the former guy is far better off. Let's face it. The latter guy is probably going to have his app thrown out in the first round before it ever gets read by a human being.</p>
<p>What makes the situation sad is that the latter guy may actually be BETTER than the former guy. He got mediocre grades only because he went to an extremely difficult school and chose an extremely difficult major. I would say that even if you get bad grades, just the mere fact that you survived and graduated from Caltech means that you're one of the top technical students in the world. Let's face it. Plenty of people who do extremely well at no-name colleges would not be able to graduate from Caltech at all. </p>
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why? most top kids in Calif assumes/believes/knows, that a cc course is EASIER that an AP course at a top public high school. If perception is 90% of reality, do you think adcoms don't know that?
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<p>I'm sure they know it. But knowing about it and doing something about it are 2 completely different things. For example, I'm sure that med-school adcoms are well aware that it is much harder to get top grades in engineering courses at Caltech and MIT than, say, in Film Studies courses at some no-name school. But if they continue to prefer those guys who have top grades from easy classes over those MIT/Caltech engineers with low grades, then what good does it do for the adcoms to 'know'? A similar argument applies to the CC grades. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that the adcoms want high grades first and foremost, and care relatively little about how you get them, as long as you get them. In other words, it's better to get an easy, do-nothing A than to get a hard-fought C. Sad but true. </p>
<p>Personally, this situation is very unfortunate and unfair, and I think med-schools shouldn't use grades at all. I think if they want to use numbers, they should only use MCAT scores, and if the MCAT is an incomplete proxy of your skills, then the MCAT should be made better, i.e. something similar to the multi-day Bar exam or the CPA exam (but for medicine, obviously). That way, it's fair. Everybody takes the exact same test so everybody can be judged on the same scale. The problem with grades is, like I said, different schools, different majors, and different classes have widely varying grading standards. It's far easier to get top grades at certain places than at others. The guy with a 2.5 in engineering from Caltech may actually be better than the guy with a 4.0 from a no-name school who completed a cheesepuff major. </p>
<p>However, none of that is here nor there. As long as med-school adcoms insist on running things the way they do, then the proper response is to do whatever you have to do to avoid bad grades, and if that means deliberately poaching easy classes at easy schools, then so be it. It's a sad testament to how the process works, but what are you going to do?</p>