<p>From what Ive heard cornell deflates the gpas of its students. I was wondering when it comes to top medical schools do they really care that you went to an ivy league basically will someone from the local public school who has a 4.0 have a better shot at getting into a top medical school than someone who went to cornell but earned a 3.7</p>
<p>First of all, Cornell doesn't deflate grades.</p>
<p>Secondly, don't assume your GPA will be higher just because you go to a state college. I personally think my GPA would've been lower because the academic environment wouldn't have been as good.</p>
<p>Thirdly, top med schools want students who can go to rigorous schools AND still get good grades. The acceptance rates for top med schools are approx. 3-5% so you can imagine that they only want the cream of the crop. I've interviewed at 3 Top 10 med schools so far. I can tell you that on average (no exagerration) more than 75% of the other interviewees came from a Top 20 college. I'm looking at the roster right now for Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons Class of 2011. Out of 145 students, 93 attended an Ivy League college. Throw in Stanford, MIT, JHU, WashU and you're talking about 100+ from a top college.</p>
<p>I interviewed at Michigan in September. Here is the distribution of colleges of the other people interviewing on the same day as me (according to the roster they gave):</p>
<p>Berkeley (6)
Wheaton College
WashU (5)
Case Western
Johns Hopkins (2)
MIT
University of Virginia
Brown (3)
University of Wisconsin (2)
University of Chicago
Stanford (3)
St. Mary's
Yale (4)
UC Davis
Cornell (2)
UMich (6)
Dartmouth
UCSD
Notre Dame (2)
UCLA (2)
Harvard (2)
Oakland University
University of Illinois-UC
UC Irvine</p>
<p>Obviously, this is only for my interview day so the sample size is small. You may not see a 2:6 ratio of Harvard:Berkeley at every place but you can bet every interview day at a top med school is as intimidating as this. Heck, at Northwestern, they stuck the 3 of us together and interviewed us at the same time. How's that for stress? ;)</p>
<p>At Penn, out of 20-25 interviewees, there were 4 from Cornell (I was proud of the representation) and 3 from Harvard alone. The rest were distributed among Penn, Duke, Yale, JHU, WashU, and Stanford undergrads.</p>
<p>To review: top med schools don't just want good undergrad or excellent grades. They want good undergrad AND excellent grades. And excellent MCAT scores. And excellent essays. And excellent recs. And excellent EC's. And excellent research. -->that'll get you the interview.</p>
<p>What is considered excellent grade?</p>
<p>But try to remember the last time you asked your dr where he or she went to med school. In the end all MD/DOs are drs making potentially good money. On graduation they call the person finishing last in the class "doctor." Most students go to their home state med school and save the $$$ over a private. Some go DO (which are predominately private except for No. TX, OK St, Ohio U., Mich St (which is both MD and DO) Am I forgetting one?). But students should not fret the big $$$, there is HPSP (Uncle Sam pays and you serve 3-4yrs in one of the military branches, there's a nat'l rural scholarship program (that's much harder to get than HPSP), or just go practice in a under-served area and the town may pay off your med school bills for being a dr in a town that needs one. </p>
<p>So even if you can't get into HU, JHU, or WUStL there are almost 150 med schools out there and a myriad of ways to pay for it.</p>
<p>It depends. </p>
<p>If you started your own HIV clinic in Africa and have 3 publications, then an excellent grade could be 3.7. If the rest of the application is not very amazing, you will not get an interview no matter how excellent your grades are. People see that the average GPA at Harvard or Penn is only 3.8 and think they have a good chance, but the truth is, most applicants with a 3.8+ GPA's do not even get an interview at such places muchless an acceptance. That's because they ignore the fact their EC's, research, recs, essays, etc. are not on the same level as their GPA.</p>
<p>What Charlie World says is very true. You don't have to go to Harvard or Johns Hopkins to be an excellent doctor. But if you do want to go to such places, be prepared to go through the meat grinder.</p>
<p>well what about med schools thats rank 100 >.> is it still like 75% ivy.. people in ivy tend to apply to pretty good med schools id assume,</p>
<p>People in Ivy schools try to get into a med school! Just because you go to an ivy does not gaurantee you an acceptance. And you can read norcalguy's post on who gets into top med schools.</p>
<p>The majority of matriculants to top med schools are from top undergrads. However, the converse is not true. The majority of premeds from top undergrads do not go to top med schools. In fact, they don't go to med school at all. Cornell starts off with 1000 premeds but only 230 even apply as seniors. Out of those 230, 25% don't get in where. </p>
<p>Now, it's true that the proportion of amazing applicants goes down as you interview at lower ranked schools. At SLU, the other interviewees I met almost seemed human. However, top undergrads are still well represented because no matter how good of an applicant you are, you can't apply to just top med schools. These people who are capable of getting into Harvard or Columbia Med are still applying to Jefferson and SLU and Drexel because the admissions process is so severe.</p>
<p>Biophilic is interviewing at even better schools than I am so I'm sure he can share his impressions from interviews as well.</p>
<p>Norcalguy, your impression from interviews are as accurate as it can get. I have been reading your posts since freshmen year and i think they are very helpful and informative!
BTW, i also know who you are in SDN and i must say that i am jelous of your Columbia interview. Cornell and Columbia are my top two choices and that rules out Columbia for me. </p>
<p>Just to add, last week i had an interview at University of Rochester and 4 out of 8 students were from Cornell and if you include the tour guide it becomes 5out of 9. I have meet Cornell studets in all my interviews so far except John Hopkins where the rest of applicant(15 of them) were mostly from Ivy schools + Stanford and Hopkins.</p>
<p>"At SLU, the other interviewees I met almost seemed human." Hahaha.</p>
<p>I have to admit, SLU was probably my most fun interview. I stayed with student hosts the day before and the med students have organized kickball that day. So I got to kick around a ball for a bit. We made tacos and watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development. But, after 8 pm, all 3 of my student hosts went back to their rooms to study and didn't come back out the rest of the night. Not looking forward to that...</p>