<p>So I have been wondering about this subject for quite some time, and since I don't personally know any Medical school deans, I have gotten mixed answers.</p>
<p>Now, I am not talking about the amount of units or amount of courses taken in a semester or quarter period. I am referring only to the difficulty of courses taken, or taking an honors course in place of a normal difficulty class.</p>
<p>In my situation, as a Pre-Med at Berkeley since I first started Organic Chemistry over the summer, I think its the most fascinating thing in the whole entire world, I spend some of my spare time learning new reactions and reading organic synthesis journals just because I love learning how to make new organic molecules. What I really want to do is take 2 upper division chemistry courses later on, "Advanced Organic Synthetic Chemistry" and "Advanced Organic Synthesis Laboratory". </p>
<p>Do Med Schools like to see applicants taking difficult courses? Or do they even bother looking at the rigor of courses or just go straight to the GPA?</p>
<p>During the first round of applicant screening (which is done by a computer program at most schools), only your GPA, sGPA and MCAT scores are considered. Difficulty of coursework is not considered at all.</p>
<p>During the next round of screening (which is done by a adcomm reader randomly assigned your file), it may or may not make a difference. Some adcomms will look closely at non pre-req coursework; some won’t look at it all. Luck of the draw.</p>
<p>You must remember that adcomms are not interchangeable cogs. They are all individuals with their own process for evaluating an applicant within the guidelines given to them by their school.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, med schools want to see applicants who have taken difficult courses and have done well in those classes.</p>
<p>Taking a difficult class and getting a B isn’t going help your cause. OTOH, taking all “gut” classes (easy As) isn’t going to help your cause either.</p>
<p>I have no idea. There are more than a half dozen screening software programs used by medical schools. Each program is customizable by the school.</p>
I remember BDM (a long time CCer) once posted that a person who scores so high on MCAT tends to stay very low key about it, unless he is willing to get himself into the trouble of being “hassled” by others constantly. Unless you have actually seen his score with your own eyes, I would suggest that you interpret what you have heard with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>When did anybody score a 44 last time? It is rumored that, unlike 41-42, a 44 does not happen every year or even in the majority of years. At least even less likely to happen than a student from DS’s graduating class achieving 4.0 (which also does not happen every graduating class - even though many CCers who did not attend his college would often claim that there is a lot of grade inflation at his school. For such CCers, I would suggest that they actually get into that school and actually score a 3.95 before they make such a claim. Hearing somebody else achieving it is easy/cheap, while you achieving it yourself is not.)</p>
<p>Mcat2, I did not know a 44 or 45 was that rare. I thought with those being accepted to a US Med school being really smart, intelligent people a close to perfect MCAT score would be more frequent than that.</p>
<p>I have not seen his score with my own eyes, but I did see his GPA on a resume of his he showed me to help me with mine, and I kind of assumed you would need something to seriously balance out a 3.1 GPA.</p>
<p>^ 44 is indeed extremely rare. 45 may be “never.” I believe 37-38 are very high scores already and 41+ is very rare.</p>
<p>I believe that having achieved 41-42 with some other reasonable credentials could land you some rare scholarship at SOME med schools (but some other med schools could still reject or wait-list such high MCAT scorers.)</p>
<p>IWBB - How do you come up with 190 people in 44/45 when there is no percentile listed for it at all?</p>
<p>I am reading that at 38, the graph hit 99%ile which means about 949 people scored 39-45. However, I am reading it such that by 42, they have used up that 1%</p>
<p>In DS’s MCAT taking year, my impression was that there are not close to 190 44/45s.</p>
<p>There used to be a table showing the GPA-MCAT grid of the absolute numbers of applicants/admitees. But the data is aggregated over many (3 or 5?) years. I think many CCers (wowmom, kristin for sure, and maybe even me) posted its link in the past (where is wowmom? She is our CC premed forum’s knowledgeable “librarian” who should have the link :))</p>
<p>I think that table is good for finding out how many scored 39+. But there is no data like this for the absolute numbers of 44/45 scorers. BTW, the absolute number of 3.8/39+ ORMs appear to be on the high side - it could dilute the value of these numbers for them. When some top schools in, say, Texas, have close to 40% of them, it may not be desirable for them to admit more of these. (Like it is said, it is already a little bit too “nerdy” there already.)</p>
<p>Many CCers said that, once the score is above some threshold, say, 36 or 37, an even higher score does not improve your chance of getting into, say, top research med schools. The top schools (except for one exception maybe) appear to look for something IN ADDITION TO the stats so they may use these numbers for the screening purpose only. If this is true and if you do not shoot for the rare merit-based scholarship at relatively limited number of med schools (not many med schools play this game anyway), there is really no need to obsess with the extreme high MCAT score. I really do not think the schools like H or Hopkins or Penn or Stanford would value it, i.e., the stats, more than the achievement in the non-numeric areas anyway - like Fullbright? (They take a reasonably high score for granted though.)</p>
<p>IMHO, no they don’t care. How would they know? A difficult course for a biology major may be an easy course for an engineering major. Difficulty is relative and really useless in this process.</p>
<p>Private med schools indirectly but only when you go to specific schools like Caltech where GPA deflation is widely publicized. They really don’t care about a specific or multitude of specific classes at a specific college including those considered to have a grade deflation.</p>
<p>There are people getting into Yale from Caltech with 3.3 GPA (don’t know the MCAT but probably close to 40 at least) and great research.</p>
<p>Right. Public schools where the majority of medical school seats exist give very little consideration to the school one went (a prof on admission council mentioned 1 point out of 100). </p>
<p>Some big name private schools OTOH give some leeway to graduates of some top name schools despite lower GPAs knowing that disparity in the GPAs exists.</p>
<p>However, a grade from a specific class at a specific school being evaluated as being hard to get or easy to get is not normal. That level of granularity does not exist. </p>
<p>A caveat to that is taking harder classes like O chem at a community during summer would be frowned upon.</p>
<p>LIzzyM said there are only 3 schools which have grade deflation bad enough that her med school takes it into consideration: Princeton, UChicago and Reed.</p>
<p>Caltech probably does not merit a mention since so few actually apply to med schools (30?). Caltech lost their UCSD combined program for 6 students. I wonder if a few more schools start seeing apps from their students.</p>
<p>If it is 30, it has a higher number of applicants than some top LAC (e.g., Swarthmore - in one year quite some time ago, somebody here posted that it produced a grand total of one student applying without any gap year. I guess that school started to “get their act together” to become more preprofessional just like most other top research schools (maybe UChicago is still an exception.)</p>
<p>Granted, unlike state school kids, a higher percentage (like slightly higher than 50%?) of kids from many top private schools apply after a gap year or two. But I also heard that many of these top LACs tend to produce many PhD track students.</p>
<p>Sometimes I suspect that one reason that the applicants from top private schools have a higher success rate in getting into a med school is that more of them delay a year or two before they apply. Daddy’s or mommy’s deeper pocket helps.</p>