<p>does columbia (CC and SEAS) send alot of kids to med school?</p>
<p>yes. yes it does.</p>
<p>No it doesn’t. In fact, not university sends students to medical school. Students send themselves there. A fancy undergrad does not make up for lack of quality. If you are good enough you are good enough. It is not surprising that top schools have a lot of students that go into top medical programs, because those students had to be the top of the top to get into that university to begin with. Go where you are happy, you will be more productive and do better in the long run.</p>
<p>No s**hit, mmmcdowe. If you’re going to avoid the question just save the time and don’t post.</p>
<p>Columbia has an excellent premed and BME program. I don’t have any numbers, but I think it would be safe to speculate that the brand name will help when applying to med school.</p>
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<p>in my experience it certainly does. </p>
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<p>cut the guy some slack, he is coming from studentdoctor network and over there they have that “everyone’s a winner” attitude …basically those who go to non-name brand colleges (obviously) outnumber those who don’t (and therefore yell louder) and have convinced everyone that your undergrad institution doesn’t matter at all in med school admissions…conventional wisdom would have you believe otherwise and my experience backs up that logical conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>Where as my experience says that where you go is not a significant factor. Certainly you can get a few more points for going to certain schools (I’ve seen the score sheets), which can often counter for the effect of grade depression and bigger competition for good resume builders. If you will reread my post, you will see that I said that a fancy undergraduate does not make up for lack in quality. I never said that where you went has no effect on where you go, though I strongly believe that personal quality always comes first. Going to a non-name brand university didn’t stop me from doing well. Also, as I was chatting with one medical school’s dean prior to my interviews, he told me that individual quality is always their first priority, not undergrad… Obviously, both your experience and mine are anecdotal, and we must stick to our own guns in our opinions. It is my opinion that being a bigger fish in a smaller pond has advantages, as does going to a power undergrad. Ultimately, medicine is at the heart a meritocracy. Whether merit is heavily dependant on where you go is up for grabs :).</p>
<p>And to be fair, while it might be true that SDN’s opinion is dominated by the public school majority, it is also true that an Ivy League forum is going to be dominated by the private school majority who would clearly support the “name brand is better” stance. It’s all speculation and anecdotes in the end.</p>
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Or, you know, statistics.</p>
<p>Most top med schools and law schools don’t freely give out the breakdown lists of the number of students in their entering class who went to which undergrad school, but I’ve seen more than a few myself. When you control for the size of the undergrad school, top schools are much more strongly represented.</p>
<p>Call up a few med schools and ask for those stats - I dunno, tell them you’re doing a research paper on admissions and assure them their school name will appear only as ‘a top med school’ or something - and look at the numbers yourself.</p>
<p>This has never been a question that top undergrads send more students (last years class at Columbia was about half Ivy by my count) to top medical schools, the question is WHY. I say the reason is because the students that go to those schools are stellar, and thus make stellar applicants naturally. Others say that it has to do with prestige, or because those schools make stellar applicants. Having rubbed shoulders with plenty of applicants from the Ivy League, their ECs were all things that I did or could have done an equivalent of if I had wanted to. This is why I believe that it is because the students at top schools tend to me more intelligent/disciplined, not because their schools are better, that they make up a large chunk of the top pre-meds. I am simply trying to give all of the credit of success to the students.</p>
<p>The only relevant stats that I have seen for this argument are polls of what med schools rank as most and least important. Very few of these list a rank for school/impression of school as one of the criteria. The only list that I can find at the moment that does mention impression of the school is a poll of residency directors, which rank school prestige very low on what they look at. This isn’t the same thing as medical school adcoms, but it does beg the question why would medical schools care anymore than residency adcoms?</p>
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<p>this is why med schools would care way more about undergrad name than residency directors would care about med school name: </p>
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<li><p>there are thousands of colleges ranging extraordinarily in quality …going from extreme party schools where your classmates are most likely morons (ex: Arizona State …i’m only picking on them because of a bit that was done on the daily show) to schools where competition is extremely stiff and your classmates are all geniuses (ex: MIT, Columbia, Harvard, etc). on the other hand there are < 130 med schools that are very tightly regulated and all give basically the same quality of education. </p></li>
<li><p>residency directors are choosing colleagues while med school adcoms are picking students so they would probably care more about how good of a student you are and the rigor of your previous academic experiences.</p></li>
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<p>I went to Arizona State, thanks. The Daily Show obviously didn’t pick the most clued in and brightest of ASU in order to give us laughs. It is unfair of you to really lump any school together into one package. Some programs are well known to be very good nationally, as well as being difficult. Not everyone does communications at ASU. You make some assumptions. First, that competitiveness of the student body and your fellow students in general make a big difference on your educational experience. Perhaps a few of my closest friends helped me propel, but they obviously weren’t the “morons.” Not all schools curve their grades. ASU and many schools set standard grades, which eliminates much of the competition among class mates (I personally prefer this, others don’t. It isn’t fair to say one is always better than the other for everyone). If you reach that grade it doesn’t matter how many others do. A’s weren’t handed out to everyone either, most courses were very close to a bell curve anyways. I agree that some schools are harder than others, and thats where I do agree that extra points come into play for tougher schools, not because of the prestige. </p>
<p>Second, you assume that top schools necessarily have tougher and or better educators. This is also not a fair assumption. The US News Rankings, to my knowledge, focus more on professors in a research aspect than as educators. My best professors have not always been the world famous ones (yes, ASU has those!), but quite often the younger assistant professors. Tell me that you have never had a professor that you found to be a poor educator.</p>
<p>We obviously are just going around in circles that have been dug through the entire earth by now. I’m happy to coexist with your differing opinion, and really don’t care to change it if I could anyways.</p>
<p>My sister went to Arizona State, thanks.</p>
<p>It’s asinine of you to assume that any given person enrolled at a state school is a moron. It’s simply ridiculous of you to assume to that everyone who attends “MIT, Columbia, Harvard” (are you seriously grouping Columbia with MIT and Harvard?) is a genius.</p>
<p>To be fair, he/she did say “most likely”. :D</p>
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<p>that has to be the most hilarious coincidence ever. unless you’re pulling my chain</p>
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<li>i didn’t say everyone as you pointed out in your second post</li>
<li>it would be absolutely impossible to find someone at columbia who thinks canada or india are states. </li>
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<p>its not competitiveness as much as quality. it definitely helps to have people around you who are as intelligent, inquisitive and driven as you are.</p>
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<p>we’re not going to get into a discussion about why there needs to be a curve at colleges that are made up of the best and brightest in the country but suffice it to say that even though your classes didn’t have a curve they were tailored to the “average” student at your school and therefore in order to pull that A you definitely didn’t have to work as hard as someone who had to compete with really good students in a class that is tailored to challenge even the brightest of minds.</p>
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<p>didn’t say or assume that at all. so i’ll just skip this paragraph </p>
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<p>umm, ok…i hope she didn’t date any of those guys that were on the daily show</p>
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<p>yes. i’m sorry you got rejected. why do you still frequent this board?</p>
<p>and obviously the use of the word “genius” is hyperbole to get my point across…but the point still stands.</p>
<p>I’ll let you have the last say, because its all good as far as I’m concerned. One thing though, if I went to a party full of drunk Columbia kids, I definitely know that I could get someone to agree with me that India was a state. Heck, I bet I could get a sober guy to say it if I promised that he’d be on tv.</p>
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<p>i’d bet money that you wouldn’t find anyone who would. of course GS and barnard don’t count 
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<p>few people would sign up to be made fools of on national tv…they do exist though and they usually end up on flavor of love and i love new york…haven’t seen columbia grads on those shows yet though. i’m quite sure they didn’t have to instruct those AZ state guys on how to be stupid. </p>
<p>for anyone who hasn’t seen the clip: [url=<a href=“Comedy Central The Daily Show Fan Page”>Comedy Central The Daily Show Fan Page]Arizona</a> State Snubs Obama | The Daily Show | Comedy Central<a href=“its%20hilarious%20but%20it%20seems%20that%20i%20got%20the%20episode%20confused%20with%20the%20one%20about%20long%20island%20wanting%20to%20secede…noone%20in%20this%20says%20that%20india%20is%20a%20state…two%20guys%20don’t%20know%20that%20ben%20franklin%20was%20not%20a%20president”>/url</a></p>
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<p>yeah Shraf you definitely cannot do that, we’re not a bunch of snobs and MIT has lower SAT scores ;)</p>
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well that’s hardly a fair comparison. GS kids are so far in debt that they’ll say anything if it possibly gets them some funds or at least publicity.</p>
<p>As for appearing on reality shows, I actually applied to be on The Amazing Race a few months back with this platonic friend of mine. I think it’s the best reality show to be a contestant on, even if the average payout is fairly low. That show at least doesn’t actively try to humiliate its contestants, and looks like it’s a hell of a lot of fun.</p>
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<p>thats y i said they don’t count</p>
<p>i can totally see u on a reality tv show…the amazing race is good…i don’t really watch it that often though</p>
<p>i’m not normally much of an attention whore. I’d be equally interested if they weren’t filming. I’d probably pay to get into a game like that - too bad it’s the most expensive TV show ever made, with all of their plane tickets everywhere and hired local staff to run the checkpoints and obstacles.</p>
<p>Anyway, point being, being on TV for being stupid isn’t quite a tradeoff Columbians are willing to make, when plenty of them, down the road, get on TV for being smart or awesome.</p>