Here is a survey from 2014 that shows private medical schools consider undergraduate selectivity to be the most important fact ranking equally with grades and mcat.
Here is a survey from 2019 showing that undergraduate selectivity is considered to be the second least important factor by all schools.
My question is what happened to change this and has this influenced admissions? Or are the private institutions lying about this in fear of scrutiny? The first suggests that if you want a certain career path as a doctor, you should not even consider premed unless you get into a top 20. The latter suggests it does not matter whatsoever.
If you are interested in some big-name med schools and you are not from a big-name undergraduate school, your chances of being invited to an interview are not very good. But the most important factor is that you need to go to a school you can get high GPA. If your GPA got slaughtered, no school name can save you.
The most selective undergraduate schools have stronger students to begin with. Such students are more likely to do well enough in college (GPA) and the MCAT to have realistic chances of admission to medical school, compared to most students at less selective undergraduate schools.
Apples to oranges. The first set of stats is for intensely selective MD/PhD programs. While the second set is for general MD admissions.
Additionally, I don’t think you can claim that the first survey “shows private medical schools consider undergraduate selectivity to be the most important fact”. Correlation does not imply causation.
You should also be highly skeptical about the first dataset. It’s a random post on a random forum with data supposedly pulled from USNews and World Report but no actual links to the source data. While the second link is to a well cited report, created and published by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“Additionally, I don’t think you can claim that the first survey “shows private medical schools consider undergraduate selectivity to be the most important fact”. Correlation does not imply causation.”
I don’t understand how correlation or causation applies here. In the first survey, private medical schools suggest that they consider ug selectivity to be as important as gpa/mcat. In the 2nd, they say it is not very important when considering whom to admit.
nrtlax3, that’s likely because the kid sat top schools will have the best GPA/mcat in general, possibly have better access to research opportunities, and probably more driven/“in the know” in general. When looking at 96th percentile test levels/3.8 gpa, there are only 2000 applicants. Unsurprisingly, most of these kids are likely at top schools. However umich does explicitly say they consider quality of undergraduate institution.