Does your undergrad really matter if you plan on being a doctor or lawyer?

Parents Forum
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<p>My dad’s coworker’s son went to our state flagship (University of Maryland), maintained a strong GPA and used his proximity to D.C. to do Congressional internships and such. He graduated last spring and is currently in his first year at Harvard Law :)</p>

<p>It can be done. </p>

<p>We also have a family friend whose daughter graduated from Carnegie Mellon with an English degree and is out of a job and can’t get into law school. </p>

<p>I think it’s really how you utilize your opportunities. Going to state undergrad definitely doesn’t ruin your chances at a great med or law school; remember that it’s really the graduate name that counts. Especially if you can get admission to a state school honors program, going to a public school can even help your chances (an exceptional student at a state school often stands out MORE than an exceptional student at Harvard, because at Harvard, almost everyone is an exceptional student!). </p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>I don’t know much about med school admissions and freely admit that. I do wonder, however, how many of the folks going to med school now have done a “post bac” program. Anyone know? </p>

<p>Now, most of the folks I know personally who went the post-bac route have in fact gone to top colleges, majored in somethng else, and then decided on med school. But I’ve wondered what percentage of med students are doing this.</p>

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<p>Well then go to Johns Hopkins. People are getting shot right and left in Baltimore. So you get the best of both worlds.</p>

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<p>“Well then go to Johns Hopkins. People are getting shot right and left in Baltimore. So you get the best of both worlds.”</p>

<p>Come to GA buddy, people are getting beaten, harassed and ridiculed for being minorities in some cases. God forbid I ever come back here.</p>

<p>It has always been my dream to attend a top medical school like Harvard or Johns Hopkins. As for the careers thing, I wanted to be a pro quarterback in the 9th grade but my high school did not have football and the high schools that had football in the area I live in only sent 30 to 40 percent of kids to colleges (most of the time it was tier 4 universities) and I knew 2 Asian kids that went there, they were stuffed in lockers daily and called racial slurs. Due to my rough life in a small deep south town my GPA stayed average, I was young and thought “oh whats the point” and now my GPA is only a 3.4 (I told everyone 3.2 because that is my HOPE Scholarship GPA).</p>

<p>As for my medical choice, my high school has offered us a lot of internships at a local medical college. I have decided that I want to be a heart surgeon, I have done many labs where we had to dissect pigs and cats and so far I have been amazed by the structure of the heart. I have done a lot of observership at a local hospital and I have talked to heart surgeons. I always wanted to go to a prestigious university for med school so I am definitely stuck on Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins etc.
My ambition of going to those places for med school will definitely give me that extra drive I need to succeed in college.</p>

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<p>I hope you know that your experience is definitely unique. I’ve lived in Georgia since I was 9 and I’ve never heard of anything like what you’re talking about. You need to realize that not all of the Southeast is like that. Also, your unweighted GPA is 3.2. HOPE takes out all arts and crap like that, and doesn’t give any weight to honors or APs. An A is a 4, a B is a 3, and so on. Colleges will calculate your GPA how they see fit, but you should know that some will look at your UW GPA as 3.2.</p>

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<p>Psychology and a lot of classes like AP Euro and AP Stat were not counted towards my hope GPA.
She said colleges will look at my overall GPA and weight it on their own scale, I believe her word over yours.</p>

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<p>As far as I understand, all academic courses (including academic electives) count toward HOPE GPA, thus AP Euro & AP Stat will count toward the HOPE number. Also, HOPE re-weights AP courses with an additional .5 as long as (grade x credit) does not exceed 4.0. Sounds like it may be worth your while to log onto the HOPE website and check your detailed GPA report to determine exactly which courses count toward your eligibility:
[Check</a> your HOPE GPA - Georgia Student Finance Commission](<a href=“http://www.gacollege411.org/Home/Opt_In.aspx?action=redirect&mode=hopegpa]Check”>http://www.gacollege411.org/Home/Opt_In.aspx?action=redirect&mode=hopegpa)</p>

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<p>And I quote:</p>

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<p>Your reading comprehension is excellent.</p>

<p>AP Euro and AP Stat were counted towards your HOPE GPA.</p>

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<p>My guidance counselor told me that AP Euro and AP Stats were not counted towards my hope, my health classes (not P.E but medical) were not counted towards HOPE either.</p>

<p>Oh well that is another argument. I got the answers I needed.</p>

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<p>Your guidance counselor is wrong dude… I know you aren’t going to believe me over her but she is. The AP part of Euro and Stat didn’t count into it (see above), but the classes definitely factor into that HOPE GPA.</p>

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<p>OP,</p>

<p>In several threads, I noticed that you seem to regard guidance counselor’s statements and statements from college admission officers as a gospel, and dismissed all the parents who were responding to your question as being wrong whenever there is a discrepancy.</p>

<p>Well, I have experience with GCs in a top magnet school and a very academically competitive suburban high school. Let me tell you, if there is any discrepancy between GC’s statements and the “collective” wisdom and experience from the knowledgeable parents on this forum, I will take the later 100 % of the time. These parents may not be professionals, but they have a HUGE vested interest in keeping up with all the latest changes and admission policies because it’s their kids!!!, and they do enormous research on their own, which is more than I can say about a lot of GCs who seem to be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of kids at school that they need to “process” during a very short period of college application crunch time - as such, their knowledge in any particular school or schools out of their comfort zone can be often pretty sketchy. I hear that at tippy top private school where each GC has only a handful of kids, they are really on top of things - but then again, the range of schools these GCs have to deal with is probably pretty limited (mostly top tier schools, I guess).</p>

<p>I noticed many a mis-statements from GCs. In one “college orientation night”, I had no choice but to publicly correct several misguided statements from the GCs because I did not want the other parents to come away with wrong information. </p>

<p>Regarding statements from college admission officers, well, don’t even get me started. When they talk to the prospective students, they are playing the role of a marketing agent 100%: they will hardly ever say anything to scare away prospective applicants, and will always say stuff that will encourage you to apply, even if the chance of acceptance is 1/10000 %. That’s how they maintain their acceptance rate low and increase their prestige and rankings.</p>

<p>I am stating this in the spirit of providing public service.</p>

<p>Of course, you are free to believe whatever you want to believe.</p>

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<p>I will still go with the guidance counselor advice because if anything I have noticed that this site is full of students trying to get to top schools and disgruntled parents (there have been major exceptions though).</p>

<p>What’s a more reliable source of news - a professional journalist or someone’s comment on a news story at cnn.com?</p>

<p>What’s a more reliable source of sports information - a sportswriter or a Cardinals fan ranting at cbssports.com?</p>

<p>What’s a more reliable source of medical advice - a doctor or your cousin Louie?</p>

<p>What’s a more reliable source of investment advice - a financial counselor or a co-worker who can’t wait to tell you about his hot stock tip?</p>

<p>College confidential is as reliable as the person whose advice I am reading. I wanted to ask this question on here because Yahoo was not loading on my computer. </p>

<p>Not that Yahoo is any more reliable but at least people there have proven that they know their stuff.</p>

<p>Guidance Counselors know their stuff by experience, as for the majority of the people on here, I do not even know their motives. Most often they try their best to discourage people like me from applying to a lot of the top colleges but I already did that. Anyways when the letters roll around during spring I will see who was correct.</p>

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<p>protagonist - it seems like you’ve decided where you are going to apply, and in some cases you’ve already applied. You’ve got some safeties and some financial safeties. So why not just let it be, and see what happpens? For some reason or other you seem to court controversy wherever you post, and whatever your GC or anybody on here says at this point is not going to change your past high school performance, or whether you get accepted or not to any school.</p>

<p>I’m sure you’ll get accepted someplace, and then you can concentrate on your grades and testscores moving forward, which you have a lot more control over at this point, and which has a lot more to do with getting into med school than where you get accepted which you can do very little about at this point. </p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

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<p>OP,</p>

<p>Sign… Nobody here is trying to do wrong by you. If you have such low opinions about what the parents on this board have to say, why do you keep coming back and waste all of our time? If you get offended whenever you hear things that don’t agree with your preconceived notion or stuff that does not support your optimism, you lash out and accuse parents of all sorts of negative ulterior motives. If you keep coming back because some of us say things that you would like to hear, then fine: at least, don’t openly insult people by declaring them to be dead wrong for holding different opinions or call them disgruntled parents. </p>

<p>When you go out into the big wide world, attitudes, tact, respect, willingness to hear opposing ideas with grace, and common courtesy are EXTREMELY important factor for success. Nobody wants to mentor, guide, help, and recommend someone who lacks such basic qualities: the fact that you had tough experience does NOT work as an excuse -it may buy you sympathy and understanding for all of 5 minutes. There are many young people with tough experience and many of them have pleasant, nice qualities and know how to appreciate when people are honestly trying to help, which often involves giving some tough advice, and these are the young people who will get ahead since they are the ones people will choose to help. </p>

<p>At this point, I will bow out. Most of us gave you a lot of advice. I hope you make a good use of it.</p>

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<p>^^^ Agree 100%</p>

<p>I will admit I learned to trust our GC completely throughout the process last year (which was not our experience with our oldest daughter where none of the GC’s held any professional associations whatsoever and seemed to be running on autopilot of the past 5-10 years). While I will agree that some things don’t change, many many do. Again, in just the span between 2003 and 2009 graduating classes I was really amazed.</p>

<p>Also… it would be really unwise to underestimate the intelligence level of the folks on CC, especially parents. I don’t alway agree with everything, but there is usually a nugget or two of highly valuable inside information. Do not dismiss the gene pool. With so many kids off to Ivy’s and other tippy top schools, simple biology would suggest youre dealing with a highly intelligent gene pool.</p>

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<p>Skepticism is a good thing, in the right measure. It is essential to good scientific work. You do need to scrutinize, continually, whether your sources of information are reliable and your assumptions (or other people’s) are valid. But it cuts both ways. You don’t want to always accept “expert” opinion as gospel, but you also don’t want to dismiss advice out of hand just because it conflicts with what you want to hear.</p>

<p>Sir Francis Bacon, often considered the “inventor” of the scientific method, said it well:
Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.</p>

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<p>And you need to think about why and how you think a “top medical school” differs. Because really, the day-to-day life of a student at Harvard Med School is the same as a student at any med school. You go to classes, you work on cadavers, you eat lunch, you work like a dog, etc. It’s not as though every day at Harvard Med School is a sunny day with flowers all around and chocolate issuing from the fountains and insights abound at every turn, whereas at a “lesser” school the skies are gloomy and you always have bad hair days. I think you are exaggerating in your own mind the difference for the sake of some “prestige.”</p>

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<p>as for Harvard med school, prestige is one of the things I am looking for, I want to go to a top med school because I believe I have now developed the work ethic it takes to attend</p>

<p>I wouldn’t go to Podunk U for med school at all, I would want to go to a med school that is respectable period.</p>

<p>thanks for your input though, honestly I would love to go to a med school up North, no where down south and if I am planning on going up north for med school, why not aim for the best?</p>

<p>AS for this board,</p>

<p>dude I love some of the parents on this board. Thumper1 and even oldfort now have been great help to me, busdriver1 and others have been nice to me and so have people like chelsea. I like it when people tell me why I can’t make it to a college and what I can do in my college years to improve myself but I hate it when people come out saying how I am inferior to their kids and why my life has been easy compared to that of other kids. </p>

<p>Also I do not like it when people assume my real life personality based on internet actions, so I tell a few people to buzz off on college confidential, all of a sudden I am this bigoted pariah who has failure written in his future?</p>

<p>In real life I often ignore people trying to bash my aspirations and if they are people with the experience and heavy knowledge of college admissions, then I give their opinion a shot. </p>

<p>THAT is hard to tell on college confidential, sure there are some good people here but a lot of the stuff on the internet you are not supposed to believe. As for parents sending their kids off to ivies, ooookkkaaayyy, and now I am a 5 star football recruit who will be playing Quarterback for USC. I still believe a large majority of people on here are trying to stop kids from applying to top schools. Most kids will listen to it and get respect for it, I won’t listen to it and as a result I will often be referred to as the person who turns down people trying to help me. </p>

<p>As I said, this site has its good members but man does it have the bad apples.</p>

<p>Anyways, I will inform you guys about spring on my other topic.
Thanks for the help with this topic, I have also considered expert advice on this as well.</p>

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<p>I’m not convinced yet, at all. I and my husband came form lower middle class with zero expose to college, went to large state non-prestige schools, had no problem at all…went on to fabulously top schools for graduate work and have both been professors at an Ivy. Most have tons and tons of services available to all range of students. Prestige does not equal better support.</p>

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<p>It looks like whole purpose of OP is to argue and put down people here by comparing us to his conselor who apparently has superior judgement. Why to waste 4 pages of discussion on that? Obviously, OP is not going to take any advice from here, he is just looking for confrontation.</p>