<p>Like lets say you have a lot of scholarships from a state university and you have been accepted into a top tier university.</p>
<p>You have the decision of either paying tons of money for your undergrad or paying little and saving that money up for med school or law school.</p>
<p>Lets say I go to the University of Georgia or Armstrong Atlantic for my undergrad degree but I want to go to med school at Harvard or Johns Hopkins, will they hold it against me because I went to a regular college even if I have the MCAT scores and the high GPA?</p>
<p>The totem pole of who gets accepted to top med schools:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Superstars from top undergrads</p></li>
<li><p>Excellent applicants from top undergrads (3.7/36 with “decent” EC’s) and superstars from mediocore undergrads (3.9/39 with awesome EC’s)</p></li>
<li><p>Excellent applicants from mediocore undergrads (3.7/36 with good EC’s)</p></li>
</ol>
<h1>1 and #2 usually have a good chance of getting into a top 20 med school. #3 is what usually gets left out in the cold (although they typically end up at decent med schools anyway, just not JHU or Harvard).</h1>
<p>Of course, your chances of becoming #1, 2, 3 or even making it to the application stage is low and it’s likely you won’t ever take the MCAT or apply to med school.</p>
<p>If you want to be a doctor, then medical school prestige (ie Harvard and JHU) is not worth a lot, unless you plan on going into academic medicine. </p>
<p>If you just want to be a doctor, don’t go to a top medical school, you will be ****ing up your gpa, and may not be the superstar you were in high school.</p>
<p>haha I didn’t mean any offense to the OP. I just meant that most freshmen don’t make it past the second year of premed. For once, my comment was innocuous.</p>
<p>"haha I didn’t mean any offense to the OP. I just meant that most freshmen don’t make it past the second year of premed. For once, my comment was innocuous. "</p>
<p>The truth needs to be told… and what you said was it. Granted… I’d really like a mod to come by and start locking these types of repeat threads w a link to the last one so we could start from there instead of just going around in circles over and over again!</p>
<p>Norcal, I absolutely 100% disagree with your breakdown. Plus, you forgot that superstars also come from non prestigious undergrads. I know plenty of 40+ MCAT scorers with research patents and publications who came from public unis that weren’t wildly famous.</p>
<p>Yes, I see that I misread. However, I still disagree with #3 students not getting into top 20 schools. I know students from ASU with stats lower than that were accepted at Pitt, Vandy, Emory, UVA, U of Michigan, Mayo, etc. A 36/3.7 from anywhere is pretty competitive for a top 20 with good ECs. Now, I will agree that some of the top 10 appear to be a little more picky about pedigree, but that didn’t stop me and I most certainly don’t qualify as a #1 or 2 (to be fair, half of my class is Ivy League so perhaps there is a little bias at this school even against other top schools like MIT and JHU at this school). Others, such as WashU, the UCs, and UWash appear to be a little more spread out. The problem is that it is hard to prove this either way. Is it the prestige, the quality of the education, or the innate quality of the students? I vote in favor of mostly the latter. Going to Harvard might give you a boost, but I think it is not the prestige that does that. It’s the fact that, curve or no curve, kids going to Harvard probably would have better GPAs at less competitive schools. That’s one of the points of the MCAT. Schools look at the average applicant GPA and MCAT for a given school to help them better understand a given GPA. A school with an average applicant possessing a 3.9 and a 28 is clearly not as rigorous as a school with applicants averaging 3.6 and a 32.</p>
<p>"I just meant that most freshmen don’t make it past the second year of premed. For once, my comment was innocuous. "</p>
<p>I didn’t think it was that true, until I started school here.</p>
<p>I know a ton of people who have already quit being premed. And the first semester isn’t even over yet. I even know one girl who quit being premed after the first month of school…</p>
<p>I think you meant: “If you just want to be a doctor, don’t go to a top undergrad school, you will be ****ing up your gpa, and may not be the superstar you were in high school”? After all, GPA’s earned in med-school aren’t particularly meaningful for not only are many med-school classes are graded on a P/F basis, but also because it’s practically impossible to fail in med-school. </p>
<p>Now, if you did mean ‘undergrad’, I’m not sure I can agree with that either. With the important exception of the tech institutes, the top ranked schools not only tend to be relatively grade inflated, but, more importantly, also tend to be relatively grade nonstochastic. While it may be difficult to earn A’s at HYPS, it’s also practically impossible to get an F. George W. Bush and John Kerry have freely admitted to being conspicuously irresponsible and unmotivated students while at Yale, yet not only did they nevertheless both manage to graduate, they also never received a single F between them - and did so before the widespread Ivy grade inflation that began during the Vietnam draft. Lower-ranked schools are far more likely to hand out F’s. One of the most effective ways to disqualify yourself from serious med-school consideration is to have your transcript peppered with F’s.</p>
<p>mmmcdove, I agree with your post #11. I too know a State funded school which is not in the “top tier league” but has sent Deans list students with 37+ MCATs and decent ECs to New England Ivys.</p>
<p>Having seen their experiences, my conclusion is that it’s the combination of MCAT+GPA that gets your foot in the door. Thereafter, your ECs and your personality can reel you in. Therefore, I believe that students who may be from top Ivys but do not have the desired MCAT+GPA total for each med school do not even get invited to interviews. </p>
<p>So, I really believe that irrespective of the name of the institution, it’s the MCAT+GPA total that the Adcoms are looking for. And within this group of students, I think MCAT weighs far more than GPA in decision-making.</p>
<p>I am aware that most people do not make it past their second year in pre med but still if someone does so in a not so prestigious university, is it possible to get to a top med school?</p>
<p>I went to Arizona State University, so yes I have already proven to you that it is possible. I also have friends at Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, etc, etc. An Arizona State student just interviewed at my medical school Friday. I have also seen a ton of BYU students and students from other “non-prestigious” schools interviewing. Some of my friends here at medical school went to SUNY schools, U of Mississippi, etc. If you have the goods, someone will want to buy them.</p>
<p>No one has contradicted each other. Norcal and I both agree that it is possible for top students from unprestigious undergrads to get into top medical schools. We only differ on our belief of the difficulty of doing so.</p>