<p>MIT engineering was simply being used as an example to illustrate the general point that grades matter more so than does the difficulty of the underlying coursework. As an example, Caltech, which is a less engineering-centric school than is MIT, is also widely understood - even within the Caltech student body itself - as being a suboptimal choice for aspiring premeds because of the difficulty of the coursework and, in particular, the grading. On the other hand, schools with high grading does seem to be correlated with high premed success, controlling for average MCAT scores. </p>
<p>What that then means is that med-school adcoms, sadly, don’t really seem to care that some schools and some majors are more difficult than others. They just want to see high grades, and don’t really care how you get them, the implication being that you should cherry-pick easy courses. Sad but true.</p>