<p>I agree that MIT has the potential to pump out lots of pre-meds, but it depends how much of the school is engineering and intends to work as engineers. Harvard has about 1.5 times the number of undergrads that MIT does, so you would expect MIT to have about 200, not 130 applicants. The question is, does the reason they have less due to the fact that engineers are overrepresented and pre-meds underrepresented, or due to the fact that there is a larger amount of self selection due to poor grades?</p>
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<p>I’m not saying that a 75% rate is bad in the grand scheme of things - indeed, it is better than that national average, which is around 50%.</p>
<p>But it is bad in the context of MIT, for let’s face it, these are some of the very best technically-oriented students in the world, giving nothing away to peer schools such as Harvard. Yet at the end of the day, Harvard can boast of an over 90% admit rate. </p>
<p>So, sure, if you want to argue that MIT is better than the average school for premed, then I think nobody would dispute that point. I would also certainly agree that MIT is better than Berkeley for premed, as I have stated on other threads that Berkeley premeds seem to suffer especially. However, MIT is supposed to better than the average school and also supposed to be better than Berkeley. MIT is supposed to be one of the best schools in the world, in addition to being one of the most rigorous.</p>
<p>Yet the med-school adcoms don’t seem to agree. Either that, or they don’t seem to care. Like I said, I suspect that somebody earning a 3.1/4 GPA in engineering at MIT and hence being rejected from med-school would have almost certainly earned far higher grades and hence gotten into med-school if they had simply chosen an easier major at an easier school. But the med-schools don’t seem to care about that. </p>
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<p>I would argue that that actually makes MIT look even worse by comparison. To be fair, Harvard is a bigger school: 6500 students vs. 4000 at MIT. Nevertheless, the ratios indicate that more self-selection happens at MIT - yet MIT still suffers from a lower admit rate. </p>
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<p>Unfortunately, we don’t have the data to know that for certain. However, we can certainly surmise that, given MIT’s high overall percentage of engineering students, that MIT’s premed applicant pool almost certainly consists of a greater proportion of engineers than do the premed pools from almost any other school. For example, surely there are far more MIT engineers applying to med-school than there are Harvard engineers applying to med-school, for the simple reason that there are only a tiny number of Harvard engineers in the first place. </p>
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<p>You are correct - the MIT General Institute Requirements that are required by all students cover most of the premed requirements. Yet the fact remains that MIT produces a surprisingly low number of med-school applicants. Much of the reason is likely due to the fact that many MIT students receive poor grades and hence don’t even apply to med-school for they know they won’t get in.</p>
<p>As I mentioned in my previous post, the question is if the reason that MIT pumps out less than the proportional amount of pre-meds (when compared to Harvard) due to self selection by MIT students, or the fact that more engineers means less pre-meds (after all, most engineering students want to be engineers not doctors).</p>
<p>As far as the 75% acceptance rate being too low for MIT, I don’t think that we can say that. Someone at MIT scored a 23 on the MCAT. Regardless of where they went, they weren’t likely to get into medical school. We see that someone with a 36 also got rejected, but we don’t know if that was due to their GPA. We just don’t have enough information to say that the reason MIT students below a 3.2 didn’t get into medical school was solely because of their hard engineering major (or even due to engineering at all, we don’t know that they were engineers) Does Harvard boast a 90% acceptance rate? I couldn’t find it.</p>
<p>I’m still looking for proof that MIT is grade deflated. Mollie had some stats which showed that MIT is very generous with A’s after freshman year. In fact, many schools reputed to be grade inflated (Cornell, Swarthmore, etc.) are actually not when you look at the actual statistics.</p>
<p>Medical schools seem to treat MIT as if it’s inflated, for some reason. The metrics I have (again, law school applicants) argue that it’s extremely deflated.</p>
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<p>It’s actually close to 95%. Unfortunately, they don’t publish that info publicly, but if you don’t trust me, you can ask a Harvard undergrad to verify the stat folders that the Harvard premed House advisors maintain. </p>
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<p>We are comparing MIT to a regularly ‘balanced’ school of which Harvard can serve as a stand-in. The issue then is not whether most engineering students would rather be engineers rather than doctors, for the same is true of every major other than biology: the typical humanities major doesn’t want to be a doctor either. </p>
<p>The real question is, who is more likely to want to be a doctor - a humanities major or an engineering major, and I suspect it is the latter, not least of which is the fact that engineers complete many of the premed requirements as an inherent part of their major. Hence, it is not much more work for them to finish the rest. Compare that to a humanities major for whom the entire premed sequence poses an additional burden. MIT probably has just as few humanities students as Harvard has engineering students. </p>
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<p>Sure we can, because we can use MIT’s peer schools as proxies. When schools like Harvard , Yale, and Princeton can boast of 90+% admit rates, despite the fact that there is little discernable difference in quality amongst the student bodies, and MIT is only ~75%, then clearly something is amiss, with the difference in grading standard being the most likely culprit.</p>
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<p>Again, the issue is about relative grade inflation, which means that the real issue is whether MIT students suffer from grade deflation relative to peer schools. MIT students are obviously some of the most technically competent students in the world, so one would expect them to earn high grades simply by that fact alone.</p>
<p>[Harvard[/url</a>]</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/yale.html]Yale”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/yale.html]Yale</a> University](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html]Harvard[/url”>Harvard)</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/MIT.html]MIT[/url”>MIT]MIT[/url</a>]</p>
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<p>Yeah, but what about that freshman MIT year? That is precisely the time when savvy premeds at other schools could be racking up strings of easy A’s. </p>
<p>Heck, mollie herself has freely admitted that her MIT grades were relatively subpar, including some C’s, and she could have almost certainly gotten higher grades had she gone to an easier school (and she wasn’t even an engineer). Nor should this be taken as a shot at mollie - as I have never hesitated to deem her one of the most brilliant graduates from MIT in recent history. But she’s living proof of what I’m talking about: even a brilliant student at MIT can wind up with relatively unimpressive grades.</p>
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<p>Actually I don’t think this is it, or at least this isn’t ALL of it. Penn students who go to medical school have on average a 3.35 or so; MIT students have a 3.75 or so.</p>
<p>If the difference in grading standards was the only difference, MIT kids would get in with an average of 3.35, there would just be a lot fewer of them. There has to be something else at play as well.</p>
<p>(By the way, according to the limited data I’ve seen, Penn is the 5th hardest school in the country and MIT is second. Spots #1, #3, and #4 are the military academies.)</p>
<p>In the past, sakky’s answer has been that it’s probably EC’s and that it boils back down to grade inflation, since MIT kids have to work harder to earn the same grades and have less time. But that can’t be it either – unless we’re willing to assume that MIT kids are also insanely poor strategists. If that was the difference, then they should be willing to sacrifice 0.4 GPA points to rack up some extra EC’s, to the equilibrium point. But they’re not.</p>
<p>“We are comparing MIT to a regularly ‘balanced’ school of which Harvard can serve as a stand-in. The issue then is not whether most engineering students would rather be engineers rather than doctors, for the same is true of every major other than biology: the typical humanities major doesn’t want to be a doctor either”</p>
<p>You are assuming that the drain of students in terms of major comes from majors besides biological sciences ones rather than biology and other pre-med favorites being proportionally decreased at MIT. Most likely, MIT has a decreased proportion of biological sciences majors as well, which would account for a decrease (assuming that bio scie majors are the most common major for pre-meds and they are).</p>
<p>Whether Humanities is more common than Engineering I do not know. 2000 applicants were humanities majors in 08. Unfortunately, engineering doesn’t have its own section and I’m not even sure if it would fall under Other or Physical sciences. Also, it isn’t a matter of being most likely, but the one who puts out the most pre-med applicants. If you are half as likely to go pre-med, but there twice as many of you in general, then the rate of pre-med production is the same on both sides.</p>
<p>[AAMC:</a> FACTS Table 18: MCAT and GPAs for Applicants and Matriculants by Undergraduate Major](<a href=“http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpabymaj08.htm]AAMC:”>http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2008/mcatgpabymaj08.htm)</p>
<p>Once again we don’t know that its MIT’s engineering majors that are dropping their pre-med acceptance rates. Since we don’t know, we could go around in circles debating this.</p>
<p>Although there may be no single factor that influences MIT’s medical school admission rate, I would like to propose a couple of theories (which can not be proved of course):</p>
<p>1) The fact that MIT is an engineering school implies that the MIT kids have an extra burden to prove to the adcoms that they are more interested in getting into medicine than the engineering.</p>
<p>2) MIT kids may be overly obsessed with the grades as compared to other kids from other schools. MIT (as well as Caltech, to a lesser extent, CMU) tends to attract most science/engineering kids who may have a big ego in getting the best grades from the best science/engineering school, because they may perceive themselves the best class in this area. They pay too much attention to the grades in science classes at the expense of others – This may be the case even before these kids get into MIT. (This attitude may also be the reason why they are interested in going to MIT and get into MIT successfully in the first place.)</p>
<p>3) It is well-known that Caltech and, to a slightly less extent, MIT, do not play much role in “social engineering” in their college admission. This may result in a less diversified student population. This is not a good environment for nurturing premeds. After all, because a future doctor needs to take care of patients from a well-diversified population, no medical school (and likely law school) would like to admit too many students from a less diversified population.</p>
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<p>Highly unlikely: Biology is the most popular non-engineering major at MIT, and in fact is 3rd most popular major overall. I believe the percentage of MIT bio students is comparable to that of its peer schools. </p>
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<p>But what we can’t go around debating is the simple fact that schools like MIT produces a lower number of premed applicants and a significant lower percentage who are admitted than do peer schools such as HYP. Those are the facts, and something must explain those facts.</p>
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<p>Which is what I’ve been saying all along, and is consistent with the generally accepted notion that med-school adcoms care more about grades themselves than about the ‘quality’ of the grades. Meaning a 4.0 in Leisure Studies from a cheesepuff community college really does beat a 3.0 in Quantum Engineering from the Incomprehensible Institute of Technology. </p>
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<p>That then begs the question of why MIT students would be more obsessed with grades than would students from peer schools - after all, I think we can agree that Harvard students would also seem to be quite obsessed with grades, and more importantly, that premeds at any school, or at least the stronger premeds, tend to be obsessed with grades.</p>
<p>If MIT students are more obsessed with grades than are students at peer schools, I would argue simply that that’s because it’s hard for them to get good grades. You’re always going to be thinking about food if you’re starving. </p>
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<p>And I would connect that back to the grading environment once again. It isn’t merely a matter of who you admit, it’s also what you can learn at a school like MIT, and MIT is located in one of the most dynamic college environments in the world, where you can learn a wide variety of social skills. Heck, MIT itself runs one of the world’s most successful business schools, and business success is largely about schmoozing and networking. </p>
<p>Yet, if MIT premeds have not developed adequate social skills, I would argue that that’s a result of your points #2 (and #1) above: they don’t have the time to develop them because they’re constantly distracted by their grades. Like I said, when you’re starving, you don’t have the time to worry about how your hair and makeup look, as you’re constantly thinking about food.</p>
<p>This sounds like speculation on your part. 3rd most common could mean mean basically anything under 33%, all the way down to under 1%. Same goes for the HYP. I just don’t know the numbers of bio majors and engineering majors at HYPM, so I can’t agree or disagree with you.</p>
<p>What I do agree with you is there must be a reason for MIT students for having a much lower acceptance rate than HYP (assuming that you are correct that they have a 90+% acceptance rate, and I do trust that you are telling what you believe is the truth, but I wouldn’t be satisfied entirely without seeing the unaltered stats myself. Since I can’t get those, I am satisfied with your knowledge of it). However, I don’t think overabundance of engineering majors, hard grading, non-engineering majors, low ecs, etc etc can be proven with what we know, and I’m just suggesting that we accept that. I have enjoyed this debate though, its so hard to find someone online who doesn’t start insulting your mother when he finds out you aren’t on the same page as him. I will give you that I agree that engineering overabundance is the most likely cause for MITs drop, assuming there is a drop, in acceptance rates just from my own experience with engineers and low GPAs. (I wouldn’t have given up my 4.0 from my party school for a 3.7 at any college or uni).</p>
<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>
<p>I agree, I know a lot of pre-meds that have decided to go for BA degrees rather than BS, because it gives them more time to do ECs and they get a better GPA for it anyways. The only advantage in taking hard majors and hard classes is if you do as well as most people in easier ones. Then you have demonstrated a superiority in academics while not hurting the adcom’s precious rankings.</p>
<p>You (& parents & others) have decided that your intended major(s) has more rigor. So the problem is that adcoms do not have the same view, or are unwilling to give extra weight to BME courses. Perhaps this from the Princeton Review will add perspective. “We can’t overestimate the value of a Classics major. Check this out: according to Association of American Medical Colleges, students who major or double-major in Classics have a better success rate getting into medical school than do students who concentrate solely in biology, microbiology, and other branches of science. Crazy, huh?”</p>
<p>Having done history, dance, and biochemistry, I will vouch that science majors are harder in general, so its the second thing that is true and what we have been saying. Adcoms don’t give (enough) extra weight to harder majors.</p>
<p>What about other double majors, do Classics double majors have a better acceptance rate than those? What about other literature double majors? What about a minor and a major? Music majors tend to also have a higher acceptance rate as well, but this could be for a lot of reasons. Grades, uniqueness, self selection, etc. Same considerations apply to Classics double majors. There’s just not enough data available to make a solid conclusion.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that “overall” doesn’t mean “everywhere”. Some medical schools have 80+% science majors in their student body. Others, like Yale, are as low as 50%. Clearly majoring in music or classics is not necessarily what every medical school is looking for.</p>
<p>Biology is likely the top 3-4 largest major at most of these schools that were discussed there. At one of the schools, 7.6 % of the class are traditional bio majors (excluding biochemistry - as mmmcdowe taught me not long ago: biochemistry is chemistry, not biology :-))</p>
<p>Regarding what sakky said “they don’t have the time to develop them because they’re constantly distracted by their grades”, I tend to believe there may be some truth in this. Even at many other schools, it is likely that many premeds dare not enjoy the club activities (unless it is medicine-related ECs) as freely as most non-premeds, because, as it was once posted on this board, premeds had better keep an eye, maybe even two eyes, on their GPAs. If a premed student is forced to compete with the physics/engineering student at MIT (I am not sure if this is true though, that is, I am not sure whether they have a physics class for premed – I think this may be the reason why the grade for freshmen at MIT is much lower), s/he may worry about the grade to the extent that s/he may ignore the development of other areas that are also important for a successful premed.</p>
<p>I know this is anecdotal: it appears that there are more premed students at Stanford who take physics at some state schools in summer. It may be no coincident that: 1) the engineering at Stanford is quite good (esp., their graduate school). 2) The GPA requirement for a California kid/resident is much higher. If a premed even needs to take a pre-req elsewhere, how can s/he spend a lot of time on joining clubs to develop his/her wholeness?</p>
<p>A million dollars question is: As a premed, is it more important to develop a person as a whole, in both science/academic and social skills/well roundedness? There may also be some truth that the medical profession prefers somebody who is more than a science nerd. There is a joke that goes like this: An engineering school needs to hire a fun czar in order to help organize an activity - because the students there lack this kind of experience, and they do not have enough time/opportunity to develop this.</p>
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<p>No, they would both get rejected.</p>
<p>^ I agree that both will be rejected. IMHO, sakky was so eager to highlight his point that he overdid it. I think most of us agree that the major needs to be a reasonably respectable one in term of its academic strength, and the student needs to do reasonably well on that kind of major. </p>
<p>An applicant does not need a 4.0 in order to be a successful premed. An analogy is that a competitive applicant to college does not need to have 2400 SAT. Some even said that as long as your GPA (or SAT) exceeds some threshold, you really do not get many brownie points by getting a perfect score.</p>
<p>Also, not all humanity majors are cakewalk. Actually, I think that very often the students who are naturally good at sciences are not good at humanities. Many science majors do not enjoy writing one paper after another in a non-stop way like those humanity majors have to do/endure. Also, the test scores in a humanity class are often a very insignificant part of your final grade (if there is any test at all; most do not have one); this often does not appeal to many premeds as they may feel insecure about what the professor’s (arguably somewhat subjective) evaluation of his/her paper is.</p>
<p>However, it is often mentioned that some (but not all) “XYZ study” major tends to be an easier major and I do not know whether there is some truth in this.</p>