<p>Hey everyone. I am a freshmen starting at Yale this fall. I was wondering if it is better to take easier courses than harder courses when I know that I will do much better in easier classes. For example, Chem 113a is the easy General Chemistry while Chem 118a is the Advanced Chemistry. These are their official titles:</p>
<p>Chem 113a: Chemistry with Problem Solving
Chem 118a: Quantitative Foundations of General Chemistry</p>
<p>On my transcript will Medical Schools really know the difference? Its not like High School were they label Regular, Honors, or AP. </p>
<p>Also, I am double majoring in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and Political Science. I believe easier classes will allow for higher grades, a heavier load for double majoring, and more time for involvements. I will also have a job that may involve Emergency Medicine.</p>
<p>I also had the same question, except I already decided on a path so I can't change it now. I'm in the advanced chemistry sequence, and honestly I can say there really is a huge difference in the difficulty level of the two sequences (at my school anyway). And after realizing it was so much more work, some pre meds from our class went to the pre med advisor to ask if med schools will really give credit for having done the advanced as opposed to the regular sequence and if this was worth the effort and time--and she said no. I've personally wondered that too, how they'd know whether it's the advanced sequence or the regular sequence from the name of the course since it doesn't specify... but I guess I stuck with the advanced sequence because I still have a strand of faith that med schools -may- know</p>
<p>I'm going to be a rising senior in HS, and I'm looking at taking Organic Chemistry freshman year or even the summer after graduation. I would agree that Med. Schools defenitely look at GPA, and MCATs very important admission factor, considering that they don't really care how you got the GPA and what prestiges/rigorous school you went. Overall, advance courses give you the "edge" in being more smart, responsible and ready for the MCAT. I wouldn't recommend taken many advance/honor classes, since it wouldn't help you much in the admissions and are more likely to hurt you if you mess up.</p>
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I'm going to be a rising senior in HS, and I'm looking at taking Organic Chemistry freshman year or even the summer after graduation. I would agree that Med. Schools defenitely look at GPA, and MCATs very important admission factor, considering that they don't really care how you got the GPA and what prestiges/rigorous school you went. Overall, advance courses give you the "edge" in being more smart, responsible and ready for the MCAT. I wouldn't recommend taken many advance/honor classes, since it wouldn't help you much in the admissions and are more likely to hurt you if you mess up.
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<p>I hope by reading all these threads, you are not getting the impression that admission to medical schools do not care where you got your GPA and what pretiges/rigorous school you went. It does matter. Admission is very competitive and an 4.0 from a 3rd or 4th tier college will not offer you better chances than a say 3.6 from a top tier school.</p>
<p>I've written on another thread that my son's GF changed to premed at the end of her junior school and she wanted to take organic chemistry in the summer at her state school, University of West Virginia where it would have been cheaper than her college, University of Pennsylvania. Her advisor nixed the idea because it would seem that she was taking advantage of lesser competition and obviously her advisor thought an A from University of West Virginia was not equivalent to an A from Penn. Keep in mind, this is an advisor from Penn and knows a great deal about medical school admissions. Penn's medical school is ranked #4.</p>
<p>You said you wanted to take organic chemisry in your freshman year , but I think you have to take general chemistry first before you could take organic chemistry.</p>
<p>1.) Readers should remember that most definitions of a third-tier school on CC are not "third-tier" schools in the USN sense.</p>
<p>2.) Of course school matters some, but it's unclear how much and I'd probably argue that a 4.0 vs. a 3.6 is perhaps more than branding can overcome, certeris paribus.</p>
<p>3.) Being a student at a third-tier school (which is probably a mild to moderate setback; "doing well is a panacea") is different from being a student at a top-few school and taking classes at a third-tier school, which runs the risk of being seen as (in addition to actually being) a cop-out and may well be a quite serious setback.</p>
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<p>I would continue to urge you to remember that sometimes "harder"/more advanced classes are graded on a more generous curve.</p>
<p>"Admission is very competitive and an 4.0 from a 3rd or 4th tier college will not offer you better chances than a say 3.6 from a top tier school."</p>
<p>Any proof of this?</p>
<p>I think, generally, taking orgo freshman year or before freshman year is a terrible idea.</p>
<p>I also am not a fan of honors gen chem. Took it at my college. Came away with an A/B and nothing in the semester I got a B in was relevant to the MCAT. Take it if you are genuinely interested in chemistry but don't expect it to help in med school applications.</p>
<p>Again again again, this is all school-specific advice. My school has an easier freshman-only section for organic chemistry; in that case, it makes sense to take it as a freshman. Etc.</p>
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"Admission is very competitive and an 4.0 from a 3rd or 4th tier college will not offer you better chances than a say 3.6 from a top tier school."</p>
<p>Any proof of this?
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<p>A girl, who just graduated from Tufts Medical, had just a 3.0 from MIT. She was accepted by 2 medical schools. Can you show me someone with such a low GPA and who attended a 3rd tier school gaining acceptance to any medical school?</p>
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[quote]
Being a student at a third-tier school (which is probably a mild to moderate setback; "doing well is a panacea") is different from being a student at a top-few school and taking classes at a third-tier school, which runs the risk of being seen as (in addition to actually being) a cop-out and may well be a quite serious setback.
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<p>This argument runs contrary to the notion that an "A" is an "A" from any school. Can we suggest that a student going to a lesser school and taking less competitive classes is also a cop-out?</p>
<p>While some would disagree, I would point you to the following PDF. That should answer some of your questions. Pay special attention to Myths #9-11</p>
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Admission is very competitive and an 4.0 from a 3rd or 4th tier college will not offer you better chances than a say 3.6 from a top tier school.
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<p>I wish this was true, but like norcalguy said, I would also like to see some proof of this, and I have never found any. In a perfect world, med-school adcoms would realize that a school such as, say, MIT, is extremely difficult and would accordingly compensate for its difficult grading scheme by admitting MIT premeds with grades that are lower than that of premeds from other schools. We don't live in a perfect world. The GPA's of admitted MIT premeds are approximately the same as the GPA's of admitted premeds from other schools. While I can't prove this, I think there is little dispute that, in terms of med-school admissions, a guy with a 4.0/4.0 GPA from a no-name fourth-tier school is better off than a guy from MIT who has a 2.0/4.0 GPA, even though the 2 guys may be equivalently talented and hard working. That's just the nature of MIT's grading and workload.</p>
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A girl, who just graduated from Tufts Medical, had just a 3.0 from MIT. She was accepted by 2 medical schools. Can you show me someone with such a low GPA and who attended a 3rd tier school gaining acceptance to any medical school?
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<p>The average admitted MIT premed had a 3.7/4.0 GPA. If med-schools were really compensating for MIT's difficulty, you would expect this number to be a lot lower (i.e. med-schools would be admitted more MIT premeds who had relatively low GPA's). </p>
<p>You also ask if we know somebody who got in from a lower-tier school with low grades. So I just poked around on the MDApplicants website (<a href="http://www.mdapplicants.com)%5B/url%5D">http://www.mdapplicants.com)</a>, and I notice a white male from BU who had a 2.85 GPA, who got into 9 medical schools, including Tufts and NYU. Granted, BU isn't a 'third-tier' school, but it's ranked lower than MIT. His saving grace seemed to be his 39 MCAT score.</p>
<p>I see another girl on the site who got a 2.8 from Williams College, and a 27 total MCAT, and got into 4 med-schools, including Tufts and BU. However, I should probably add that she is African-American. </p>
<p>Look, if you can break out a cracker-jack MCAT score, like the BU guy did, or if you are a URM, you can get into med-school with relatively weak grades. But the statistics show that on average, MIT premeds have to do just as well as the premeds from any other school.</p>
<p>From the website you posted, the accepted applicants' grade range was also from 3.0 to 4.0 while the rejected GPA was from 2.6 to 3.6. Medical admissions vary just like college admissions, if you have a hook that can compensate lower grades, that's all you need. But you never know whether that hook would work. You gave me a website that listed graduates in 2005. This girl I know graduated from MIT in 2000. She was not a URM and worked at a medical research lab for one year after graduation before applying. Each year the stats vary.</p>
<p>When I graduated from college in the 1970's, the admission rate to medical schools hovered around 33%. In the mid 1990's when a lot of people went into computer science, the admission rate went as high as 60%. Last year, it was about 46%. As we see more companies cutting costs outsourcing technical and manufacturing overseas, I see admission rate decreasing because an unemployed physician is afterall an oxymoron.</p>
<p>1.) Again, going to Penn and taking your summer classes at WVU is worse (more bad) than actually being a student at WVU, although the latter is certainly not an advantage. The question revolves around choice: going to a school may well be for financial or admissions reasons; going to Penn and "copping out" is more clearly a conscious avoidance choice.</p>
<p>2.) Nobody is arguing that an A is an A no matter where it's from; but a 3.6 vs. a 4.0 is a very large gap.</p>
<h1>1. I going to complete 14 AP's and I already have some credit for the courses. Since I completed AP biology, and I'm going to complete AP Chem. AP Physic, etc. What other classes do you recommend me to enroll during the freshman year? Wouldn't I be reasonably ready to enroll into organic chem?</h1>
<h1>2. Read this post. A girl from Cornell University, GPA: 4.00, and MCAT of 42. <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=186756&highlight=rejected%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=186756&highlight=rejected</a> If you planning to apply to med. school, a student required the to have the "whole package," such as great recommendations, extra. activi., etc. Although I agree med. schools are claiming to consider GPA and MCAT as an "important" admission's factor, there are always exceptions to how someone "got in." Thus, just because your going to ivy league won't necessary gurantee a student admissions, but it helps a little, depending what med. school one would apply. Moreover, if a student graduates from "average" college/university/tech. school, this doesn't necessarly discourage admissions to a medical school. Overall folks, if you really want to be a doctor and follow the passions that drivees you in school, eliminate your bad habits and study hard, it's a simple process. The admissions people are only human as well, and they will also judge you by the way you present yourself in the interview.</h1>
<h1>3. If you ask me, med. school admissions can be random, depending where you apply of course. But with all honestly, focus hard on grades, demonstrate research skills (do actually interesting research projects, don't just clean the equiptment and say you did research). A world of advice, depending what medical field one would enter into, some doctors do some diagnosis and treatments for patients in which research is recommended. Participate in extracurriclar activities you really like, an honor society and maybe a sport or play an musical instrument (not many though). There are always methods of getting around med. school admissions, such as if you enrolled an extra year or two at undergraduate school and did more research, traveled and helped people in need, and more likely to get in with an average GPA and MCAT score by demonstrating that maturity and passion for the medical field.</h1>
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From the website you posted, the accepted applicants' grade range was also from 3.0 to 4.0 while the rejected GPA was from 2.6 to 3.6. Medical admissions vary just like college admissions, if you have a hook that can compensate lower grades, that's all you need. But you never know whether that hook would work. You gave me a website that listed graduates in 2005. This girl I know graduated from MIT in 2000. She was not a URM and worked at a medical research lab for one year after graduation before applying. Each year the stats vary.
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<p>The stats vary, but they don't vary that much. Somebody with a 2.0/4.0 GPA is probably not going to get into any med school. </p>
<p>Furthermore, nobody is arguing that a hook is important. Of course it is. However, you can develop that hook at a no-name school. Going to a top school does not guarantee that you will develop a hook. In fact, a school like MIT may actually work against your developing a hook for the simple reason that you may be forced to spend so much time studying there just to pass your classes that you won't have time to develop a hook. Obviously some exceptional MIT students are able to make the time to build that hook, but one could then argue that that student would have also been able to do so at a no-name school.</p>
<p>The point is, I still don't see why you say that 4.0 at a lesser school is worse for you than getting a 3.6 at a top school. The discussion of a hook is irrelevant, because that is something that exists independently of grades. Somebody who goes to a top school may have no hook. Somebody who goes to a no-name school may have a great hook.</p>
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When I graduated from college in the 1970's, the admission rate to medical schools hovered around 33%. In the mid 1990's when a lot of people went into computer science, the admission rate went as high as 60%.
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<p>In which year in the mid 90's was the rate as high as 60%?</p>
<p>According to the AAMC data, the number of acceptees has consistently been about 17,500. The year in the 90's that is on record as having the least number of applicants was 1992 with 37402 applicants. {No data exists for 1990 or 1991, but I wouldn't exactly deem those years to be part of the "mid-90's".}. That means that the admit rate in 1992 was about 46%. During 1995, 46586 people applied, with a 37% admit rate. In no year during the 90's do I see the admit rate ever reaching 60%. Heck, it never even exceeded 50% during all the years on record. </p>
<p>In fact, the data shows that, if anything, the admit rate actually DECREASED during the computer tech boom. That is because a surge of new people applied during the mid 90's. It was not until the year 2000 that admit rate actually recovered to the level that was seen in the year 1992.</p>
<p>"A girl, who just graduated from Tufts Medical, had just a 3.0 from MIT. She was accepted by 2 medical schools. Can you show me someone with such a low GPA and who attended a 3rd tier school gaining acceptance to any medical school?"</p>
<p>That's not proof. That's an anecdote. </p>
<p>And you are not arguing that a 3.0 from state school is equivalent to a 3.0 from an Ivy League school. You are arguing that a 3.4 from a state school is equivalent to a 3.0 from an Ivy League school. The difference of 0.4 is rather sizable. I don't see where you can make the assertion that the prestige of a college can make up for such a large deficit in GPA.</p>
<p>Sakky,the site you showed (or I showed you in another thread)only represented the statistics from AMCAS, American Medical College Application Service. Only 117 out of 125 accredited medical schools participate in AMCAS. You are not getting the whole picture from those statistics. How do I know, it was approaching 60%? During that time, a close friend's daughter was applying to medical schools and we were advising her and paid close attention to any information pertaining to admissions. Both my husband and I read medical journals almost daily and we form our opinions from articles we read. How about you? Any personal experience?</p>