Dfb wasn’t referring to premed but the pool.
Not that black and white, DAP. Some programs are intentionally cooperative, not brutal weeders. And some weeders are tough in all the intro math-sci courses. Not all are taken as first semester freshmen.
Chemistry and organic chemistry seem to be where a lot of dreams of med school (and engineering degree) go to die.
I don’t believe I’ve ever hired someone from Bakersfield- regardless of the discipline. At least I don’t recall.
It’s not a school I know, but if an appropriate comparison is Baruch (one of the CUNY colleges) or Rowan (in NJ) or Stonehill (in MA) or Xavier in Cincinnati… all schools I’ve hired from in my career- the answer is “it depends”. Depends on the company and the role; depends on the resume; depends on a lot of factors besides the major.
You can easily look at the recruiting calendar on the careers website of a particular college to see which companies actually recruit there. High probability that if they’ve hired there in the past, they will continue to do so in the future. I’m always happy to see resumes from BYU even if the company isn’t currently sending a team there to interview- particularly if there are some wonky roles overseas that have been tough to fill. LDS kids in general will go anywhere, and since most of them have developed language fluency during their mission years, they don’t all ask, “Why are you sending me to Manchester (UK) instead of Paris?” So it doesn’t mean that if a company isn’t sending a team to campus- that you can’t get hired from that company. Maybe they’ve trimmed their projected numbers for the year and so your campus got knocked off the schedule, but they are still happy to see resumes from your school.
However, I’m not saying that the particular school doesn’t matter. It does. It matters much more than the “it doesn’t matter where you go as long as it’s cheap” crowd believes, and it matters less than the “I’d sell a kidney to pay for Duke” crowd believes. And for some kids- it will matter a whole lot- because the peer group is particularly important, and for some kids it might not matter much.
But not every kid needs to major in STEM to be employable-even in a lucrative career- which was my point to Canuck guy many posts ago. That is demonstrably not true, as thousands of philosophy, art history, and classics majors can attest.
Regarding the “what doctor do you choose” conversation -
I think people have convincingly made the point that primarily judging a doctor by what undergraduate college they went to is stupid.
But if it were something serious and it were my family, here’s what I’d do -
I’d go see and get opinions from at least two, possibly three, excellent doctors. Because doctors are often dealing with very tricky issues and they are far from infallible. I don’t care what schools they went to or what experience they have or how hard the pre-med classes are (and please spare me, they’re not that hard).
So even when your doctor is great you’ve still got to get multiple opinions in order to figure out what the best diagnosis and treatment plan is. Two or three heads (even non-Ivy heads 
) are often better than one.
That sounds ideal, @alsimon, but if your insurance requires a referral for specialists (and isn’t going to pay for more than one or two) or you need an emergency procedure, it’s not always that easily done.
We tend to find our physicians (and surgeons) through the referrals of other health professionals we trust. For the most part, it’s worked well. Not gonna lie, I look to see where they went to medical school and did their residencies, but beyond that, I really don’t care where they were educated. Granted, even with very low complication rates, if your family member is the one or two percent with a bad outcome, it’s not much of a consolation.
When you’re considering heart surgery (or any other major procedure), what you want is a surgeon with a lot of experience doing the specific procedure you require. The more procedures, the better the outcomes, generally. At least that’s how I understand it.
Sorry if this has already been answered but how does the study define most selective? Because if schools like Tufts, Brandeis, Wesleyan, and Middlebury (all great schools but not ivies or “top 20”) are included in the most selective category then differences in earnings between most selective and the next category would be expected.
Middlebury and Wesleyan are top 20 LACs.
I went back to check and they did use the Barron’s selectivity ranking of “most competitive” as their “elite” category, which includes about 70 schools. Obviously, the list goes far beyond the Ivies, and includes several schools that are rarely discussed at all around here (Rose-Hulman and TCNJ, for example), as well as schools that are more likely to be “high-match” than “reach” schools in most chance threads (URoc, Davidson, Reed). It doesn’t help that the author of the article makes the same mistake, taking data based on the difference between Barron’s “most competitive” schools vs. others and summarizing it in the next paragraph by using “Ivies” as a shorthand for “most competitive.”
@EllieMom thanks for the clarification. If they used ~70 schools, Im actually shocked at how minimal the differences the earnings are between the “70” schools and the other schools.
Why are you shocked? Outside of a few fields, top school and “lesser” school grads work side by side and get paid according to performance. This is just the way of the world in most fields.
@wildcatttt, likely a spouse? You know what age people marry at these days?
And yes, different friends at different schools, though like tends to gravitate to like. You could argue that that may be a problem at a small non-elite LAC with a small population, but there are big numbers of all types at a big uni that isn’t very far down the rankings.
It’s rather provincial to think the “closest public U” is filled only with local kids with only a 30 minute perspective. Or that growth ends with the college degree, they settle down and that’s that. Rather old fashioned, too. Many of us agree our kids can and should experience a new environment. But there’s a better way to word it than a put down.
@PurpleTitan : I think they care in theory, but with high application numbers, especially if you are receiving them from out of state (as many medical schools will, because some states simply do not have enough medical school seats, like in Georgia where I am from. You’ll get many more applying outside of those states), it is kind of hard to know what the fluff STEM courses are and who fluff instructors are. In the case of a private medical school receiving many applications from the associated undergraduate institution, there may be some inside knowledge and adcoms may be aware of some patterns to sift through most of those who seem statistically qualified, but I doubt that can happen with schools receiving apps from elsewhere.
What I am highlighting is that it is difficult to differentiate. Students could either a) take different sets of STEM courses on top of the pre-reqs, b) take the pre-reqs at different levels (maybe one student at the same school took pre-reqs at honors level consistently and it was indeed significantly more challenging in terms of cognitive complexity). or c) Same classes, night and day instructors (with students being aware. Students aren’t just stumbling upon instructors who are below average rigor wise). And trust me, the latter happens. With high application volume, there is likely no mechanism to compare among students to that level of detail either within the school they are applying from or between say, elite schools (where yes, to the surprise of many, there are differences). If one is the student to take the risk, it may be better to ensure that the instructor cares for effort and will become a mentor and write a glowing rec. letter even if the student isn’t an A student for the course (as in they should other desirable traits and did pretty well considering the difficulty). There are some strategies to help if one isn’t the super brilliant student who can take who and what they want, but there are of course limitations.
Interestingly, apparently top law schools do keep data on the schools that tend to send many applications, however I’m sure top law schools don’t have a comparable level of application volume.
At some schools the “baseline” rigor is okay, but many courses (especially the pre-reqs) at some elites are really just “standard” and the problem is the level of competition, because “standard” means that the class is comparatively easy to the average performer at said school. This means no curve and little room for error, but it doesn’t mean many will necessarily struggle to get a very solid numerical score on assessments (hw, exams, etc) of say 80 or so. However, if the standard level was given elsewhere, it may have to be put on a curve grading scheme. The issue comes in when stronger and more rigorous instructors have assessments consistently between 50-75 or so and some students take them. The B-/B of that course will have to think and generally study much more than the standard level course but they’ll look the same on the transcript. Again, in the best case scenario, these types of instructors are also the mentoring types who will write a motivated and intellectually sincere average performer a rec. letter (whereas I notice most standard level instructors tend to reserve them basically for A/A-).
If any STEM(or whatever) student decides to challenge themselves academically at higher than normal levels, I strongly advise them to treat each course as an experience and do more than work to make the grade. Instead, if possible, actually interact with, impress, and receive mentoring from said faculty. In such a case, it can pay off in terms of personal development AND future prospects assuming you do a solid job in the courses.
You play the card that I’m damn near an expert in lol.
Students don’t find something like ochem easy. I’ll admit that. The point is, some ochem instructors make higher than normal demands in an already challenging subject and that students can self-select for instructors that require a lower level command of material where Items on exams and HW are mainly the bottom portion of Bloom’s Taxonomy or they can select for those who incorporate more or many more items that are in the middle. In stronger chemistry programs, instructors will often employ items that use the top of the taxonomy a lot.
Compare the cognitive complexity of items seen here from the same school (both of these instructors usually teach at the same time):
http://as.vanderbilt.edu/chemistry/Rizzo/chem220a/Exam_1.pdf
Another instructor (sometimes teaches in same semester as that guy): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BenFHM19md1AtNkE/view?usp=sharing
The items in the second exam, speaking as a tutor and discussion section leader of this stuff, has more complex items (if not significantly)
Let us not compare either of these to some other elite schools with larger and stronger undergraduate chemistry programs.
It is a department by department and school by school thing, but students who take some instructors will have to think harder than those taking others and will struggle more for a certain score. Everyone knows about such differences between instructors. Students comment about the second instructor: “harder than other sections, requires more problem solving”. The first person mainly requires memorization/very low level problem solving. Their class is standard level and the bottom one is slightly above (they are different variants of “standard” level).
Just because generally students find ochem hard does not mean all ochem instructors are equally difficult whether between schools or within the school. Plus ochem is one of those courses that has kind of a ridiculous reputation because people have likely been trained to not study for it properly in their general chemistry courses (which despite sometimes being harder than AP, still mostly require algorithmic and plug and chug problem solving). Ochem uses a different logic to approach chemistry that was not as emphasized (or done correctly) in most general chemistry courses. Some educators, for example, find little correlation between say, scores in general chemistry, and the ability for students to draw Lewis Structures at the beginning of ochem.
@dfbdfb : Interestingly, I picked up on that trend as well. At more selective schools, it appears intermediate and advanced courses are less consistently rigorous vs. those at less selective schools. However, when comparing a selective/very selective university versus say a “competitive” university with decently strong students (lets say 1200+ or 1300+ average), they all seem to have weedout mentality at the introductory level and often give rise to what I consider “standard level” STEM courses. There are many elites that take the intro courses (the very lowest level allowed to be taken by a STEM major that is) to another level kind of adjusting for the fact that there may be those with AP credit taking it banking on an easy A instead of moving on to the next level or sitting the course out. The weeder system is intense enough that many instructors for intro. levels are making even those with experience break a sweat (they may break a sweat anyway because many such students are over-confident and work less as result and end up screwing up an exam).
My previous post was based, half in jest, on the Eric Eide study I posted. Here is what I was responding to, as reported in the WSJ:
“We reached that conclusion after analyzing a survey of thousands of college graduates and looking at what they were making a decade after they got out of school. What we found: Diplomas from prestigious schools boost future earnings only in certain fields, while in other fields they simply don’t make a difference.
Specifically, for business and other liberal-arts majors, the prestige of the school has a major impact on future earnings expectations. But for fields like science, technology, education and math, it largely doesn’t matter whether students go to a prestigious, expensive school or a low-priced one—expected earnings turn out the same. So, families may be wasting money by chasing an expensive diploma in those fields”.
Another way to play this game is do your best to get into an elite so you can study anything you want, or focus on STEM if you ended up in a lesser school. I see it as a case of “pay me now, or pay me later”.
Some subjects are clearly more vigorous than others. Analytical philosophy, economics, physics and math come immediately to mind. I don’t think STEM is the differentiator though.
Remember the NCAA infractions at UNC? I was hoping they housed those student-athletes in the physics department. Did not happen. You have no idea how disappointed I was.
@bernie12 - I think you make some good points about ochem, but in my opinion there are some factors that are much more important than the ones you listed when it comes to how “hard” the class is at a school -
Ochem is generally graded on a curve, and is notorious for being filled with very grade conscious students. So, how hard it is to get an “A” (which is what premeds need to shoot for) depends on how good your fellow students are.
If you’re at a school with a lot of smart students then all other things being equal it will be harder to get an A.
The difficulty also depends on what grading distribution the department uses for the ochem class; i.e. what percent of the final grades given are targeted to be A’s, B’s, C’s, etc.
(These two factors offset each other a bit though. Generally, at less selective schools the % of A’s awarded is lower than at more selective schools).
Another factor is this - are the “real” chemistry majors / chemical engineers required to take a harder ochem course than the premed version, or are they all put together in the same course? Generally speaking, these students will be better at ochem than the average premed, so if they are in the same class it will be harder for an average premed to get an A.
Because of this, how much advanced material a professor covers doesn’t really affect how hard it will be for students to get an A as much as you might think. It’s mostly an issue of relative performance.
Of course, I still think having the opportunity to learn the material at a more sophisticated level is a good thing 
@al2simon : The pattern of chemistry majors being required to take a separate organic course seems more common at elite publics like Berkeley and not at privates (I went to an elite private so that is what I am familiar with- schools like Harvard have 2 different sequences, but does not require majors to stay on one of them. At public schools, such a requirement “may happen” or it may be an unspoken recommendation). I already described the differing grading patterns. Standard level at a selective school means you can’t really screw up an exam. “Challenging” is more like the European system where exams are not really made to yield 100s so grades are put on a curve or students are ranked. The point is, for the instructor with the more sophisticated material or demanding a more sophisticated level of problem solving skills to succeed, scoring the same grade on their curve as would be scored in the standard level course may be an uphill climb because typically more confident students will self-select for that instructor. Getting a B/B+ in a standard level course may require a 1-2 and occasionally a level 3 BT level of mastery (perhaps A/A- is a stronger performance on level 3s as the exams top off at level 3 and there are not even too many of those). However, in the hard instructor, you have to be able to score decently (let us say 50%) on problems at level 4 or even 5 of the taxonomy and score darned near perfect on any level 1,2,and 3 problems offered. And that is in the case of about a 50/50 instructor (as in like 50% 1,2,3 and 50% 4,5) that runs averages usually between 65-70 and curves to about a B-). A 75% “may” get you a B/B+. Level 4/5 for STEM subjects is no walk in the park for most average students (even elite ones). Most HS STEM courses just don’t prepare students to deal with those and nor do most freshman courses in college.
I understand the grades, but what I often argue is that sometimes the level of material that folks claim students at elite schools are exposed to is just flat out overblown. There can be enough choice in sections that many elect to expose themselves or demand a more standard level of mastery from themselves. It’s more like a standard level education (as in course is at “okay” or “acceptable” level) where they have to fight harder for a grade than if they went elsewhere. It is why I am now more about the material. If they were only asked to produce a level of mastery kind of on the low or middle ends of cognitive complexity, then the course is not really particularly hard but is instead perhaps just new. Elite students have traditionally gotten by on being exposed to material before and thus being able to employ that foundation in whatever class, but some courses such as ochem are new territory. Admittedly, another interesting one at elite privates and publics can be biology. Many such schools opt to cover biology emphasizing more experimentation, data analysis, and much more problem solving than asked for in HS and even the new AP so at some institutions, students with experience may even be caught off guard. You can no longer just read the book at and powerpoint slides and be fine, you may have to practice a lot, a study tactic mostly associated with chemistry, physics, math, and maybe upper level biology courses such as genetics, but not as expected in an intro.
What makes elite schools “better” may mostly be the overwhelming amount of resources of all kinds. And yes, I would say that it may be easier for a very top student, who wants to be challenged, to more easily find that than at other places that may have the classes/instructors, but not enough like-minded peers to join said student in such classes. Even elite schools with more laid back student bodies (in terms of willingness to purposely take such difficult instruction) have a great threshold of students who do take a less beaten path.
Different STEM majors may take different levels of the course. For example, many physics departments offer an introductory physics sequence for physics and engineering majors using calculus and multivariable calculus, but also offer an introductory physics sequence for biology majors and pre-meds that uses less calculus or no calculus.
Depends on the department. Some departments do have separate (harder) general and organic chemistry courses for chemistry and chemical engineering majors versus biology, other engineering majors (usually only need general chemistry), and premeds. Berkeley is an example of a school with such a department (4A, 4B, 112A, 112B for chemistry majors; 1A, 3A, 3B for most others). Old exams for these courses can be compared here: https://tbp.berkeley.edu/courses/chem/
@bernie12, law schools may track the success of students from various undergraduate institutions, but because the US News Law ranking is the only thing people care about in that world and entering GPA and LSAT are the biggest components that a school has direct control over, admissions (and scholarship money) to law schools is heavily stats driven.
For example, HLS seems intent to keep close to YLS on both the entering GPA and entering LSAT numbers. HLS is also almost 3 times bigger than YLS (and more that 3 times bigger than SLS). This means that, while Yale and Stanford are holistic and require you to be a special snowflake besides having top scores (SLS doesn’t bother trying to keep up with HLS and YLS in the scores game in order to have more flexibility in whom they admit), if you above the HLS median LSAT score and median GPA (both, admittedly, are high), you are almost assured of getting in to HLS. To get a class of a little under 600, HLS makes a little over 900 offers. 300 of that 600 have to be 173 in the LSAT or higher (top 1% in LSAT scores). There are roughly 1000 of those each year. Yet of those 1000, some would have an inadequate GPA, some would choose YLS or SLS, and some would be lured away by full-tuition/ride scholarships to other T14 law schools.
Back when there 150K LSAT test-takers each year (so thus, 1500 173+ scorers), HLS may have had the luxury of being choosy even if you were above the HLS median in both PA and LSAT. These days, there are 100K each year.
@PurpleTitan : Yes, with HLS I have indeed noticed that. I had a lot of friends get into Harvard Law, were excited, but were ultimately waiting on Yale. It was as if they expected to gain admission to H but could not for Yale or Stanford (if they applied).
And of course, we now see this scheme developing at some UG institutions.
Another reason law school may be excessively stats driven is because it has been claimed (or many academics affiliated with law school) that the LSAT is damned near perfect at predicting law school success. They seem fairly convinced of this, whereas you don’t really see as much confidence in claims like that with standardized tests like SAT, MCAT, etc. I’ve watched videos where a person was giving a talk defending the test up and down (one featured a guy from the University of Virginia) on its fairness and utility in predicting success. This coupled with the higher grades you typically see in majors taken up by most pre-laws makes the GPA threshold high for some schools (though apparently this and even LSAT has been slipping/stagnating some).
At least it isn’t quite as stupid as undergraduate admissions where schools with nearly perfect statistics student bodies feel the need to increase their SAT IQR range by another 10-20 points each year. Do they ever notice the diminished returns or are they that desperate to retain or increase their rank? Because at this point, increasing those scores more has nothing to do with how well or willing those students are to learn at high levels. And some campuses will be full of regular students walking around with the equivalent of an Ace of spades on their foreheads but hardly being academically engaged beyond grade earning.