<p>I sat on my school's admissions committee this year. Committee letters vs. individual letters never ever came up as a point to distinguish between applicants. Some committee letters were really thorough and informative like BDM described (Princeton and Case Western come to mind). Others were just a collection of quotes from individual letters with no info about the school's "quirks" or anything. It really depends on the school. And it's definitely not going to be the thing that gets you in/gets you rejected.</p>
<p>Thanks MyNetter...that made me feel a little better. Do you know of any other schools that don't write committee letters?</p>
<p>I doubt any state schools do, just because they'd be dealing with so many applicants. I've actually talked to one adcom who expressed reservations about committee letters, but in general I'd say the benefits BDM stated are very nice bonuses. Plus, it standardizes what letters you need. Since I don't have a committee to provide a letter, I'm probably going to have to meet substantially different letter requirements for various schools.</p>
<p>BDMike - Just to correct a few misconceptions, although no house has a full-time advisor, there are many more than one. Each house has a network of advisors so you're guaranteed that your advisor only has a few students to deal with. The Office of Career Services also has two full-time pre-medical advisors you can talk to.</p>
<p>Additionally, Harvard does write committee letters (it comes from your House's pre-med committee, made up of the House's network of advisors). The fact that you are represented by your personal advisor who only has a few students means that all the letters go out in late-July early-August (which I think is an upside, but I have nothing to compare it to).</p>
<p>Are there other things? Is there anything specific I should be attempting to do? Just out of curiosity, what house were you interviewing with?</p>
<p>The one thing that jumps out at me is the fact that Emory has too many high GPA/low MCAT applicants. This is particularly noticeable if you compare the Cornell and Emory charts. This suggests to me that either Emory's classes aren't preparing their students well enough for the MCAT and/or the classes simply aren't rigorous enough. Top schools generally boast many low GPA/high MCAT applicants which is why it's interesting to see Emory sport so many applicants that are opposite.</p>
<p>Actually, I don't agree that Emory's MCAT scores are so much lower.<br>
According to the two charts, Emory had 156 students with a 30+ MCAT score, while Cornell had 170. That really isn't such a big difference.</p>
<p>umm...we're comparing different numbers of students...170/200 is a lot different from 160/330.</p>
<p>More importantly, here are the percentages of applicants with 30+ MCAT scores at each GPA level:</p>
<p>3.9+:
Cornell: 100%
Emory: 93%</p>
<p>3.8-3.89:
Cornell: 97%
Emory: 63%</p>
<p>3.6-3.79:
Cornell: 81%
Emory: 59%</p>
<p>3.4-3.59:
Cornell: 83%
Emory: 44%</p>
<p>Disparity? I think so.</p>
<p>It's obvious that Emory produces too many med school applicants for its size. I suspect a lot of these 25 MCAT scorers are reluctant to let go of their med school dreams because their GPA is so high. If you had a 3.8 GPA, would you give up so easily? But, why do these students have such high GPA's but such low MCAT scores?</p>
<p>Another way to look at it is by the percentage of high scorers (35+): 73 out of the 208 Cornell senior applicants scored 35+. Only 48 out of the 332 Emory applicants scored 35+. I think it's pretty obvious that the reason for the low acceptance percentage is the low MCAT scores. Cornell and Emory have virtually identical entering freshmen (in fact, I think Emory's avg. SAT score might be even a little higher). So, the question is: why are Emory students scoring so low?</p>
<p>We've already established that Emory has too many students applying to medical school due to the nature of its advising system, so it doesn't really work to use percentages of total applicants like that.<br>
So why is it that Cornell has twice as many undergraduates, yet nearly half the number of applicants to medical school? Are Emory students significantly more interested in medicine, or is Cornell screening applicants in some way?<br>
Out of 14,000 students, Cornell sent 148 to med school. Out of 6,000 students, Emory sent 203. When you look at those percentages, it actually weighs heavily in favor of Emory.</p>
<p>Having watched a close friend go through Harvard (undergrad) advising, as well as having nearly been offered one such spot, I'm pretty confident that each undergrad is assigned to only one advisor; it could be that there's more than one per house (I don't know how big the houses are).</p>
<p>From everything I've seen, the two full-time advisors were not involved in the admissions process of any of the students I've been through, and the job description was very clear that I would have been the not-just-primary-but-dominant source of advice for these students.</p>
<p>It is good news that they do a committee letter, although frankly having them not come from a central clearinghouse strips them of most of their value.</p>
<p>The good news? Harvard undergrads still do very well in the process. So there's no need to complain too loudly.</p>
<p>Alright, that alleviates some of my concerns. You're right that pre-meds only get one advisor, but each advisor only has a few students b/c there are many advisors per house (each house has roughly 200-300 students, and not too many premeds, so it works out). </p>
<p>The committee letter comes from the house committee (primarily written by your advisor), and quotes liberally from up to 6 letters that you designate. The 6 letters are then sent in as a packet as part of the committee letter. If this strips them of most of their value, what can I do to fix this?</p>
<p>Cornell does not screen its medical school applicants just like how Emory does not. Therefore, you have to look at the number that get into medical school to the number that applied.</p>
<p>The reason why Cornell University has 14,000 undergraduates is because it has 7 different colleges. Some Cornell colleges have nothing to do with medicine or science, such as the College of Industrial and Labor Relations. So, it would be wrong to use 14,000 as the number of students when talking about medical school applicants, Cornell's sole purpose is not to breed pre-meds.</p>
<p>It's impossible to predict what "should" be the number of med school applicants w/o knowing how many students actually want to attend med school. For example, last year, Harvard had 320 applicants while Princeton only had 157 applicants, even though you'd expect the numbers to be similar.</p>
<p>where are you all getting this acceptance rate data?</p>
<p>hey i was accepted to Emory University for this summer too - went and visited before deciding on USC. Emory's premed is brutal. BRUTAL. half the kids cant take it and switch out of premed - and the grades are lousy. This is all from my friend who goes there. Only their own medical school looks favorably on Emory students because only they know about the work Emory students have to do. A panel there said half of Emory is premed, half is business = COMPETITION. it's gonna be tough there. education is superior, but....yeah.....it's gonna be tough.</p>
<p>Just in case anybody in the future is looking at this thread and wants to know more about the Emory pre-med program: They are in the process of changing their advising system, and within the next two years they will have a committee in place and students will have to apply through that committee.</p>
<p>^^^ I don’t know how old this thread is, but have they gotten a committee up?</p>
<p>Yes, emory has set up a program for pre-med committee letters; although at the moment it’s not mandatory, and it has no requirements (no minimum gpa, mcat).</p>
<p>As a current emory pre-med junior who happened to stumble across this thread, I cant resist weighing in on what people perceive is happening and what I see in emory’s pre-med program.</p>
<p>Upon arrival at Emory, I remember seeing data supported by emory that my year (class of 2011) had between 40%-50% pre-med going into freshman year. Now, I can speculate as to why there are so many pre-med. Perhaps southern pre-med students who want to stay in the south arent offered too many alternatives (as in the north) to a prestigious school with world class health research opportunities and internships. But again, this is only speculation.</p>
<p>I can however say, with certainty, no university can send 40%-50% of its student body to medical schools, and I can attest to the fact Emory’s pre-med classes kick ass (perhaps we need it to be so to bring down applicants to more reasonable numbers). </p>
<p>All classes (2 sems of: chem, bio, orgo, physics) have test averages ~75; this pretty much holds true across pre-med class professors (I’m inclined to think professors are told to keep their classes at such averages as I’ve heard bio, chem, and physics professors pronounce a test with a 68 average as “a little low” and a 75 as “just right”).</p>
<p>Now let’s suppose you’re pre med and you suck at something (physics, for example). In a school with test averages around 85, you can expect to get a B or B+ in that class you’re not so good at (better than average). At emory, slacking off a semester can mean a C or C+. </p>
<p>Emory’s average GPA (across all majors) is (around) a 3.3. A friend from Upenn with a 3.7 went to Tufts Med. Now taking into account the average GPA for his class was a 3.6 (as he says), a 3.7 is not as impressive at Upenn as at Emory.</p>
<p>I think emory’s problem is it’s ginormous pre med class, and its inherent need to reduce it to reasonable levels. Pre med is hard at emory especially the traditional pre med major-- neurobiology and behavioral science. It’s got some very difficult classes, which can account for many of those with great MCAT scores’ low GPAs. My current roomate is an NBB major and as an idealist, he doesn’t take any “fluff” classes to boost his GPA.</p>
<p>After talking to a pre med advisor sophomore year on upcoming classes, I can say I was not asked my GPA, and only got words of encouragement. Now personally, I think we need to be more selective with Emory’s outgoing pre med class, taking into account lower GPAs and perhaps giving them alternatives to think about, thereby limiting the pre med class and improving that all important “entrance statistic,” but I guess that’s just not “Emory’s way.”</p>
<p>Thanks for the interesting post.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is true.</p>
<p>
I think it is difficult to convince medical school adcoms of this, unfortunately. It may not be politically correct to say this (I apologize if I offend you by saying this), they may think the students at Upenn may be of a higher caliber than the students at Emory. After all, UPenn’s medical school is higher-ranked Emory’s medical schooll, so maybe adcoms think Upenn attracts “better” premed students (similarly, Duke, wustl, jhu, harvard, columbia, etc.) </p>
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<p>Is this also true at many other schools that have a affiliated medical school?</p>
<p>I think most colleges with a “good” (heck, maybe “any”) affiliated medical school will attract many many aspiring premeds.</p>
<p>I think a school like these should try hard to channel more of their premed students to other career paths. Unfortunately, so far most of these schools heavily depend on weeding classes to achieve this goal. Is there a more “humane” method? For example, to provide many alternative majors that are strong and “marketable”? This may point to the value of going to a school where there are many strong majors besides the apparently “premed-related” majors.</p>
<p>I appreciate Dave’s comments, but the main thrust of his point is factually incorrect. Emory may have a lot of incoming premeds (although bluntly 40-50% doesn’t sound all that high to me), but that can’t explain the poor results in the outgoing pool.</p>
<p>In the outgoing pool, Emory has 310 applicants.
<a href=“http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table2-7-mwhite-web.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table2-7-mwhite-web.pdf</a></p>
<p>Compare to Duke’s 387, Cornell’s 466, Penn’s 334, WUSTL’s 294, Northwestern’s 304, etc.</p>
<p>Based on the very limited data we have, it appears that Emory’s not a particularly grade-deflated school. (And even if it were, Penn is a poor choice to drive home the point.)
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3446250-post27.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3446250-post27.html</a></p>
<p>I really think that Emory’s shockingly low MCAT scores are what’s driving their curious application performance. It can’t be explained by a larger pool or tougher grading.</p>
<p>PS: The size data are a little contrary to what I had been saying earlier in the thread. Not sure where things changed on me, or if I was working with incomplete stats earlier.</p>