Does anyone know if there’s a link to any statistics on which feeder colleges send students to top graduate schools? I found something like this, but it’s just for Ph.D. programs:
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/the-colleges-where-phds-get-their-start/
In what fields? Different colleges have different strengths.
When you say “top” graduate schools…what exactly do,you mean??
@thumper1 - In general. I remember seeing some stats on feeder high school that sends a large percentage of students to top colleges. By top grad schools, I’m just going by the US News and World Report ranking.
Yes, but what kind of graduate schools?
PhD programs? What subjects?
MBA and other business programs?
JD programs?
MD programs?
etc.
Okay, how about MD programs?
This is the most recent source I know: https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/infographics/top-feeders-medical-school they looked at LinkedIn profiles and then isolated the top 20 (in alphabetical order) best for sending students to top medical schools. You can see more of their lists by going to the larger page: https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/category/infographics/
This is the only one I know that was based on actual admissions data from top grad/med/law schools, but it is from 2003, so it’s quite old. https://hubpages.com/education/Wall-Street-Journal-College-Rankings-The-Full-List-and-Rating-Criteria (the article is wrong that it’s from 2010, but those were the top 50. You can see more discussion of this in this thread from 2005: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/85416-wall-street-journal-feeder-ranking-p1.html).
16 of the schools on the med school feeder list are also in the top 20 of the WSJ feeder rankings (JHU and Cornell are also in the top 25), so I guess some things haven’t really changed.
Fascinating. Thanks, @nostalgicwisdom!
Checking for clarity…you want to know which undergrad schools have the best placement into top ten medical schools??
@WayOutWestMom any ideas?
My opinion…your kid can go to any college…and get tippy top GPA and a tippy top MCAT score, and apply to top ten med schools. The MCAT and GPA are going to be the key elements…and a great interview…if the student is invited for one.
If you spend some time googling the class profiles of Med schools across the country, you will see that they all have students from hundreds of undergrad schools all over the place. Your college name has little if any to do with whether you get into a med school. And the idea of a “top” med school is something that many doctors will roll their eyes at. All US med schools are great, and the grads from Wayne State aren’t being pushed aside by grads of Michigan.
@nostalgicwisdom - You rock! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thank you so much! =D>
Read what @thumper1 and @snarlatron said; undergrad school is much less important than GPA and MCAT scores.
@thumper1 - Agreed. But I also agree with the article on the first link that nostalgicwisdom provided, namely, you do get have some advantage graduating from a highly selective feeder college. The chart is very telling.
@snarlatron - Take a look at the chart, “Does Selectivity Matter?” in the first link provided by nostalgicwisdom above. According to the chart, it does: 74% of the elite medical schools are populated by students from “extremely to most selective” feeder colleges. Of course, the next question is, do you have to graduate from the elite medical schools to practice medicine? No. But does it help landing a more selective internship and other placements post graduation? Probably.
All that really says is that there is more of a concentration of kids at these school who have the ability to test well and get good grades. You do realize that there are kids with good grades and scores that don’t attend the top 20 schools due to amazing merit opportunities or have families who are stuck in the middle making too much for need based aid and not enough where they have a half million on hand to pay for under grad and med school ( yes parents income and assets are a factor in obtaining aid for med school)
I agree with sybbie.
If you really want to see what residency program directors value, the NRMP does an annual survey
[Results of the 2016 NRMP Program Director Survey](http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NRMP-2016-Program-Director-Survey.pdf)
“Graduate of highly‐regarded U.S. medical school” is ranked as being of only moderate to low importance, below “Lack of gaps in medical education” and “Other life experience” and above “Demonstrated involvement and interest in research” and “Visa status”
So it helps maybe some, but not nearly as much as you think. It used to matter more in the past when residency matching was a matter of who your med school Dean knew and could make a call to on your behalf. But those days are long gone. Matching is done by independent organization–the NRMP–which uses a computer program algorithm to make the placement based upon the applicants and programs ordered rank lists. Any contact by med school personnel with residency program directors/asst directors on behalf of a student will get a school–and its students-- sanctioned and banned from the Match. That’s the equivalent of the death penalty for medical schools.
Top residencies go to students with top USMLE scores, top clinical and didactic grades, strong specialty LORs and “good fit” with program.
The one area that attending a highly funded medical school (which is substantial portion of what goes into med school rankings) does advantage a residency applicant is that greater NIH funding provides greater access to research opportunities for certain research-intensive specialties.
In some ways, it’s better to be a top student at a mid-ranked medical school, than a midling student at a top-ranked medical school. (For example, our state med school [class size 110] matched students to Harvard (3), Mayo (2), Emory (2), UCSF (2), UCSD (2) Vanderbilt, Columbia, WUSTL and Baylor. Additionally for the 3rd year in row, a student matched into ophthalmology in the military match that offers only 5 ophthal positions annually. BTW, that match list isn’t a fluke–it looks like that every year.)
Lots of good data here:
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
Look at table 4 to see top producing (per capita ) schools
@jmnva06 - Thanks. Interesting data, certainly.
If you are talking about a very top MD school, like Stanford, the majority of their students come from very top, private colleges: https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/browse?affiliations=capMdStudent
At this level, it is often the case that about 40-50% of students are from Ivies + SM. About 20-30% of students from the remaining top 25-30 colleges. About 20-30% are in-state students, international students, URMs, and lower-tier colleges.
Caring about the eliteness of a med school seems a bit misplaced. If you are going to apply to b-schools or want to enter prestige industries like IB or MC (even more so PE/VC/HF), being at a feeder or M7 matters. If you are going in to law, being at a T14 or T3 matters a ton. Likewise with academia and many PhD programs. Likewise with the nonprofit world.
And there are network effects in the software, entertainment, art, and media worlds. That doesn’t really apply to medicine unless you are going in to research/MD-PhD programs.
Medicine may be one of the fields where prestige matters least.
@prof2dad - That’s an interesting link. Not a single candidate with a humanities background. Surprising, because I’ve been hearing that med schools are lot more welcoming of students with humanities background.