<p>“BE DIFFERENT…everyone volunteers, everyone does research, everyone going to a top 20 med school broke a 3.7 on their GPA most have 3.8+, most have MCATs ranging 30 to 40, the key is be different”
-Incorrect, absolutely not needed to spend a speck of time to try to stick out. Just pursue your own personal interests while in college to make sure that college was a big positive factor in your life with awesome memories for the rest of it. To say that MCAT is 30 to 40 is correct, but that is where the major difference is and also in GPA. 3.7 is very different from 4.0, 30 is very very different from 34, and 34 is very different from 37. My guess is that you are reading sdn, I do not know what else could have pointed to this? Regular applicant 3.8/35 with regular EC will get to few top 20s, guarantee, unless he/she applied to some goofy list of Med. Schools, that completely out of synch with applicant stats.</p>
<p>I actually disagree with this. There are many routes to get into med school. Looking at my class, some people blew the adcom away with numbers 40+/3.9+, whereas others were more average 3.8ish/34ish and had mediocre activities, where as others 3.6ish/30ish but had many pubs, great activities, a real story to tell.</p>
<p>SDN was not the basis of my information, as if you look on SDN most people have extremely high MCATs with GPAs - it’s a very self selected portion of the population - I was actually so discouraged b/c of SDN thinking I didn’t have a chance at top schools. The reason I say to be different is that, I think my stats are pretty smack average but I received interviews at great places - Mayo, Cornell, Stanford, Yale, all UCs etc - places I would’ve never thought with an MCAT score on the lower side of 30s - whereas many of my friends with high stats didn’t make it to top 20s - med school is a very random process but I do think there is some control over it. At two of my interviews I was told by the adcom that MCAT/GPA are usually used to screen applicants simply beacuse they are too many and for you to prove that you can survive med school - beyond that…other factors play just as important of a roll. </p>
<p>Everyone has a different experience when it comes to the app process…my process taught me how important is to be a bit unique…it carries you quite far in the app process…numbers are important…they leave doors open but doesn’t get you in in my opinion unless u can bloww them completely out of the water with it…and that takes 40+/3.9+ at my school I think - my 2 cents.</p>
<p>I think the most important thing that people forget is that, as the dean of admissions at my school said, “When I interact with someone in an interview, ultimately what I’m asking myself is, ‘Can I picture this kid as someone’s doctor?’” What exactly that means is obviously up for interpretation but it’s not just about smarts or unique activities or any one thing. It’s a myriad of traits and experiences that have to coalesce into one image. There is no one key thing you have to do, it’s a whole story you have to construct, one where the ending is “…so that’s why I would make a good doctor.”</p>
<p>^Well, you have a chance to “shine” at interview only if you invited. Your stats might filter you out. My own D’s rejections were pre-interview. She did not get invited, she did not have a chance to “shine”</p>
<p>I was on CC alot for college but just joined again as I start on the medical school admit process. I spend alot of time on SDN and find that some of the information there might not be so great. Does anyone have suggestions of who are reliable posters when it comes to medical school?</p>
<p>Just hang out in the forum for a couple of weeks and it will become apparent. There are a number of parents here with children in medical school (From MS1 through MS4 and into residency) or who are in the middle of this application cycle. Some (me, for example) have multiple children going thru this process.</p>
<p>There are also several med students and a couple of residents who post somewhat regularly. Both straight MD and MD/PhD.</p>
<p>All of the parents and all of the med students who do post here tend to be thoughtful and honest and will offer suggestions and help freely.</p>
<p>Entomom, do you think we should desticky this thread? I note that it has a lot of overlap with other stickies regarding picking schools. General Premed Advice is also a wonderful thread that’s getting older, and Coursework has been less popular of late.</p>
<p>I should also sit down and redo Goldshadow’s FAQs thread at some point.</p>
<p>@ how’s Boston University for pre-med?</p>
<p>bluedevilmike: For someone who is already at Stanford and loving it, what would be your advice regarding compensating for a pre-med advising team which you consider inadequate? Could you give specific examples of the ‘bad’ advice they’ve given? What would you recommend in terms of resources (online, books, or even consultants)?</p>
<p>Thx</p>
<p>Harvard vs. Duke vs. Columbia PreMed
My daughter got accepted to the following schools:</p>
<p>WUSTL
Brandeis
Northwestern
UCLA
Brown
JHU
Pomona
USC
Amherst
Duke
Harvard
Columbia</p>
<p>But her top three schools are Harvard, Duke, and Columbia. She is going in for neurobiology/neuroscience (pre-medicine). She’ll be happy attending ANY of the schools she got accepted to, but those are her top three. What are your thoughts/experiences with regards to the premed program and research opportunities at these schools?</p>
<p>How is pre-med at USC, UGA, UT, or USD?</p>
<p>@schoolfees,</p>
<p>Duke has one of the best premed programs in the country. 85% of premeds at duke get into medical school in their first cycle. However, I’m sure Harvard and Columbia also have impressive premed programs.</p>
<p>In general some of the better known schools for premed are: WUSTL, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, Stanford, UCLA. </p>
<p>However, more important than the school you went to is how you do. A stronger gpa and mcat from a flagship state school almost always will trump lower stats from a more respected university.</p>
<p>I was not a Stanford student; I do know that their admissions percentages are lower than they should be, and that several of the students from there who came onto this board complained, and that several of my friends who went there complained about subpar advising. I’m not privy to the details.</p>
<p>In general:
1.) West coast undergraduate advising doesn’t seem to understand the importance of early applications. APPLY EARLY.
2.) Picking a school list is also very sensitive to advising, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Stanford just wasn’t as familiar with East Coast medical schools.
3.) Some of the things a premed committee does are just irreplaceable. No matter what books you buy or who you ask, we can’t write you a committee letter, make phone calls on your behalf, or explain away your bad grades for you.
4.) There’s one popular Stanford site which advertises “ten common premed myths” or somesuch, which I’ve read several times and STRONGLY disagree with on multiple points. Take it with a grain of salt; some of its “myths” are actually true.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if uc Irvine is good for pre med?</p>
<p>Sent from my LG-P999 using CC</p>
<p>All the UCs are “good” for premed. Any good univ or college is “good” for premed.</p>
<p>Thanks BDM. Regarding your previous advice on how to come up with your list of schools, how would you tweak it for a (CA resident) Stanford student to compensate for the ‘notoriously fickle’ CA SOM’s?</p>
<p>BTW, how to you find the time for so much CC participation?</p>
<p>You apply to more schools, usually by adding private schools across the country which have average matriculant MCAT scores and GPAs similar to or a little lower than yours.</p>
<p>In my experience, in the aggregate the UCs are not that fickle. They’re very selective, and any given one of them is very fickle, partly because medical schools in general are quite fickle. But in the end, if you think of the UC system as one school the results look a little more sensible.</p>
<p>@Bluedevilmike. How was your premed advising at Duke? Are you able to compare it with Harvard’s, Columbia’s or Wustl’s i.e. how comparable? Was there clinical experience opportunities for you? We are hoping to decide on a school. My daughter has very little hospital experience and this need is a top priority for her when choosing.</p>
<p>I’m a huge fan of single-advisor offices, which Duke had at the time I attended. There’s just no way to replace the continuity and the track record that that one advisor will have. When she told a medical school something, they knew they could believe her because she had had so many contacts with them over such a long time period and had represented so many hundreds and hundreds of excellent premeds.</p>
<p>The difficulty is that that basically requires a superhuman to pull off, and when she retired in 2006 Duke knew immediately that she was going to be impossible to replace with any one person, so they didn’t even bother to try. In the immediate few years after that, it was a single office that divides students among several different advisors. This is not ideal for the reasons discussed above, but seems to be working okay for them. I believe WUSTL works on a similar model but am not sure. They too do fine.</p>
<p>Harvard is decentralized, as each house has its own advisors – in fact, I believe that most advice comes from medical students who receive free housing in those dormitories. In the abstract, I would have thought that this would be a major problem, but frankly Harvard students do fine and I wouldn’t worry too much about it.</p>
<p>I’m afraid I don’t know anything about Columbia.</p>
<p>Thanks BDM. Could you elaborate on why the lack of a committee letter would put someone at a disadvantage? I’m only talking about schools that just don’t send out these letter, rather than schools like JHU that do send them but only for those students they deem worthy of endorsement. What type of information would such a letter include that wouldn’t be apparent from the application, the LORs, and the transcript?</p>