<p>okay so naturally the GPA is going to suffer because MIT is such a hard school, but how does this affect admission into the top grad programs?</p>
<p>weve got a conversation going on the u chicago forum. might want to check it out.</p>
<p>any thoughts?</p>
<p>I want to know too! BUMP</p>
<p>It really depends on the career you are going into for grad. school.</p>
<p>For instance, I've read that most law schools look for near perfect GPA or perfect GPA while taking a rigorous courseload. </p>
<p>I know more about the medical field, since that is where I want to go.
If you want to go to med. school, you need numbers, numbers, numbers, and more numbers.
That means if your GPA isn't near perfect and your MCAT sucks, your application is in the garbage and your medical career is over before it even started.
So even though MIT is a prestigious school and the sciences are excellent, the courseload is very very rigorous and unless you study your butt off, you won't get a high GPA. And even if you do study your butt off, everyone else is too, so you might not get a good grades anyway.</p>
<p>You have to remember that grades are curved, and at MIT everyone is a super genius, which hurts your chances of making good grades.
That is why if you want a challenging courseload, you go to the IVIES, besides Cornell, that are known for huge grade inflation. Tons of students are on the honor roll. The only problem here is you have to make yourself stand out from the rest, since everyone will have similar grades.</p>
<p>So sometimes, it might be better to go to a school where you will dominate in order to look good.
Sometimes, instead of taking the sciences, you might taking something else you're good in (ie. Music). If you take all music, you're bound to get all A's if you do the work, etc. </p>
<p>In conclusion, do whatever you have to do in order to get into grad school.
If you want the medical field badly, you might as well go to a crummy school and get all A's in easy classes if that is what you want.
What is the point of going to a school like MIT and then not getting into any medical school at all?
This only pertains to medical school, but it might apply to other careers?
Here is another statistic: Nearly 50% of the students each year that apply to medical school get rejected. That is right, every single school they applied to. Just think about that.</p>
<p>so what about business school or something like that...would u think it is any different, now im worried. can it really be that ridiculously unfair?</p>
<p>Refer to the "Med Skool" thread I replied to toward the bottom of the first page, or top of the second page, of the MIT forum.</p>
<p>Here's the data for MIT premeds</p>
<p>Notice that 74% of MIT premeds get into medical school - which means that over a quarter of MIT premeds get rejected from every single med-school they apply to. Yep, every single one. Also keep in mind that this only deals with those MIT premeds who actually go through the entire premed process and then actually submit applications. Lots of people, whether at MIT or elsewhere, come in wanting to be doctors but then ultimately never bother to apply to med-school. Some people find out that they don't really want to be doctors. Some people find more interesting academic pursuits. But quite a few people just get bad grades - bad enough that they know they're not going to get in anywhere, so they don't apply. Either that or they try the premed sequence of classes and discover that they either can't or don't want to do what it will take to get the top grades necessary to look good for the med-schools, and so they drop those classes, thereby dropping out of the premed sequence. The point is that those MIT students who apply to med-school are a highly self-selective group (in the sense that each one of them obviously thinks they have at least a half-decent chance of getting in) and yet over a quarter of them don't get in anywhere they apply to. I'm not just talking about not getting into the top medical schools, I'm talking about getting rejected from every med-school they apply to. </p>
<p>B-schools are far less numbers oriented. B-schools care primarily about work experience. I think that MIT students, especially MIT engineers, are in pretty good shape because they tend to get good jobs upon graduation, which gives them the opportunity to build that strong work experience that B-schools value.</p>
<p>hmm well i am not planning on being a doctor at all. But this is all kind of unsettling with the whole grades thing and thinking about applying to grad school in the future. i also applied to rice and may have to consider that if i am accepted. so i guess it comes down to probably getting a better education at MIT and having excellent opportunities at jobs, but having to work much harder (which is not the problem for me at all, i am ready to put in the time) and having a tougher time getting into the top grad schools. so now the question, which is better: going to a good undergrad (rice) and top grad school or excellent undergrad (MIT) and not as good a grad school. maybe i am just overthinking this all and should just go for the best undergrad education that i can because i might opt to not pursue education after that.</p>
<p>For academic graduate degrees like PhD programs, I think it is clear that MIT will help. These programs don't care so much about your grades as they do your research experience, and MIT offers a vast treasure-trove of research opportunities. And it is ditty with a lot of truth that the easiest way to get into MIT graduate school is to go to MIT for undergrad. Heck, in many MIT majors like course 6 (EECS), provided you do well, like a 4.25/5 which is well, but not ridiculously exceptionally well, you are basically guaranteed admission into the MIT MEng program, an MIT graduate degree that is only open to MIT undergrads. </p>
<p>The problem with grading seems to be confined to med and law schools. These 2 institutions want to see high grades, and don't really care about how hard it is to get them. PhD programs know fully well that MIT grades hard, and will compensate accordingly. I suspect that med and law-school adcoms know too, but the difference is that they don't really care. They're not really interested in getting the best students. They're interested in getting the students with strong numbers, regardless of whether that means they really are the top students or not.</p>
<p>ah well that is nice to hear. well what about if i am not going for a PhD, but something like an MBA? It seems like the problem is only with law and medical schools, which is not something i am thinking about pursuing. thanks again, this is really helping me out.</p>
<p>The problem exists for the MBA, but is minor, and generally tends to be more than compensated for the fact that you will probably get a better job out of MIT. Hence the superior work experience you will present to the MBA adcoms should more than make up for any deficiencies in your GPA.</p>