<p>Is it better to go to a really good/prestigious premed school and get a lower gpa, or is it better to go to a not as good premed school and get a higher gpa?</p>
<p>Go to the prestigous school and get a higher GPA. Grade inflation is rampant at top schools. A high GPA and prestige are hardly mutually exclusive and, in fact, may be correlated.</p>
<p>Yeah I'm going to agree with Norcal... EXCEPT! There are some CAVEATS. Make sure the good school has grade infation infation. </p>
<p>Most state schools are huge and the general courses are tough weeders.</p>
<p>u sure norcal? i was reading an earlier post and it said it doesnt matter about the prestige of the school all it matters is if u get good grades and good mcat score not the prestige of the school although it may help a tad bit</p>
<p>I wouldn't say prestige doesn't matter at all. If it doesn't matter at all, then 75% of the best premeds must reside in the top 20 colleges because 75% of the people I met at my interviews at top med schools came from top 20 colleges. Of course, you should attend a school that you like (since that's the school you'll be most successful at). Prestige is only a secondary factor, but it is a factor.</p>
<p>My answer was strictly to address the question posed by the OP. Due to grade inflation, you won't necessarily get lower grades by going to a top school. You might even get higher grades. So, if you like a top school, why not have your cake and eat it too?</p>
<p>NCG - I think there's a lot of confounding going on in your anecdotal evidence. </p>
<p>1) People going to prestigious undergrads are more likely to apply to prestigious med schools - even with less noteworthy stats - through peer pressure/delusions of grandeur/prestige whore/whatever. I feel this is probably an extremely accurate statement, one that I'll confirm anecdotally by referencing where most of my med school classmates who attended Chadron State College and 4.0's applied. </p>
<p>2) As we've been through before, the overall caliber of student that attends a top 20 undergrad and makes it through pre-med is better off academically because they've always been better off academically. Ignoring that selection bias is a grave error. </p>
<p>3) Improved advising at top 20 schools also likely means that students from those schools are applying to more schools and thus make up a greater % of the total applicant pool (I'll use myself as exhibit A here). My merely adequate advising at a state public thought it was totally fine that I was only applying to 7 medical schools. My roommate who attended a marginally better (difference of two spots in the USNWR undergrad rankings), but more recognized private school applied to 18 schools. She even had a better GPA than I did, though our MCAT scores were the same. She of course also got all the advice about applying very early and so on, advice that I didn't get.</p>
<p>4) There's something else I thought of but have since lost...</p>
<p>Anyways, certainly, if students love top schools, that's fine, but they shouldn't choose them just because they're top schools and they believe that's going to help them get into medical school.</p>