Grade Inflation Isn't The Only Thing

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
21

<p>Thanks for the correction. I most certainly should not have used the word "need". Let me nuance this a little:</p>

<p>"Being a premed at MIT probably requires a higher GPA than it does from Stanford. This is reflected in the mean/median GPAs among admitted students, which is considerably higher at MIT."</p>

<p>Still, I just want to reemphasize a core point.</p>

<p>Even if you are just going to use undergrad as a stepping stone - a philosophy I heartily discourage - even then, you still should not simply seek out the school where you are most likely to get a high GPA.</p>

22

<p>Don't MIT students have to later send the actual grades received in freshmen year?</p>

23

<p>Johns Hopkins is usually the only school mentioned as requiring this information from MIT students; probably for that reason, Hopkins gets fewer MIT applicants than other top medical schools -- it's a pain to go around getting all those hidden grades released!</p>

24

<p>i'm a little confused as to what would make it necessary for a student on average from a school like Case Western(no grade inflation) to get a 3.75, when a student from a grade inflated school on average only has a 3.5 GPA..it just doesn't make sense to me that accomplished students such as those at all the high standing grade inflated colleges would get a lower GPA-and i'm assuming MCAT's are held constant- and still be admitted to med school.</p>

<p>someone please explain to a deeply confused child :-D</p>

25

<p>The difficulties in explaining this run rampant, and I'm not sure I really know, either. The point is that there is more involved in picking an undergrad school than merely seeking certain types of grades.</p>

<p>These numbers are not controlling for MCAT score. Duke's average admitted applicant has a 32.0 (3.51), and Case's has a 30.4 (3.75). This may be explaining some of the differential, but not all of it. MIT is a 34 (3.7).</p>

26

<p>
[quote]
i'm a little confused as to what would make it necessary for a student on average from a school like Case Western(no grade inflation) to get a 3.75, when a student from a grade inflated school on average only has a 3.5 GPA..it just doesn't make sense to me that accomplished students such as those at all the high standing grade inflated colleges would get a lower GPA-and i'm assuming MCAT's are held constant- and still be admitted to med school.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I would surmise that it's because the student at the grade-inflated school has more extra-curricular activities or better personal/social skills that are demonstrated via the interview. </p>

<p>However, I would say that that is also related to grade inflation/deflation. After all, if you go to an easier school, then you simply have more time to build better social skills and to do more EC's. Whereas those that attend deflated schools are constantly worrying about their grades to the exclusion of other things.</p>

27

<p>The LSAC (Law School Admissions) publishes grade inflation information, controlling for LSAT score.</p>

<p>Remember, these are pre-law, not pre-med students, and the entire basis of this calculation assumes that LSAT is, in some way, a reasonable measure of your scholastic ability. With that, a little math based off of their data indicates:</p>

<p><a href="Negative%20numbers%20are%20grade%20deflated%20and%20positive%20numbers%20are%20inflated.">quote</a>
MIT -2.646136
Penn -1.486136
Johns Hopkins -1.246136
Swarthmore -1.246136
UC Irvine -1.046136
Dartmouth -1.046136
Princeton University -0.966136
Univ. of Chicago -0.966136
Harvard University -0.926136
Williams College -0.886136
Princeton -0.806136
Yale -0.766136
Cornell -0.686136
Duke University -0.686136
Stanford -0.646136
UC - Berkeley -0.646136
Haverford College -0.646136
Oberlin College -0.646136
Pomona -0.646136
Univ. of Virginia -0.526136
Rice -0.446136
Northwestern University -0.406136
Emory -0.406136
Columbia Univ. - Columbia College -0.326136
Univ. of Texas -0.286136
Georgetown University -0.246136
Boston University -0.206136
Univ. of Michigan - Ann Arbor -0.206136
Brown -0.166136
Emory -0.166136
Bryn Mawr College -0.046136
Tufts University -0.006136
Univ. of Rochester 0.033864
Brandeis University 0.113864
UCLA 0.153864
Univ. of Southern California 0.193864
Villanova University 0.353864
Baylor Univ. 0.353864
Univ. of Massachusetts - Amherst 0.353864
Boston College 0.373864</p>

<p>...</p>

<p>St. John's Univ.-Jamaica 2.353864
Temple University 2.353864
Univ. of North Texas 2.753864
Jackson State University 3.153864

[/quote]

[quote]

MIT is 2.6 "standard deviations" below the mean for grade indexing by this standard, etc.</p>

<p>What this is not:
This does NOT represent any kind of grade correction. For example, it does NOT tell you how much you should add to your GPA to see what you would have gotten had you attended MIT, or Jackson State University, or whatnot. (The raw scores would have been useful for that purpose, and you can reproduce that calculation very easily using the website.)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>A non-centered adjustment for "grade correction" can be derived from dividing by four. In other words, since MIT's grades -2.6, and Duke's are -.7, the difference then is 1.9/4, or approximately .5. I can, therefore, expect to have received, all things being equal, roughly .5 GPA points lower had I gone to MIT. (More likely, having received lower grades, I would have worked harder to offset some of this difference.)</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=266240%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=266240&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

28

<p>Haha, but the majority of the MIT pre-law students are engineers, while the majority of MIT premeds are biology and neuroscience majors. Having majored in biology and neuroscience at MIT, I don't think it's a huge leap to say that it's more difficult to get an A in an engineering class than a biology class.</p>

29

<p>The difference between pre-law and pre-med students is a definite flaw in the relevance of the index as calculated. Still, as long as flaws are pointed out and conceded, more information can never hurt.</p>

30

<p>Interesting results, but I am worried about the data source. Apparently these are not complete figures from the LSDAS. As I understand it, these are self reported, with unknown numbers from each institution. Therefore, may not be at all representative of the law school applicants, let alone student body as a whole. Is that correct?</p>

31

<p>So the LSDAS has the correct information from each school, and reports that information to applicants from that school. Those applicants then -- you're right -- self-report those numbers to a website which compiles them.</p>

<p>So unless students are lying -- which is always possible -- the numbers should be representative of all law school applicants. They are not, of course, representative of the school as a whole or of medical school applicants.</p>

32

<p>um...bluedevilmike...i think you should mention that duke's 3.51 included alumni also O.o</p>

33

<p>ok...um...O.o
ok if you look at alllll the schoolsss, the average gpa of accepted students are pretty much the same. So yes, getting a 3.8 at a state school will probably be the same as getting a 3.8 at some high tier school. However, if you are to account for the rejected students, you will find that many students who had high gpa during undergrad at a state institution will be rejected more often than a student w/ high gpa during undergrad at a higher tier school. This is probably due to opportunities, mcat, and etc. This is why when you look at high tier med school's and their accepptees you find that most come from the top 25 schools or so for undergrad. This is not because their gpa was higher than those students from state schools but rather these students from higher tier universities had more opportunities. However, students w/ high gpa from a state university can also be accepted but these students are accepted at a lower ratio, only because most of these high gpa students in state univ did not have the opportunities that many students in higher tier universities do.</p>

34

<p>I would suggest the best way to determine which school to go to for med is to simply look on us news and look at academics section and then look at the pie chart (hehe lol) and there you will see % of undergraduates attending grad school immediately after 4 years and see what % of those students will be attending med school. After looking at the top 25 or so schools, you will notice that rice/jhu has around a 49% of undergrads attending grad school w/ a large percentage of those attending med school around a 20+%. However, if you want to spend around 5 years and then go to med school, DUKE IS Definetly the route to go, i think 70% of undergrads all attend grad school after 5 years...the only bad thing is that only approx 25% of its undergrads immediately attend grad school after 4 years. Sorry to exclude the lac, some of these are reown in their high percentage of students entering med school
edit: i admit there is one major flaw regarding my suggestion and that it is extremely probable that most students in rice/jhu were already planning to go grad school/premed, hence why the large percentage while in other schools like mit/caltech, such a small percentage entering grad/prof school which is probably because the majority of students there are engineering O.o...however, then it brings us back to the point of why soo many students who want to attend grad/prof school will choose to go to those schools instead
edit: the final decision in choosing a school is basically still preference. Consider the question of whether you need advising or whether you can take care of everything w/o any advising, or whether you know you can easily procure research opportunities even at state universities, or whether you want to spend 5 years before getting into med school? etc etc. Have fun!</p>

35

<p>I think that highly regarded schools have very few students who take more than four years to graduate. I certainly only knew one student at Duke, who was rapidly tagged as "that fifth-year kid". It takes a little longer because more kids take time off between undergrad and med school, not because they're taking longer in medical school.</p>

<p>Most students find that that's an important year for them, and it really does give them a chance to boost their application in a variety of ways.</p>

<p>In any case, the AAMC confirms that the average age of an entering medical school student is 25. So starting med school at 23 would still be younger than normal.</p>

36

<p>no no bluedevilmike, omg i hope you didn;t think i said that, wow that would be a complete insult O.o, i never meant students take longer than 4 years to graduate, i only meant that most students at duke choose to relax for a year than apply to grad/prof(med) school of course after graduating meaning, they just take a year off =D which is cool</p>

37

<p>It's not unusual for students to take a year off after undergrad. My premed advisor (after attending conferences with premed advisors from other Ivies) noted that approx. 1/3-1/2 of students from Harvard, Yale, etc. take at least one year off between undergrad and med school.</p>

38

<p>no no, i never meant that it is unusual, duke is not the only one w/ 25% of undergrad attendning grad school immediately after 4 yrs.
edit: i only mentioned duke specifically, because it does extremely and i mean extremely well in placing grads in grad/prof school after 5yrs meaning it stands out that way...i never meant it as a detrimental comment against duke...</p>

39

<p>hey BDM,</p>

<p>first of all sorry about my one post about how carolina > duke, I was just really excited and needed to talk trash to people I could find that like duke :p</p>

<p>but anyway, I was wondering where you could find this average GPA stuff for other schools (ie northwestern, U of southern california, etc.) or if you have the average GPA for acceptees for other schools besides Duke, Stanford, Case, MIT.</p>

<p>also, you might have explained this, but if prestige matters, and MIT is notorious for being a hard school, then why do they have a higher GPA required than say Duke if both are somewhat equal prestige-wise?</p>

40

<p>This data has to be acquired school-by-school, and many schools -- Stanford included -- do not release this data except to their own students.</p>

<p>That's exactly my point: prestige is not what is mattering here. Because MIT is more prestigious than Duke (hey, no argument here) AND grade-deflated, and yet their students seem to be held to a higher standard.</p>

<p>So here's my point:</p>

<p>Yes, **school **matters, but it is not the **prestige **of the school that is the important component. What is? Heck if I know -- but I often suspect that it's the advising more than anything else.</p>