Hi everyone, Thanks in advance to all those who answer.
At my college, and at many other colleges, there are placement exams for certain subjects, such as math or chemistry (or you can choose to take the higher level). Which matters more though? Would taking a harder course but possibly getting a worse grade look better for med school admissions or does course rigor not matter at all as long as you have a good GPA?
Whatever you decide to take, your goal is an A in this class. It is basically your own decision. As long as Medical School is accepting the class as pre-req, adcoms do not care any further / deeper than that. The high GPA is very very important!
While I hate the anti-intellectualism of the approach: As in intro level courses would be better than skipping intros and getting Bs in more advanced courses.
Some med schools have 10K+ applicants to fill maybe 200 spots. Then ask what’s a harder course, say Shakespeare or O-chem. Who determines which one is a harder course? Then, as I remember, when S started college there were 4 sections of general chem each taught by different PhD. If you’re an adcom which section was “harder?” So taking into account myriad of course offerings/sections by thousands of colleges, certainly in initial evaluations of thousands and thousands of applicants it’s easier for adcoms to thin out herd by looking at GPAs first. You want a higher GPA. I’m not saying course rigor has no weight, but rigor will never come up if you’re rejected early on because of low GPA.
High GPA definitely matters more than course rigor
You will have to compete with students from your own school as well. If they took the most challenge courses and you did not, the adcoms will compare and know. So, do not skimp on course rigor and try to get As each and every time, you will succeed.
"You will have to compete with students from your own school as well. If they took the most challenge courses and you did not, the adcoms will compare and know. "
-I strongly disagree. I agree that you should not be skipping rigorous classes if you feel like taking them, but your goal is every single class no matter the level of rigor is the same - grade A
What are you strongly disagree about? Do you mean every premed should all take the easiest way out, take the minimum med school requirements go to the most non-competitive school they can find and the adcoms careless? I don’t think your D did that to be the only one apply out of BS/MD. In CA, as far as I know, not too many lower ranking CSU students really go into med schools and CSU accounted for most of the 4 year college matriculations.
I don’t think med schools care really care that much about your transcript beyond your GPA and that you fulfilled the requirements. There’s less variability among the colleges that med schools receive apps from than among high schools that colleges receive apps from so I never got the sense that there’s as much transcript combing as there is at the undergrad admissions level.
To OP, the answer is clear: Better GPA. You will discover that the pre-med students in your entry level chem or bio class got 5s on their AP chem and bio exams and are repeating the class because they know that GPA is what matters here and they want the As.
And yes, artloverplus, stated baldly, you don’t get extra credit from the med school admissions folks for going to a more ‘rigorous’ school, taking harder classes, and pushing yourself academically. A B at Harvard is not equal to an A at State U in organic chem. There are other good reasons to to push yourself academically - like getting the most out of your education, not short-changing yourself intellectually, developing higher level skills for the sheer joy of using your brains - but getting into med school isn’t among those reasons. The admissions committees do not compare your transcript to those of other students to see who worked harder. It’s possible that your committee letter might make reference to the rigor of your schedule if they are paying attention, but even that is uncertain.
“What are you strongly disagree about?”
- that ". they took the most challenge courses and you did not, the adcoms will compare and know. " and make decision based on this comparison. They simply do not care. There are no pre-reqs for upper Bio classes, physiology, genetics,…etc. Do most take them? Yes, they are helpful for the MCAT and future medical students are curious how they feel about this type of classes… Do Med. School adcoms care? NO. Adcoms know (and medical students realize after they start at Med. school) that NO UG academics really prepare them for the rigor of Med. School level of academics. That is why Med. School adcoms accept students with English majors, from Conservatories of Music, and many others not related to medicine at all as long as they complete required classes and other requirements but nothing else above. But the GPA for these classes as well as overall GPA better be close to 4.0.
I also strongly disagree with “A B at Harvard is not equal to an A at State U in organic chem.” - how one can tell? There are many Orgo classes at every UG as well as other science classes like Gen. Chem., Physics. Surely Calc based Physics is more difficult than the non-calc based Physics AT THE SAME COLLEGE. I do not know how one can compare classes across the colleges. The programs are designed totally differently. The weed out class may be put at different time in the program and it maybe be a totally different class in each program. The general comparison across colleges is completely irrelevent and not credible, it has no meanning. Not here for discussion purposes, not for Med. School adcoms.
I know that anybody who complete ALL requirements, who took some lower level classes because they were not that interested in the sabject and some high level classes because of personal interests and for other reasons (helpful for the MCAT is one), and who got (as an example), all As, with all other requirement being fullfillled, this person will have a very high chance at several Medical Schools. And this would include anybody from the lowest ranked unknown local college. And this has been confirmed by my D. several times and more so at her graduation from the Med. School last weekend. She said that some in her class regret ever attending Harvard and such as it gave them no advantage being accepted and no advantage with Med. School academics at all. Everybody in the Med. School class was basically on the same footing.
I’m curious about something. Let say you got your high GPA at a competitive college. What if you had a really tough major. And there are only 5 kids in your school with that major and you’re the only crazy premed to attempt it and the only one applying to med school that year. Are you guys saying it still makes no difference? All things being equal, and assuming a student has everything else like high MCATs and all the ECs, ADCOMS will not take that into consideration?
I guarantee you that the admissions committees understand the differences between classes and schools and what level of effort it takes to get what grades.
Students need to take the highest level of class that they feel will effectively challenge their abilities.
Like school prestige, it probably has some difference, but I get the feeling it matters so little and is literally an afterthought. The essays, LORs and the interviews will be gone over with fine tooth combs and dissected ad nauseum and the transcript will get a quick glance at most. If two students are really “all else being equal” it’s probably just going to be the one the interviewers liked more for some arbitrary reason than transcript rigor if I’m being honest. This is for MD/PhD so it may be different but if anything I would expect the transcript to be more important since advanced level knowledge is more important for the PhD. Certainly post interview I’ve never heard an applicant’s transcript even mentioned during the admissions meeting. I have heard the school’s rigor as a whole discussed and whether a 4.0 from X state university is really something to be super impressed with to which another committee member said “4.0s always look good.” Pre interview - I didn’t get the impression from my friend who was one of the student members on the committee that the transcript was really a point of emphasis. A quick glance at most to see that the student went into some degree of scientific depth and breadth but certainly no combing through the transcript to see if the highest level of courses was taken and weighing in the average GPAs of one major vs. another at a given school. Maybe if the committee letter highlights and stresses something like what @momworried points out it will get factored in but the Adcoms are certainly not collecting that data themselves like the UG adcoms collect data about high schools.
I’m in general agreement with you. That’s because we are talking about factors that speak to two different things. The transcripts generally indicate if the applicant would be successful, academically, in that program or not. That’s usually easier to determine.
A number of other things speak to whether they would be a good fit and part of what the admissions committee wants the class of new admits to be.
I see your point @justonedad.
Since many qualified students get rejected every year, I don’t think it’s worth time to discuss things that will impact med school admissions if we aren’t talking about actually getting admitted. I think the GPA necessary to succeed academically in a program is much lower than the average GPA of an admitted class. I also think that - certainly for medical school - not much is needed beyond the college level intro courses to succeed. I disagree and have done so in the past with Miami that nothing you do in undergrad can help or prepare you for med school, but I do agree to some extent that advanced level courses are simply not necessary for success in medical school and medical schools even think so or they would require them.
I also think it’s important to remember that OP did not ask whether a student should spend their entire college career taking courses like “intro to lying in the sun” vs. advanced differential calculus. We’re talking about whether a student should place out of intro level science and math courses to take more advanced science and math courses. Now I believe if student who has a genuine interest in a topic and the ability to do so should skip ahead and take full advantage of what their university has to offer. I think students who truly put GPA above all else end up not being successful in med school admissions because I think that character flaw shows through in other regards/endeavors and pops up in other places on the app too. But if a student wants to be a bio major which only requires algebra based physics and intro calc 1/2 and the student has no real interest in physics or calc then there’s no problem with just taking the algebra based physics class and intro calc 1/2. There’s no benefit at the med school admissions level to taking the more advanced courses for the sake of “increasing rigor” especially if that increase in rigor will result in a decrease in GPA. The med school will not be impressed by the bio major with a lower GPA or even equal GPA who took the more advanced physics and calc classes nor will they wonder why a bio major “only” took intro calc and algebra based physics. And I haven’t even added in the opportunity cost of taking a harder level class of no interest and thus sacrificing hours on that class instead of using them more wisely on something else.
"I’m curious about something. Let say you got your high GPA at a competitive college. What if you had a really tough major. And there are only 5 kids in your school with that major and you’re the only crazy premed to attempt it and the only one applying to med school that year. Are you guys saying it still makes no difference? All things being equal, and assuming a student has everything else like high MCATs and all the ECs, ADCOMS will not take that into consideration? "
-OK, you got to “get” the fact that about 5000 are applying to abot 200 spots at every Med. School, including the lowest of the lowest ranked You really think that adcom has time to consider all of the above. Nope, the lower GPA will most likely get “cut” aotomatically, gone…The high GPA will or will not be considered, forget about major, does not matter…Some adcoms simply ignore some applications, you might never know the status of it, ever. It has happened to my D. who at the end had a great selection of 4 Medical Schools to consider, including top 20s. Again, the academics at UG has practically no influence on the academic success at Med. School. You wish to attend at Harvard, then follow your dream, but this is it, no advantages at Med. School, none.
PhD from Harvard was on the same footing with everybody else in my D’s Med. School class.
This thread is variation of what factors are important in med school admissions. Here it’s GPA v rigor. As you can imagine there are endless posts on SDN by adcoms or other credible people on topic of factors. The one I posted below is in response to “what exactly do top schools look for.” I think it’s relevant here because it makes the point that the factors (including fit) looked at by all med schools are the usual suspects (GPAs, MCATs, ECs, PS, interview, etc). I guess if you want to argue that a “rigorous” schedule could be demonstrating the “wow” factor referenced in the post below, okay. I just don’t think that top schools rarely, if ever, get to “rigor” as they have more than enough qualified applicants with usual factors above including those with “wow”. IMO “rigor” is in the eyes of the beholder. A “wow” from one adcom, would get a “meh” from another. I think rigor is more likely to come into play, if ever, if deciding whether to waitlist or reject at mid/low tier schools where as mentioned in post below, adcoms pick later in kickball.
In terms of what the top schools look for, they want good numbers, solid ECs, compelling essays, a great interview, decent research, and some aspect of the resume that has the “wow” factor. Really not much different than what other schools want. The only difference is that their prestige let’s them pick first. It’s basically like picking for a kickball team – most teams want the same attributes, but only one gets to pick first. There is also the nebulous concept of “good fit” which shouldnt be underestimated. You can be perfect on paper, but there may be reasons a school still won’t want you, ranging from not being enthusiastic enough at the interview to being the third applicant they saw who was a former navy seal and equestrian.
“I also strongly disagree with “A B at Harvard is not equal to an A at State U in organic chem.” - how one can tell?”
Miamidap, you say you strongly disagree and then go on to prove my point repeatedly: The med school ad com’s don’t care what school you go to or how rigorous your program is - only what your final GPA is.