@Jsteez While I do agree with you on this…“for some students money is not an issue and for someone who wants access to the most cutting edge research and facilities, top of their field professors, and inspiring peers/environment, attending a top ranked program makes the most sense”, with respect to your JHU data, it is quite possible that the same top students from JHU are admitted at most of those top schools. If that is correct, getting into the top medical school from JHU is not all rosy as you point out.
@Jsteez I agree that there are SOME students who have parents who’ll fund $300k for undergrad and another $300K+ for med school. However, those are more the exceptions than the rule.
You’re forgetting an important point. It’s not JHU or similar that is getting those students into those top med schools. Those students were tippy top cream of the crop awesome test-takers to begin with. If those same gifted dedicated students had gone to UTexas, UIUC, UMich, UCLA, Iowa, etc, they’d likely have similar results.
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but it’s being around like minded individuals that makes these environments so much more unique and rewarding as @YaleGradandDad puts it.
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Again, I’m not talking about attending podunk schools, although if circumstances limited one’s choice to the local directional, doors aren’t shut tight if the student excels.
I think you and YaleGradandDad think that unless you’re at a tippy top school, your classmates are a bunch of dolts. Sure, maybe the first semester you might have some weaker students attempting Bio and Gen Chem, but likely they’ll change their career path after the first exam or two. Soon the premed classes and the classes for the serious majors will be mostly, if not all, very strong students.
Flagships and similar tend to be very large schools with students who range from weakish to outstanding, with the upper quartile consisting of students who would do well at a tippy top school. However, these top quartile students aren’t generally sprinkled evenly across all the majors. They tend to be concentrated within about 12 academic majors, and they generally include those on the premed path.
People like you and YaleDad seem to be looking at other schools’ ACT ranges and see things like middle quartile ACT ranges of 24-30 and imagine that the premeds aren’t being intellectually challenged when they have a bunch of mid 20s ACT students in their classes. Likely, their classmates will the ACT 30-36 students.
@Jsteez it’s ok, @mom2collegekids has been shown to be wrong about med school admissions many times in the past.
See ucla applicants to med school stats here:
http://career.ucla.edu/Portals/14/Documents/PDF/MedStats/2014_Medical_School_Admissions_Statistics.pdf_042516.pdf
The above reads only 3 to ucsf and 0 to many of the top private med schools. If you’re going to say going to a public affords you even similar chances to a top private school for getting into a top med school, show me the stats.
If I’m aiming for a top med school, all the more reason to go to a top private school which has the resources to help you gain admittance to a top med school
@stevensPR that UCLA link is worthless. It’s only showing the self-reported results of 124 applicants when UCLA typically has about 1000+ applicants each year. You can’t tell from that how many UCLA applicants were accepted to top schools.
@stevensPR …you want to use a chart that is only showing results for about 12% of UCLA’s 1000 med school applicants and you’re damning UCLA for only having 3 JHU acceptees out of 124 students who reported data? (We don’t know how many of those 124 actually applied to JHU.)
Are you equally or more damning of Vandy for only having 2 accepted to JHU out of 189 Vandy students applying to med school? (Vandy does report that 37 of their 189 applicants applied to JHU. Again, UCLA doesn’t provide that detail in regards to JHU)
I wouldn’t use UCLA’s east coast/midAtlantic acceptance results as anything significant. While Calif applicants do need to apply OOS since instate has way too few seats, it’s well-known that Californians prefer to stay in Calif and many may not even apply OOS, which that chart sort of suggests.
Fwiw if i were a prospecive BME pre-med major I would choose amongst these 4 schools as follows: 1. Harvard 2. Yale 3. Duke 4. JHU
I would actually reverse the rankings, if you don’t end up at med school a BME from JHU is more valuable on the open market for jobs or research opportunities than the other three. And given that most won’t attend med school having a fallback like that is important. So JHU, Duke, Harvard, Yale.
^^^
I totally understand that advice given that many premeds end up changing career paths. My advice is really strictly for premeds who truly know their hearts, have not romanticized the career, and absolutely want to become physicians.
A student from a top school may have a slight advantage from a lower ranked school, lets say Harvard vs IOWA, but not by a wide margin. Here is from the web site of a T10 UG school that is known for grade deflation in CC community.
" That is not to say that you can earn a 2.0 at XXX and expect that to be held in the same regard as a 4.0 at another school. The mean GPA nationally for applicants accepted into MD programs in 2016 was 3.70. The mean GPA of XXX students accepted into MD programs in 2016 was 3.58. Specific to the sciences, the mean accepted science GPA nationally was a 3.64 and the mean XXX science GPA was a 3.51. It is clear from those results that the medical schools are valuing the rigor of the XXX experience when they consider candidates. "
And we all know Harvard, Yale and few others are known for grade inflation, so their 3.7 should be equivalent to Idaho’s 3.7 or Iowa for that matter. It is a misconception that a Harvard graduate with 3.7 is much superior than ALL the other school’s 3.7 to a med school or any others, if so, the top 1% in the society will be filled with only HYP graduates, which is not true.
40 years ago, I graduated accounting major from a U that ranked 200+ in the US, the accounting school is accredited by AACSB. When I graduated, the “BIG 8”(Equivalent to the Current Big 4) recruiters were happy to hire anyone who has GPA 3.5 or better from my school, the GPA cutoff was 3.5 and they didn’t care if some one is from UIUC or Wharton.
No intension to hijack the thread that is about pre-med. But I think it will be very difficult for any accounting employer to hire anyone from undergraduate Wharton into his/her firm. In the 2016 placement report, there is barely anyone solely concentrated in accounting. For those with double- or triple-concentrations where one is accounting, they barely pursue an accounting career either. In addition, it appears that there is only one pursuing Master in Accounting. Overall, accounting is huge at UIUC whereas accounting is not very visible today at Wharton.
https://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/WHA_2016cp.pdf
I don’t want to start some elite schools vs other school, but I will give my opinion. There are certain schools that have “Connections” to some “elite” UG schools. That’s just the way things work. So, do you have a big advantage going to one, prob not. Would you have a tip, yes.
^^^^ @prof2dad
I thought I said 40 years ago!