How Important Is Name!?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>How important is the name of an undergraduate school if i'm going to med school, assuming that all the stats are the same?</p>

<p>Also, for undergrad admission, do colleges pick a certain amount from each school? in other words, am I competing against my classmates first before those from other schools?</p>

<p>I live in socal, and right now im planning to apply to UC berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCI, USC, Stanford, WUSTL, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Johns Hopkins. Honestly im not sure about the last three (Notre Dame for sure--location); this might sound really stupid but, how serious/enthusiastic should you be about a school to apply? </p>

<p>please help...</p>

2

<p>"How serious should you be about a school to apply?"</p>

<p>Here's the test:
Assume that you are rejected by every other school on your list except for this one school. Would you go there?</p>

3

<p>Only as important as you make it out to be. You get out of college what you put into it. I mean, you could go to a "no-name" school like Widener and go on to Harvard Law. Like-wise, you could go to Harvard and go on to Widener Law.</p>

4

<p>What’s in a name? A name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that one loves the school that is called "Harvard", not the Harvard name. One could flourish at a no-name school (outside top 50), and go to Princeton for his PhD and end up as a dean of Princeton's Engineering School. Or one could go to Wharton, but might end up as a glorified data clerk in some bank. In essence, college is what you make of. You will be fine in any of the schools you listed, especially if you want to go med school. Remember- keep your grades up and don’t be shy to become A grade gobbler</p>

5

<p><a href="http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog05/MCATstudents.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/students/academics/catalog05/MCATstudents.pdf&lt;/a> (see page 413)</p>

6

<p>Just checked the JHU's medical school's list from the above link. It looks like that the colleges represented are really diverse. However, the following schools have more than 10 students enrolled at JHU medical school:</p>

<p>BYU, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, JHU, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC- Berkeley, UCLA, Maryland, UPenn, USC, WUSTL, Yale.</p>

7

<p>What are your concerns about Northwestern?</p>

8

<p>I strongly recommend that you shouldn't go to Johns Hopkins without visiting it. There is a distinctive emphasis on research there that is either going to appeal to you or repel you. Also, opinions differ on the city of Baltimore. JHU is not your generic university. If it's the wrong school for you, you might truly hate it.</p>

9

<p>Oh I don’t know about that. Granted there are still some shoddy areas in the city that you don’t want to explore, especially in the night; Baltimore is still a charming/safe city. As for JHU, I think it’s a fine school located in a great college town. Heck, I think it’s the best school in the whole Maryland, evidenced by the number of JHU undergrads in its med school. (World-famous Wilmer eye institute) Yep, I know where you are comin from and I also heard about the rumor of pre-meders being quite intense and competitive, but that’s way blown up. But then again, there is no pre-meder in any school who is not a grade gobbler.</p>