The focus on a GPA from a elite vs state school is slightly off track if only because GPA is simply one metric out of many. Volunteering, leadership, MCAT, ECs, research, letters of rec, and interviewing skills—these all end up playing a significant role in determining acceptance vs waitlist vs rejection, much more significant than what school you went to. OP, I would go to the school that you feel is the best fit and where you feel you can thrive and succeed, whether that be intellectually, emotionally, or opportunities-wise.
For what it’s worth, I attended a state school for college and gained acceptances to T20 med schools. I would not let prestige be such a big factor in your decision.
@HalfMoon22 As a current med student, I would say med school is “different” than undergrad, and for some people they find that the differences fit their learning style more. With many medical schools moving to Pass/Fail preclinical curriculum and unranked classes, there is very little pressure on students to gun for the highest score possible on their exams, allowing more collaboration and focus on learning at their own pace. Although I’m definitely learning things at a greater volume and pace than in undergrad, a lot of the stress associated with exams and studying has disappeared. In addition, people find it refreshing, rewarding, and more motivating that all they’re learning are topics that they are genuinely interested in aka medicine. In these respects, I am finding med school to be “easier.”
Additionally, having come from a huge state school, there is a lot more individual academic support and investment. There’s also the encouraging thought that my school has a 100% match rate and things are probably going to turn out just fine after 4 years, one way or another.
From personal experience, I can tell you that no one is impressed by a 3.5 or even 3.6 GPA during admissions from an Ivy vs a 3.8 or 3.9 from regional U. However, they are quite impressed by 3.8 from an Ivy with 518-520 MCAT. People talk a lot about research, volunteering and everything else but outside of being a Rhodes or Fulbright scholar, nothing else truly beats a solid GPA and a great MCAT score for MD admissions.
Most students end up in their state schools for medicine. Those schools rarely give you brownie points for attending a top 20 school and allow that to make up for your GPA shortfall. The schools that do give you brownie points for attending a big name school, have a different problem. They get all the top candidates from those big name schools. So are you to assume one attends Yale or Columbia or Penn but the entire class is stuck at 3.6 GPA? That is never the case because there will be 30-60 super performers at each school who are all applying there with 3.8-4.0 GPA and 522 MCAT scores.
Michigan is a great example of recruiting from top schools. My kid did get in along with several friends from Stanford (all with extremely impressive stats). None of them from her batch attend Michigan because they all went to other top schools. Does Michigan interview slightly lower tier candidates from Stanford because of that - of course not. I am sure some kids are attending from the 16 or so they admitted (not everyone is a 4th year student out of those interviewed and I only knew those in school - medical schools admit people out of college for 5-10 years but list their original undergrad).
This seems about right. There’s a lot of discussion about “holistic” admissions, but two aspects of a medical school application that are easily quantifiable are GPA and MCAT score, and these numbers are duly reported by virtually every medical school and by AMCAS. And there doesn’t appear to be any shortage of high GPA/MCAT combinations coming out of the Ivy League(or other “top” schools) so medical schools have no need to adjust up the GPA average of these applicants.