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Extremely selective with the quotations, Sakky. Your representation doesn't convey the meaning of the article. How about </p>
<p>"You're not consigned to the scrap-heap if you don't get in the first time," said Fishbein, "and we will be here to support you the whole way, even after you graduate."
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<p>Of course I am being selective with my quotes! The rest of the article basically deals with how the premed committee serves to help those particular students who are doing well. I have never disputed that the top JHU students do well for themselves. The interesting question to me is - what about those who DON'T do well? What happens to them? </p>
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Further, Sakky, JHU does send the highest percentage of students to Graduate school. "83 percent of Johns Hopkins students go on to graduate school (about half immediately after graduation), the highest percentage of any school in the nation." From 2006. This is states on many of Hopkins' websites.
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<p>If so, then would you mind linking to these websites? </p>
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BDM, Hopkins places students at every large consulting firm and most large Ibanks as well as in many other good government and private sector areas. Much better than many schools. Look at the career center website.
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<p>But again, that's missing the point. Again, nobody is disputing that the top students do well for themselves. The relevant question, again, is, what about those students who are at the bottom of the class? </p>
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I just read post #43. What you don't seem to understand is, that 90+% of premeds go to medical school from Hopkins.
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<p>Uh, as stated by BDM above, what you mean to say is that 90% of premeds * that apply to med-school * will get in. Plenty of premeds at any school, Hopkins included, don't even bother to apply. For example, plenty of premeds at any school don't even manage to complete the premed course sequence because they find it to be too difficult. Even of those that do, some complete the sequence with such poor grades that they know they're not going to get in anywhere, so why even apply? For example, if you get straight C-'s in all of your premed courses, come on, you know you're not getting in anywhere. And even of those that do reasonably well in those courses, some will absolutely bomb the MCAT and therefore decide not to apply. </p>
<p>But the point is, at any school, the percentage of premeds who actually apply to med-school are only a subset of the total number of premeds at that school. I know quite a few people (granted, not Hopkins people) who really wanted to be doctors, but never even applied to med-school because their grades/MCAT scores were just too low such that they knew they weren't going to get in anywhere. </p>
<p>But anyway, the point is, to date, nobody has yet satisfactorily explained to me why you (potentially) need to sink bad applicants in order to help your good ones. I've said it before, I'll say it again - if you can't say something good about somebody, why not just say nothing at all? Why do you have to dis' somebody publicly? </p>
<p>Look, the poorly-performing JHU premed in't going to take anything away from the top JHU students anyway. For example, a guy with a 2.9 GPA and a mediocre MCAT score who still insists on applying to med-school isn't going to take away a spot from the superstar JHU premed who's trying to get into Harvard Medical School. Competitively speaking, he's not even in the same universe. So what's the harm in just giving that mediocre premed a neutral form letter so that he can apply to some no-name med-schools or osteopathy schools? His chances are already low to begin with - so what's the point in lowering them even further by tattooing him with a bad rec? </p>
<p>what I gather from coolguyusa and darkhope is that JHU is basically playing reverse Robin Hood - you're taking away from the poor performers in order to boost the top students. That to me is already rather odious. But that's not even the full story, for I rather doubt that the top students are even really being boosted at all. After all, think about it. How exactly is a top JHU premed helped when the mediocre premeds get bad rec's? Why does that help? Let's face it. The top premeds and the mediocre premeds are probably not even applying to the same tier of med-schools anyway, and if they are, the mediocre applicant won't even make it past the first screen of the top med-schools. Hence, the top and mediocre premeds are never realistically compared by the same med-school adcom in the same process anyway. Secondly, even if miraculously they were compared together, they STILL would certainly not be compared head-to-head against each other such that the committee letter takes precedence. For that to happen, you would have to have a med-school adcom who had 1 spot left and 2 applicants left to consider - a top JHU premed and a mediocre one - and then use the committee letters to decide between them. Come on, is that really going to happen? Again, the mediocre premed will almost certainly have been eliminated in the process long before it ever got to that point. Better grades, better MCAT scores - the top JHU premed is superior to the mediocre one in every possible way such that a committee letter isn't going to make much of a difference.</p>
<p>Hence, I still do not see how the top JHU premeds gain anything by having the mediocre JHU premeds get branded with negative recs. Like I said, keep giving the top premeds stellar rec's. I have never disputed the value in this. But, let's be honest. It's clear to me how the mediocre premeds lose out when they are tagged with bad rec's as opposed to neutral rec's. But who really gains from this situation? Does anybody really gain anything? Economists would say that this situation is Pareto-suboptimal - that some people lose, but nobody gains. This is the case of reverse Robin Hood, except that the top students aren't even really gaining anything. Seems to me that you're hurting the bad students just for the sake of hurting them. It's not a zero-sum game, it's a "negative-sum" game.</p>