<p>I am about to start applying to schools and I plan on being premed wherever I go and ultimately going to medical school. I am unsure if it would be in my best interest to push myself into a top ivy league school (UPenn) where it will be extremely competitve and difficult to earn a high gpa or to attend a less competitive school (UMichigan) where I can more easily get the 4.0 with my single goal being getting into medical school in the end.</p>
<p>Either one would be fine. Go where you’ll be happiest (or if you think you’d be equally happy at either, whichever one is cheaper).</p>
<p>A 4.0 GPA is not the magic ticket to med school admissions, and not having a 4.0 GPA is not the kiss of death. Enjoy being an undergrad. You’re only in college once.</p>
<p>^Also, a 4.0 isn’t as easy as it sounds. Saying a 4.0 at UMich (which is pre-med central and I am actually not sure that Penn has a rougher grading system than UMich in the first place) is easier than a 4.0 at UPenn is like saying that its easier to win a dunk off against Shaq than with Michael Jordan.</p>
<p>A high GPA is a great thing though, regardless of where you went. It is true that med schools do keep in mind grade inflation/deflation, but a 3.5 will never beat a 4.0, regardless of where you went.
As both are top undergrads, there really isn’t much point in your question. However, I will say that where you go is secondary to what you do. You want a school that will thrive in and has the resources that appeal to you, but what its rank is won’t make up for any failings on your part. Resources aren’t just getting good grades either. There’s more to med school applications than that.</p>
<p>A top school, like top 25 or top 50 or top 25 LACs are all good, something recognisable is helpful.</p>
<p>For instance a student in CA who has a choice between UCLA, UCI, and CSU Chico is probably not going to suffer in med school apps between UCLA & UCI whereas Chico is relatively unknown and if it is known has a big party school reputation. The Chico student better have nearly a 4.0 and great LORs & activities. The same student at a UC might do okay with a 3.5-3.7 and the same great LORs & activities.</p>
<p>You need to go where you can do the best and do not assume that #1 school on USnews is any harder or easier for a certain GPA than #10 or #20 or even #50. It is you and your experience there and what you do with it. </p>
<p>UCI may be lower ranked than UCLA but it is still full of gunner premeds, so no GPA boost there. Plus a more famous school may even offer more programmes that give you an opportunity to be involved and get connected, so you may have a higher GPA at a higher ranked school because they educated YOU better than a lower school might have.</p>
<p>That being said, I cannot see any big reputational difference between Penn & Mich, that are both well-respected and well ranked. Go with fit.</p>
<p>As I attended a party public school and am now on my way to medical school, I’m going to have to disagree with you some. I agree that going to a less competitive school should result in a higher GPA, but not as a way of making up for a “failing.” It is because competitiveness is taken into account, and adcoms would wonder why you didn’t do better in your classes relative to a harder school. This is done not by rankings or prestige, but by the average GPA and MCAT score of a given school. Let us say that Princeton has an average applicant with a 3.6 GPA and a 34 MCAT. Let us then say some other less competitve school has an average GPA of a 3.6 with a 30 MCAT. If a student from the 2nd school applied with a 34 and a 3.6, adcoms will take this in account since the students (who has an above average MCAT for that school) didn’t have an above average GPA. </p>
<p>Once again to emphasize, a 3.5 will NEVER beat a 4.0 with everything else equal. The biggest “difference” that I have heard of is a 0.3 GPA boost for a very grade deflated school. So perhaps a 3.65 might beat a 3.85 at CSU, but let’s not get too crazy!</p>
<p>Here are my recommendations for choosing a school, taken from my blog.</p>
<p>the biggest things to get into medical school, aside from GPA and MCAT scores, are that you have had interesting and meaningful experiences in:
- Community Service
- Medically related volunteering/work
- Research (most important for those wanting to go to a research heavy school)</p>
<p>Everything else that you do outside of these three areas is what makes you unique, interesting, and can only improve your chances. I personally feel that one of my strongest features when applying was my dancing experiences. These three things, especially 1 and 2, are critical to many schools, because it shows both a tendency towards compassion and charity, as well as provides you with a basis to prove why you want to go to medical school. Because of this, here are my personal recommendations on selecting a school.</p>
<p>1) Has a research program that is large enough to sustain undergraduate participation.
Look for schools that have undergraduate thesis projects, undergraduate fellowship positions, etc. A school with Research 1 designation is great, because that means there are tons of research projects going on. If you never publish or present a paper, that’s fine. However, doing so can be a major boost, especially if you are author or co-author, or even 29th author of a paper that makes it into a major journal like Nature. It does not necessarily have to be medically related research, but I would recommend it if you are contemplating MD/PhD.</p>
<p>2) A moderately well known school.
I personally would recommend limiting your choices to one of the top 200 or so schools. You want a school that has had a decent number of pre-meds, because this increases the chances of an admissions committee knowing something about the opportunities available at your school. It also increases your chances of getting good advising from a pre-med office. I am a member of the faction that believes that prestige is not a significant factor in the admissions process. Having gone to a public school that isn’t even ranked in the Top 100, I have interviewed at a number of the Top 20, 10, and 5 schools. I personally believe that your own merits outweigh the name of your school significantly. This is not to say that I believe a 3.5 is the same as one school than another. Admissions committees often have “experts” on a given school, or look at statistics like the average GPA and MCAT score of pre-meds in past years. Thus, a 3.5 at Princeton might be more impressive than a 3.5 at John Doe public school, simply because the average GPA and MCAT score at Princeton is a 3.5/33, and a 3.5/28 at John Doe. Clearly, it was harder to earn a 3.5 and 33 at Princeton than a 3.5 and 33 at John Doe (though, the equal MCAT scores would somewhat minimize this). Suffice it to say that a 3.5 and 28 at Harvard isn’t going to beat out a 3.8 and 31 at John Doe, all other things being equal. This being said, I feel that opportunities at the more prestigious undergrad schools outside of academics are excellent. However, I feel that any big public school like OSU, ASU, etc will have similar opportunities by virtue of their sheer size. Any school that made it in the top 200 should have enough of everything for you to succeed if you are good enough. If you are good enough at one place, you are good enough anywhere, so long as you aren’t handicapped by lack of opportunity.</p>
<p>3) A School with a medical school or that is near one.
The inside man always has an advantage. If you went to Harvard College, you will have a stronger shot at Harvard Med. This is because you have three years to build relationships with the medical school, do research under doctors affiliated (and thus get letters) with the school, and become an expert on that school. The opportunity to work with doctors at any medical school probably increases your chances everywhere. There is always the chance that they will be recognized, and its a great way to get insight in academic medicine.</p>
<p>4) Go to a school near a reasonably sized city.
Cities have a lot going for them by virtue of their huge populations. There are all sorts of activities available in research, community service, and just fun things that will make you a more well rounded and interesting person. Being near a city means you will also be near at least a few good hospitals or clinics. This saves you on travel time and ease of access, as it is likely students from your school have already built connections with nearby hospitals.</p>
<p>I heard that UMichigan is very competitive. 4.0 is doable probably at any school as long as you work hard. I also heard that GPA and mcat score are much more important than name of your UG, and it does not matter what Medical School you go in USA. I know couple people from very low ranking Med. Schools who got amazing residencies at Mayo Clinic, which is apparently such a big deal that husband of one of them, quit his job to move to Minnesota. Basically go any place that fits you the best and work hard and complete other non-academic reguirements and you will be just fine.</p>
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<p>I would actually disagree with this premise: it’s not entirely clear at which school it would be harder to get a higher GPA. You may actually get a higher GPA at Penn than at Michigan.</p>
<p>Gaining admission into med-school has less to do with earning top grades than it does with avoiding failing grades, and it is practically impossible to get a failing grade at an Ivy, except possibly for Cornell (and even that is debatable). As long as you put in a modicum of effort, you’re going to pass. Maybe not with an A, but you’re almost certainly not going to be stuck with anything below a C, and probably not below a B. However, at Michigan or many other public schools, you truly can fail. </p>
<p>Hence, Penn may represent the risk-averse choice in which the variance of your outcome will be reduced. Maybe it will be harder to get a 4.0, but on the other hand, you won’t get a terrible GPA either.</p>
<p>You might also want to consider it this way:
You’re 17. Unless you are 100% sure you want to be a doctor (which if you were, apply to the 7 year programs instead of these schools) there is a decent chance you won’t be premed when you graduate. A lot of the Penn students who internally transfer into Wharton were premeds when they entered college. If you want the best opportunities out of undergrad in case you decide (whether due to grades or changed interests) that becoming a doctor isn’t for you, a top school will help you land a great job compared to going to an average school. I wouldn’t say Michigan is too different from Penn in this regard, but you see my point.</p>
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<p>I thought that gaining admission to a med school still requires more As than Bs at any school. One difference between going to a top school and going to a not-so-top school is: At the latter one, the percentage of As need to be higher.</p>
<p>When you receive a failing grade at any school, it is unlikely that you will get into a medical school no matter what school you go to. At issue is whether it is easier to receive X percent of As at a top school, or it is easier to receive Y percent of As at a school that is not so top, where X < Y. If somebody can answer this question (and what X and Y are), it will likely help aspiring premeds decide which college to go.</p>
<p>I also suspect that the percent of students in premed at a given school may influence the success rate of a premed (either positively or negatively). If a school is full of premeds, you may notice that the average GPA for the graduating class at that school tends to be lower. There is a chance that it is purely because of the effect of high concentration of premeds (and that school may attract more “gunners”?), rather than because of the extreme difficulty of the premed program there. This is just my speculation though so I could be wrong here.</p>
<p>Oh…one more point (and a strange question): Is it good to go to a “girly” school or not? Call me sexist. But it appears to me that a higher percentage of high achieving female students are in premed (An anecdotal example: more females in BME than in traditional enginnering majors, among science/engineering female students), because relatively speaking, more high achieving male students will explore other “attractive” careers like I-banking, hardcore (PhD-track) science, engineering, etc. I am not Larry Summers so it is OK for me to say this :-)</p>
<p>It is not at all clear that your gpa will be higher at a college that has less competitive admissions. The most competitive colleges, with a few exceptions, tend to have higher gpa’s. In other words, it seems as if professors around the country have a common idea of what constitutes “A”-level work, and they are more likely to see it from the highly selected crowd of Princeton undergrads, than at a place where many of the students do not have the academic talent to get in HYP.</p>
<p>Your CLASS RANK may well be higher at a less competitive school: If you GPA is the same at HYP as at (arbitrary) QRS, and admissions standards are much higher at HYP, a 3.6 places you higher relative to your classmates at QRS than it does at HYP. However, this does not mean you are more or less attractive to medical schools. They seem to want a certain level of academic accomplishment. This level is common at the most competitive colleges, like HYP. Therefore, a high proportion of the students who enroll at these places are good enough at absorbing and analyzing material and taking tests that they are good prospects for medical school. As you move to less competitive admissions places, the proportion of students who are medical school material decreases. At least before they changed their grading rules, Princeton published detailed information on their med school admissions results. It was fascinating that the average GPA of a successful premed was about the same as the average GPA of the student body overall. In other words, to get into med school from Princeton you simply need to be an average student at a place filled with people who are way above average.</p>
<p>As noted, the MCAT scores at a place like Princeton are very high by national standards, and of course the college is familiar. So there will rarely be questions about how to interpret an academic record at P. </p>
<p>This tells you nothing about whether A GIVEN STUDENT enhances her/his chances at med school by going to HYP. This really depends on the highly individual interaction between student and college.</p>
<p>The things mentioned in mcdowe’s post- research opportunities, good advising, etc certainly count. There is something to be said for the college being familiar to the admissions committees, otherwise their impression of your college is likely to be dominated by random facts. You have to be careful here. For example, small liberal arts colleges are very common in New England, so med schools in the northeast are very familiar with them. They will have detailed opinions of a couple dozen such places. If you are applying in Texas, then your LAC may be an unknown to the the admissions people.</p>
<p>Is an R1 university better? Depends on how you do there. If you thrive academically, then it is hard to argue. If you would learn more, and have better grades, at an LAC, then you are probably better off there.</p>
<p>Please forget about 4.0. It is at least possible most places, but very rare at the top colleges, and certainly not to be taken for granted. Even if you could get a perfect 4.0, it is not obvious that you should. In fact, the top med schools would much rather see a very high GPA, and substantial other accomplishments, than a perfect GPA, with nothing else. The time spent making sure to get an A in every single course perhaps could be put to better use doing some real research and “settling” for an occasional A-.</p>
<p>Why not to aim at “A” AND do everything else and make sure that you are enjoying yourself doing it? There are plenty of opportunities. Usually the only obstacle is to be able to choose, you do not want to be torn into 10 different directions every day. But most pre-meds are very involved with minors, volunteering, jobs, research, study/trips abroad, liedership opportunities, Medical organizations AND they also try to get that “A”. Does it look bad on application, just curious?</p>
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<p>What’s even more important than getting more A’s than B’s is not getting any D’s or, especially, F’s. See below.</p>
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<p>No, you’re neglecting the even more important issue of avoiding D’s or F’s. You said it yourself: “when you receive a failing grade at any school, it is unlikely that you will get into a medical school no matter what school you go to”. Hence, you should prefer a school that practically never hands out failing grades in the first place. At Penn, as long as you do a modicum of work, the absolute worst grade you’ll get is probably a C, which obviously isn’t a great grade, but is still far better than an F. Other schools, Michigan included, will not hesitate to fail you. </p>
<p>Let me tell you a story not about Michigan but about another prestigious public university that shall remain unnamed. I know a guy who, the night before a major exam, found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him, and his anguished mental state resulted in his bombing the exam and thereby failing the course. The school didn’t care about why he performed poorly on the exam, all they cared is that he performed poorly. So now he has to carry around the scarlet letter F on his academic transcript for the rest of his life, eviscerating his chances of getting into any grad school forever. If he had gone to Penn, he may have still bombed the exam, but he probably would have ended up with no worse than a C, because Penn practically never gives out grades lower than that.</p>
<p>sakky, I do not disagree at most of your points. Rather, I tried to elaborate what you had said, in the following sense:</p>
<p>The admission “game” to any medical school is a game that can only be played successfully by those who are highly motivated and with a reasonably good academic capability. Thus, I excluded all the students who ever get D or F from the discussion.</p>
<p>I fully agree with you about the additional risk factor of going to a state university, and some (if not most?) top private schools more likely “pamper” their students when the students have some difficulty in their lives. (But I do not know how true this is: “Penn practically never gives out grades lower than C”, just because I am not familiar with Penn.)</p>
<p>What I meant to ask is that, among the students who get more As than Bs and rarely get any C and never get a D or F, at any school, is it easier to get, say, a 3.75 at a top private than to get a 3.85 at a state university? (here I assume that a 3.75 kid from a top private has the same probability as a 3.85 kid to get into a medical school. These two numbers, 3.75 and 3.85, are chosen arbitrarily and may not be correct.) I do not know the answer myself. Maybe only a student who has transfered between these two types of schools may have some first-hand experience on this.</p>
<p><a href=“But%20I%20do%20not%20know%20how%20true%20this%20is:%20%22Penn%20practically%20never%20gives%20out%20grades%20lower%20than%20C%22,%20just%20because%20I%20am%20not%20familiar%20with%20Penn.”>quote</a>
[/quote]
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<p>I’m quite certain if you ask around the Penn section on CC, you will find that, barring truly extraordinary circumstances such as academic misconduct, practically nobody gets grades worse than C’s.</p>
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<p>And I disagree with that very premise. Even highly motivated students with strong academic ability can sometimes be tagged with bad grades, either because they run into circumstances like the guy I mentioned above, or because they happened to misunderstand an exam question, or because they just happen to have an unlucky brain fart at precisely the wrong time. The very best way to avoid bad grades is to simply attend a school that doesn’t give them out in the first place. </p>
<p>More generally speaking, as others have alluded to, Penn is a more grade-inflated school than is Michigan - by a delta of about 0.2 GPA, partially because Penn practically never hands out bad grades. Now, to be sure, some of that can be explained by the higher average student quality at Penn. However, as I’ve been saying, grading is somewhat stochastic in nature: a brilliant and hard-working student may nonetheless unluckily end up with low grades and a lazy and incapable student may nonetheless luckily get high grades. Hence, you may end up with lower grades at Michigan than at Penn. </p>
<p>[University</a> of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/penn.html]University”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/penn.html)
[University</a> of Michigan](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/Michigan.html]University”>University of Michigan)</p>
<p>Personally, I would argue that the biggest GPA difference of all is not to be found among various schools but among various majors. Let’s face it: at any school, some majors are far more difficult and far more harshly graded than are others. Maximizing your chances of being admitted into med-school can be summarized as choosing an easy major where you can get high grades while doing little work.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure that this is a dreadful thing, as far as medical school goes. When people’s health is in my hands, I’d like to think I would do my best, no matter what was going on in my personal life. As an MD, if I make a mistake and hurt someone, I don’t think the patient or my supervisors are going to care that my significant other is cheating on me or that my dog died or that my mom just found out she has cancer. I still need to care appropriately for my patients.</p>
<p>Of course, whether or not a college exam is like taking care of patients as a resident/attending is debatable, but I still wonder.</p>
<p>sakky, as a Penn student I can say that if you do really really poorly you can get a C- or D. I havn’t gotten any, but have friends who have either received a really poor grade, or close to it. In most classes you’re pretty safe with at least a C (assuming you try and whatnot, there are students here who party too much and have to take time off). However, with science and math if your scores are low enough you can fail. Granted, most people I know who are facing a D or F will take a W. One W won’t kill a med school app, but an F probably will.</p>
<p>sakky:</p>
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<p>If this is really true, don’t you think it is really sad because most doctors we will have are those who tend to be good at gaming the system while minimizing the efforts? Thanks god that there are such things called pre-reqs which all premeds need to take.</p>
<p>I admit that even at a top school, some students may have this attitude. I personally know a premed who said that he is going to keep a far far distance from those science departments once he has passed the pre-reqs. I only hope that not too many are like this. I know my child is likely not one like this. An evidence: He even plans to take a very difficult course and he is fully aware that he may not get a top grade in the end because the students taking that course are all top students (I heard that some are even medical school students.)</p>
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<p>Well, the problem with that logic is that, as I said, there are many colleges that just won’t give you a failing grade, regardless of how poorly you may have done. Students from those colleges hold an unfair advantage in the med-school admissions process over students who go to more difficult colleges where students can fail.</p>
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<p>Ok, perhaps I overstated it with a D. But still, the point is that Penn won’t stick you with F’s. But other schools will. </p>
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<p>I think it is a tremendously sad system, for I agree, what the system ends up admitting are not those students who are necessarily the academically most qualified students, but rather the ones who are the best at playing games by appearing to be the most qualified. </p>
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<p>Well, even that has a problem: many clever students then deduce that they should not take those prereq requirements at their particular school, but at a nearby easy community college instead. </p>
<p>Consider what Dr. Michael McCullough, former Rhodes Scholar and who earned his MD at UCSF, had to say. His advice was directed to premeds at Stanford, but could just as easily have been directed to premeds anywhere.</p>
<p>*Myth #10.
I SHOULD TAKE ALL OF MY PRE-MED
CLASSES AT STANFORD BECAUSE IT WILL
LOOK BETTER TO THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS.</p>
<p>This is not true either. Many successful medical
school applicants at the nation’s best medical
schools took many of their pre-med requirements at
community college in the summer or other local
schools. By taking some of the basics elsewhere, you
can create more academic freedom to take some of the
truly amazing courses that Stanford offers both in the
sciences and non-sciences. The introductory classes
are taught very well here, but they can also be learned
elsewhere. Many upper division classes in all departments
are uniquely taught well at Stanford.</p>
<p>The only caveat to this is that it might look
strange if you did poorly in all of your science classes
at Stanford and then did well in an ‘easier’ school.
However, if you do fairly well at Stanford, it will not
appear strange that you took some basic coursework
elsewhere to save academic time and/or money.</p>
<p>Take home point: You will not be penalized
for taking some of your introductory pre-med classes
elsewhere and this can free you up to take classes
which are uniquely taught well at Stanford.</p>
<p>Myth #11.
I AM ALWAYS BEST OFF TAKING ALL MY
INTRODUCTORY PRE-MED CLASSES AT
STANFORD.</p>
<p>False. It is true that it is more difficult to get
an A in a Stanford pre-med class than it is at most other
schools. This is easier to understand since you are
graded on a curve with some of America’s best students.
Consequently, an ‘A’ at Stanford can mean a lot,
particularly in science classes with a ‘C’ mean.</p>
<p>However, most of you won’t get A’s in every
class. And because of this, some of you certainly
would have had higher GPA’s elsewhere. It is also true
that medical school know this and will take it into account.
However, this ‘forgiveness factor’ is not infinite.
Getting a 4.0 in your pre-med requirements at a
junior college will certainly make you a stronger applicant
than a 3.5 in your pre-med requirements at Stanford.</p>
<p>One admissions officer I spoke with estimated
the bump factor of attending a school like Harvard or
Stanford to be between 0.3 and 0.5 of a grade point.
For some of you, an ‘A’ in high school could
be achieved through hard work and determination.
This is not necessarily true of the pre-med classes at
Stanford. Everyone is trying hard. They are all smart.
And the classes can be very difficult.</p>
<p>The upshot of all of this is that some of you
may be more successful applying to medical school by
taking most of your pre-med classes elsewhere. And I
have certainly known many applicants who would have
been more successful applying to medical school if they
had pursued their academic passions at Stanford and
took their pre-med classes elsewhere, either in summers
or in a year off. I have also known students at Stanford—
who would have been fantastic physicians—who
quit the pre-med process in frustration without exploring
this option. If you want to be a doctor and are
struggling at Stanford, this option is worth exploring.*</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.questscholars.org/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf[/url]”>http://www.questscholars.org/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf</a></p>
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<p>The real problem, as I said, is that the med-school adcoms perversely punish those students who take difficult courses as, for the purposes of med-school admission, it is better to not take a difficult course at all than to take it and get a bad grade. Sad but true. The blame rests entirely with the adcoms.</p>
<p>No offense to some good students at a junior college (who may later transfer to a 4-year college and be very successful there), I believe that if my child had taken a couple of BCPM classes there, he would likely consider himself as a non-competitive applicant in the eyes of medical school adcoms.</p>
<p>He actually took some classes there as a high school student. But after he had learned the cons of taking a class there, he regretted that and vowed never to take another class there again. Right or wrong, this is his belief. People can agree to disagree, can’t they?!</p>