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I agree with this. But I didn’t think that was the question, or at least the implication of the question. Anyway, I was just answering the narrow question of whether I ever took note of where my doctors went to school.</p>
<p>Of course, if you can get into your dream school, and reasonably afford your dream school, I’d go there.</p>
<p>Binghamton doesn’t have a reputation for being a big party school. If your brother is serious about his studies, he can find plenty of like-minded people there.</p>
<p>Yale—I think for me, I also don’t believe college should only be a vehicle for med school. Which is why I asked the question of who calls and asks what school a doc attended. The OP seems concerned about UG and how it effects a top 20 med school, but frankley, he/she should be much more concerned about the general fit of the school based on their personality to increase their chance of an amazing GPA and a breadth of knowledge that will make him/her a great doctor and just a talking head.</p>
<p>And he’d get that in spades at a public honors college, where he will be afforded opportunities galore, along with like-minded classmates, few or none of whom will have been accepted because they are legacies, rich, or hockey players.</p>
<p>Checkout [Student</a> Doctor Network|An educational community for students and doctors spanning all the health professions.](<a href=“http://www.studentdoctor.net%5DStudent”>http://www.studentdoctor.net), a website for those trying to get into Med school (and those who did). From what they say, the below is correct. All about the GPA and MCAT and not so much the school.</p>
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<p>I know a few other students who have faced this dilemma and they have chosen the less expensive undergraduate route knowing they had to pace their finances because the road to an M.D. is a long and self-financed one.</p>
<p>I hear what you are saying YaleGradAndDad, I really do, but being able to pick our first choice school regardless of the cost is a luxury not everyone has. Who is to say a person won’t love their experience at a less expensive school?</p>
<p>The cost of medical school is enormous. Yes, a doctor is well compensated, but do they really want to have years where a significant portion of their salary goes to paying back their student loans? Maybe the OP’s brother doesn’t care about that but if would be a good idea to run some numbers to see what his student loan payments will really look like.</p>
<p>This is not a new discussion, it was going on back when I was going to school in the dark ages, and I suspect things haven’t changed all that much when it comes to medical schools. I don’t doubt that going to a prestigious school (i.e an ivy league school when trying to get into Harvard Med et al) gives an edge to a student applying, but it is one of many factors, and what med school recruiters routinely said back then (disclaimer, I didn’t go to medical school) was that what they looked for was students who showed they could handle the rigors of medical school, and if the program they majored in was rigorous and they showed they could do it by showing great grades, MCATSs and so forth, the school itself wasn’t that important.</p>
<p>It also depends what you major in, a kid majoring in biology as a pre med at an elite ivy league program may be ranked lower then a kid who went to Georgia Tech (which btw if a fantastic school for engineering and tech fields, known quite a few grads of it) and majored in Engineering, with identical grades, simply because engineering is known as a tough, rigorous discipline (want an idea how much? The kid that was valedictorian in my brothers engineering school not only got into a wide swath of the top med schools, he got full scholarship offers from a number of them). You may get more of an edge going to a ‘less prestigious’ school majoring in a tough program then going to an ivy with a less rigorous one…</p>
<p>I also agree with others, pre med programs tend to have a lot of kids who change their mind about going to med school, and is it worth coming out with 100k in debt and parental load to go to an ivy or similar school with that chance in mind? And if you do go to med school, it is likely you will have a load of debt from that, so why add to that?</p>
<p>There is a mystique about the ivy league, they are great schools, have a lot of great teachers and so forth, but as in discussions you see all over the universe of people discussing schools, is it worth going into that kind of hock for? As far as Ivy league schools being interesting and stimulating environments, they are, but so are a lot of other schools. I agree you should choose a school for more then whether it can get you into med school, going to a school you otherwise find unattractive because it has the rep of getting kids into med school probably will work against you IME, because school is more then just cramming for exams and a 4.0 for most people. </p>
<p>One other thought, while MD’s do make a good income generally (other then researchers or people who do public health kind of careers), I would also advise being careful about the debt load. Besides the fact that doctors in training can spend years in internship and residency, it also takes a while to get a career going. Having to get through those years with a huge debt load is not easy, from talking to MD friends of mine. More importantly, if you decide to go a different track with your MD degree, if you choose to go into research or want to go into public health or working to bring medical care to poor or rural areas, which generally don’t pay well, not having huge debts might give you more choice about what you do. </p>
<p>In other words, if it were me, I would seriously look at going to a school as academically challenging or with a solid pre med program that was the most economically doable, and many of the schools you mention have programs within the school that are as good or better then many “elite” schools. Georgia Tech engineering, for example, is one of the best in this country, and may cost lost if you get good scholarship money, or a flagship state school. Quite frankly, there is a lot of hype out there, not just in med school, that if you go to one of the ‘magic schools’ your future is all bright and positive and you ‘have to get in there’…whereas the reality of the world as it exists proves otherwise.</p>
<p>I haven’t read this thread, but wanted to add my $.02 as a current med student who is involved with the acceptance of applicants. </p>
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<p>No, but getting into a “top 10” medical school is no easy feat no matter where you go. Its difficult enough to get into any medical school. And you’ll discover that a med school’s rank, much like an undergrad university’s, says little more about it than the amount of research funding it has. Medical education is incredibly standardized - you’ll learn the same things anywhere you go. The big differences between medical schools are location, curriculum style, 3rd/4th year rotations/electives, etc.</p>
<p>While undergrad university is taken into account with admissions to some extent, the effect is very minor (numbers matter way more than institution or major), and the debt level is simply not woth it. Not even close.</p>
<p>*Binghamton doesn’t have a reputation for being a big party school. If your brother is serious about his studies, he can find plenty of like-minded people there. *</p>
<p>This is also true at so-called party schools. Who cares that some students in easier majors across the campus have time to party? My son goes to a “party school,” but he’s in the honors dorm (very quiet), and he’s in a serious major (chemical engineering/pre-med).</p>
<p>Party schools tend to be large flagships with big sports that are going to have numerous majors ranging from difficult to easy. Those in the more challenging majors who party too much, will quickly change their majors or flunk out. </p>
<p>Why do people think that there is some kind of consistency of SAT scores across a campus??? There isn’t. Those who have top scores are **more likely **concentrated in about 5-8 majors…engineering, physics, math, bio, chem, etc.</p>
<p>Reply to post #20…I have often selected doctors based on where they have attended schools. I am always interested to see where they have gone to undergrad. Medical school not so much. I guess I kind of feel that if they went to a great undergrad than they must have been pretty darn smart and the deal with medical school is that everyone graduates as a doctor. I also feel that some people select a lesser med school because they may want convience or less debt.</p>
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<p>Source of data, please? And what about sans-engineering LACs? Sure, Middlebury & Williams have wonderful science programs, but they also do languages and art history, respectively, rather well. Is that where the ‘low’ SAT-math kids congregate? :)</p>
<p>Off to get some popcorn to watch this one. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>While undergrad university is taken into account with admissions to some extent, the effect is very minor (numbers matter way more than institution or major), and the debt level is simply not woth it. Not even close.</p>
<p>This may be the case at some medical schools but the OP asked about admission to the top 10-20 medical schools. These schools have so many excellent candidates and prestige of the undergraduate program does matter. My ivy league medical school filled nearly one-third of the class with ivy league undergraduates - way too high a ratio if prestige did not matter.</p>
<p>Kudos to the poster who says 100K in debt on the assumption that an 18 year old will go on to become a physician is a risky bet. I am making the assumption that the person in question will go to medical school and become a physician. If not, then he won’t have all this education debt for medical school. If he does, then I argue there is a value in attending college at a prestigious institution just for the sake of becoming a broadly educated individual, independent of how it assists you in attending graduate school. The high income you make as a physician reflects the time and money you invested in becoming a doctor. I don’t see why it should come as a surprise that you need to pay that investment over time any more than it shocks me to hear that people take out a 30 year mortgage to buy a home. I also think it is reasonable to assume that higher levels of undergraduate debt may influence the amount of debt your medical school expects you to take on before they offer grant assistance.</p>
<p>Blue. You won’t get to eat much popcorn. I was talking about flagship party schools. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>“My ivy league medical school filled nearly one-third of the class with ivy league undergraduates - way too high a ratio if prestige did not matter.”</p>
<p>May be true in some medical schools, but I can tell you that it doesn’t necessarily reach beyond there either. My d. is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Princeton, a very prestigious program. In six years, and with maybe 30 candidates for every place, including candidates from every Ivy virtually every year, they haven’t accepted a single one from the Ivy League. Not one. And, among the faculty, precisely one has an undergraduate degree from an Ivy (Harvard). Could it mean that they believe students are pretty universally receiving better preparation elsewhere? (Your guess is as good as mine).</p>
<p>More then one poster has reminded us that the OP asked about admission to a top 10-20 medical school. Here is the original post:</p>
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<p>In all fairness to those of us who have broadened the question to one of gaining acceptance to medical school as opposed to gaining acceptance to a top 10-20 medical school, the title of the thread talks only of pre-med and the first paragraph of the original post only talks about going to medical school. It isn’t until the second paragraph that the OP talks about going to a top medical school and not until the last sentence that he confines that to a top 10-20 medical school.</p>
<p>I think those of us who spoke more broadly about gaining admittance to a medical school rather than gaining admittance to a top 10-20 medical school were within the scope of the original question.</p>
<p>Taking on $110k in debt for an UNDERGRAD degree when he has sooo many more years of school ahead of him is crazy. Maybe it would be preferable for him or you if he could go to the more prestigious, more expensive college. Maybe it’s your dream. But the reality? $100k in debt is a big, bold sign that this particular dream is out of your price range.</p>
<p>In another thread, curmudgeon posted this about Yale Med School (he had data on 74 matriculants? at the time of his post):</p>
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<p>"Could it mean that they believe students are pretty universally receiving better preparation elsewhere? (Your guess is as good as mine). "</p>
<p>It could… in musicology.</p>
<p>Elsewhere on CC I’ve seen comments of an English dept. prof , a Harvard science grad student, and others giving a different inference, from the perspective of their departments.</p>
<p>eg:</p>
<p>“I’m in the humanities, and I subscribe to the unpopular view that where you attend for undergrad can have a tremendous impact on where you are admitted as a graduate applicant. Bluntly put, most of the top programs are filled with students from top 30 or so schools. I interviewed at several schools when I was applying, and virtually all of the other shortlisted candidates were from Penn, Oxford, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, and the like. With upwards of 100+ people competing for 2-3 funded spots, you need EVERY leg up you can possibly get.”</p>
<p>“I’m in the sciences, and my experience is still absolutely in line with this. The top feeder schools to my top biology PhD program (per biology undergrad) are MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, and MIT and Harvard still lead when you look at absolute numbers of students sent to my program.”</p>
<p>also quoted, from a blog of a philosophy prof at UCRiverside:
“To my knowledge no UCR undergraduate has ever been admitted to a top-15 philosophy Ph.D. program (certainly not in the 10 years I’ve been here), though we’ve had some students with straight A’s, very strong letters, and excellent writing samples. When I was a student at Berkeley, it seemed that almost all my classmates were from top universities (Harvard, Princeton) or renowned liberal arts colleges (Amherst, Swarthmore). The few who weren’t from such name-brand institutions seemed to have done time at such colleges (a classmate from Northeastern, for example, had spent a year at Oxford and had letters from professors there). I don’t want to suggest that it’s impossible for a student from a middle-tier school to get into a top Ph.D. program, but the odds appear to be long even if you’re valedictorian.” </p>
<p>an English Prof:
“If you are an ambitious humanities student, it is a big advantage to attend a school with excellent PhD and MFA programs. Faculty at such institutions are required to publish/go to conferences in their field/establish national or international reputations, so they are likely to be interesting for serious students. They are used to mentoring and evaluating grad students so they will be able to give you an accurate assessment of your prospects in the field, which may not be true in a smaller LAC. As you get into your junior and senior years, the graduate students (and possibly, graduate courses) will become more and more interesting to you–you will never be the most “advanced” person around. There will be a ton of visiting scholars coming through to give talks and enrich the mix.”</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>YaleGradandDad, Both my FIL and BIL got their MBAs at Harvard. They have both always advised people to not pay for prestige for undergrad. They both received their BS from colleges that do not rank in the top 50.</p>
<p>Interesting thread. No pre-med students in our family (at least yet), but it is very surprising to me that med schools would choose say, a 4.0 Cal State Fullerton grad over a 3.5 Stanford grad. It makes me think that the med schools’ curriculum must not be particularly rigorous if the student from a significantly less-competitive college is considered able to achieve just as well or better than the student from one of the best universities in the world.</p>