Is compromising prestige for less debt smart for a premed?

Parent Cafe
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<p>*momreads quote: My son has a couple of friends who turned down the Ivies for undergrad to take National Merit offers (full tuition and honors housing, among the other goodies) at a large state university. Best decision they could have ever made. They will graduate at the top of their class with near perfect GPAs.</p>

<p>Yalegrad response…
Which suggests they have easily outclassed their peers since they are so far above the norm at that state school. Of course those schools wouldn’t offer those free rides to attract students who were not heads and shoulders above the rest of their admits.*</p>

<p>Yalegrad has given the misinformed answer that many give without knowing the facts. My NMF son is at the same school as Momreads’ NMF son. They are not unique among their classroom peers. As I’ve stated in an earlier post, kids with high stats at large flagships are not equally distributed across all majors. They are largely concentrated within about 5+ majors…Eng’g, math, bio, chem, physics, etc. </p>

<p>That school has over 500 national scholars and about 1500 students who have Presidential scholarships (typically ACT 32+), and a similarly large number of kids with a big scholarship for ACT 30-31. Again, guess where many of those kids can be found? …in math, engineering/comp sci, and hard science majors…not totally, but generally speaking that is where those kids are.</p>

<p>Therefore, these kids are not “head and shoulders” above all their classmates. They are truly among other very smart kids. Anyone with an ACT 30+ is scoring at or above the 96th percentile. Certainly, these aren’t “average joe” students.</p>

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<p>Bay,
First of all, my guess (and it’s just a guess) is that everything else being absolutely equal, the Stanford grad would get some brownie points.</p>

<p>But,

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is what I don’t understand. For someone to assert that one UG school prepares a student better than another, certainly that school should add some value above and beyond the students intrinsic ability. I mean, you are suppposed to actually learn something in your undergrad curriculum. So it doesn’t matter if it’s the same kid or not.
If we assume (for arguments sake) that the MCAT is a metric of the knowledge level and training of a student then -
MCAT Score of Smart kid with superior undergraduate education > MCAT score of same smart kid with lesser undergraduate education.</p>

<p>I’m disregarding the GPA for this discussion, because all sorts of things come into play. And as I said before, I’m not sure I buy into the MCAT as all that valid a metric. This is just for argument’s sake. It’s entirely possible this scenario you presented almost never occurs, and Stanford UGs almost always outscore CSUF UGs. I’m just talkking about one particular hypothetical case.</p>

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<p>You’ll probably find far more grade inflation at Stanford than at CSUF.</p>

<p>This is probably true.</p>

<p>When I was at a high school football game in Calif recently, the friend I sat with was talking about her son who is at Yale. She was upset that he seemed to be kind of less-than-serious about his studies (much less than when he was at his private high school) and his response was that he knew that 85% of the kids would get an A in their classes.</p>

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<p>If this is true, then either: a student should never choose a lesser school because they will end up with a lower MCAT score; or there is truly no difference in education quality between the top colleges and the lowest colleges. Is that right?</p>

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<p>The education quality is a matter of what the individual student receives, not what the entire college is like. The top pre-med student at a second tier (I’m not talking about the flagships) state university will often (if not almost always) receive more educational opportunities than the middling student (the SAME student) at the prestige private.</p>

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<p>I’m getting a little lost here. I don’t know where you infer these generalizations from what I wrote. Of course there are instances where students should choose lesser, or (more diplomatically described), lower ranked schools. And I assume there are differences in education quality between schools. Except in your example, at least for the student you describe, those differences certainly are not reflected in the MCAT score. I don’t have across the board data, and as I think I implied above, I wouldn’t be surprised if Stanford applicants generally do better on the MCAT overall.</p>

<p>But none of this has anything to do with what I’m writing. I’m addressing one hypothetical situation. THe hypothetical situation you presented. </p>

<p>I’m assuming the MCAT is a measure of the quality of the undergraduate pre-med education, which is at least partly true. I’m only considering that factor. In your case, a student attended Stanford instead of CSUF, but despite going through four years of what is supposedly a superior pre-medical program, was still unable to score even one point higher on the MCAT than he would have by attending CSUF (and presumably saving some money). For this student, and under this scenario, it is entirely unclear that attending Stanford benefitted them as far as a pre-medical education. </p>

<p>If there are other tangible and intangible factors involved, that could be a different story.</p>

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<p>In my hypothetical, I gave the student the same MCAT score coming out of both schools, in an effort to isolate the gpa/school rank factors. From what you wrote, I realized that this would be unlikely to happen because the quality of the education impacts the MCAT score. That is why I concluded that a student should never choose a lesser school because they will end up with a lower MCAT score. At the same time, mini and others claim that there are no differences in education quality between the top colleges and the lower colleges, so one should always choose the lesser school (if cheaper) because ergo there will be no resulting differences in the MCAT score. It is certainly confusing.</p>

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<p>That could be true in some, most, or all cases. It also might not be true. I’m not addressing that since I have no data. I’m just talking about your hypothetical student, and for him/her it didn’t matter. </p>

<p>and of course, there are other things involved besides GPA and test scores.</p>

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<p>“At the same time, mini and others claim that there are no differences in education quality between the top colleges and the lower colleges, so one should always choose the lesser school (if cheaper) because ergo there will be no resulting differences in the MCAT score.”</p>

<p>That’s not what I am claiming. In fact, I think that educational quality at the prestige privates is generally speaking substantially higher. HOWEVER, I am arguing that the SAME student who would be a top honors college pre-med at a second-tier state u. will likely receive more attention - more internships, more research opportunities, better recommendations, and better mentoring - than that same student, now a middling student because of the competition, would at a prestige private. It will result in a better resume, likely a higher GPA, and the same MCATs.</p>

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<p>"Yaledad wrote this one "Most people would say that those “prestigious” colleges offer more opportunities both as a student and perhaps as a graduate. "</p>

<p>Conventional wisdom is a funny thing, Einstein once said that convetional wisdom are a series of prejudices learned before the age of 18, and I tend to agree with him.Yes, conventional wisdom is that the ivies are magic, that just going their puts some sort of magic dust on the graduates, that just going there makes someone an uber person and so forth, and quite frankly that is twaddle, a mystique the schools themselves promote and a lot of people believe (and in many cases, it can help get a foot in the door, by people who swallow the mystique). </p>

<p>Does that mean Harvard, Yale et al, or Stanford or whatever are not great schools? No, they are, they offer unique opportunities, because they do attract top notch students (well, not in all cases, more on that in a bit), they have some great facilities and do attract some top notch faculty, better in some programs then others, and it is a unique experience. And like I referenced, the name of an ivy can open doors, especially in some of the more snobby portions of the working world, like investment banks, where there are still all kind of class based snobbery from the old days of the white shoe, eastern establishment ran things (rapidly changing, but still out there). </p>

<p>Does that mean that only they offer stimulation, or that somehow a top notch public university can’t offer something stimulating? No, and that is where frankly myth and snobbism comes into play. U Cal berkeley attracts really brilliant students, they have a student body I would put up against any ivy, and in the sciences they are probably better then most ivies…one of the things that Yaledad leaves off is that when an institution is top notch and offers an affordable tuition or even better is known for offering heavy scholarships to attract top level students, the result can be an elite status. There is an analogy to this in the music world, Juilliard and Curtis are known as two of the top conservatories in the world, but popular perception is that Curtis’ students are almost uniformly at the highest level, while Juilliard’s population ranges from the brilliant to works in progress…and why? Curtis is tuition free for all its students (and is also small). They attract students from the same pool, high level music students, have a smaller size, so they literally pick the creme de la creme of the creme de la creme. Juilliard is an incredible school, but they also admit more students, and it is expensive to attend there (same tuition as an ivy, same total cost), and because of that the range of students is more…Curtis is the equivalent in my analogy of an ivy, Juilliard a top level public college or a high level private with less of a mystique…</p>

<p>And quite frankly I think it is selling other environments short to claim that if you don’t go to one of the mystique places, like an ivy, that somehow the experience is more shabby. One of the blessings of this country is the number of colleges out there, and the fact that there are alternatives where the level of teaching and the experience of education could very well be as stimulating as any of the big name schools, and in fact are having talked to graduates. Take a look at successful people in the world, scientists and poets and authors and lawyers and doctors and such, and you find excellence from a wide variety of sources;likewise, if you trace the path of ivy league graduates, you see some who excel, who do incredible things, and you also see many who don’t do anything extraordinary. This country is very different then in other countries, the Asian countries come to mind, where they have a very small number of elite colleges and universities, and if you don’t get into them, your future is dimmed (basically, there it is true what is untrue about the ivies, the name of the school there pretty much sets your future path).</p>

<p>And one thing I think is being left out, and that is at ivy schools there are the kids who shine, and they have significant portions who aren’t 4.0’s, who coast through, having gotten in they basically don’t exactly burn the firmament. At Stanford, an excellent school, they also have party hearty rich kids, as they do at Princeton and Yale and Harvard et al, and these kids are not allowed to fail, things like grade inflation and ‘gentleman’s c’s’ still exist, and besides knowing a lot of people who went to those schools, and their kids, this has been written up. </p>

<p>And I will solidly tell you as a hiring manager, and as someone with 25 years in financial services as well as contacts with managers in a variety of industries, whatever push an ivy or elite college education gives you tends to end very quickly, after that it becomes what someone does. Yeah, there are still managers out there who look at someone’s resume and the first thing they do is look at what school they went to, especially true of people who grew up in cultures where that matters, but it is relatively few and far between, once you are out there it is proving what you can do…and things like grades in college, what college you went to, what names you can drop don’t mean all that much…and the old boy, wasp, ivy league mafia that dominated business for a long time is either dead or near death, globalization nailed them as much as it did manufacturing jobs and that was the hallmark of an ivy education. </p>

<p>The real answer to the OP is up to them, if they feel going to an elite school will motivate them to work harder and get into a top program, more power to them, if they think it is worth the 100k in loans and financial stress for the family, then do it, but I think it is also valuable to realize from people who have been out there not to do it on mystique, but on facts, and the fact is that admissions people will not take a 3.5 from an ivy over a 4.0 from a less elite school, assuming the kids took equal levels of coursework (someone getting a 4.0 majoring in a non science list history and taking only the required science courses for pre med would not be the same as someone majoring in EE with a 3.5), the name alone could be an edge with kids with two seemingly equal background I suspect. One of the fallacies is that if you go to a non ivy, that they are teaching at a lesser level, when in many course tracks , especially in the sciences, it doesn’t matter where you go, you take organic chem at MIT or take it at harvard or Rutgers, and it is going to be pretty much the same course, they aren’t teaching graduate level organic chem at MIT in organic chem 1 as a pre med concentration…and admissions people know that, they know that if someone got a’s in orgo at Rutgers it is pretty much the same as getting it at Stanford or Harvard…</p>

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<p>I sent an e-mail about this hypothetical 3.5 Stanford vs. 4.0 State Flagship (everything else being equal) to the Dean of Admissions at my top 10 medical school and will share any response I get with this board.</p>

<p>I think it is a poor assumption that a strong but not very top student at a place like Stanford has less on-campus opportunities than the top student at CSUF. Way back when I placed out of typical pre-med courses like Chemistry, Biology and Calculus and took upper level electives to fulfill pre-med requirements while doing research with a world renowned physician happy to have an undergraduate in his lab for a few months.</p>

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<p>Med school admission question: Don’t forget the interview. There are many brilliant students–on paper. But some of them interview like robots. People skills are so important in medicine.</p>

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<p>To get into my wife’s community college nursing program is about as competitive as Harvard. About 1 in 20, and you can’t get in through legacy, football, fencing, harpsichord playing, and I doubt there have been any with large family donations.</p>

<p>No, you have to take 9 pre-req courses. In the year my wife entered, the cutoff was 8 As, and 1 A-minus. Period. (Then came the interviews, etc.) They didn’t care if you took the pre-reqs at Yale or Pensacola Bible College. I know of at least magna cum laude biology graduate of Mount Holyoke who had to take some of her pre-reqs a second time because her grades weren’t high enough. Many of the rejects went to four-year nursing programs, which were easier to get in.</p>

<p>I once taught at one of the prestige privates. Middling students did NOT get good research opportunities. They just didn’t. Those who did - the top students - bragged about it, because they knew how rare it was. The reason for that is simple - they have the best graduate students in the world, who are paid to do the job, and the professor’s reputation (and early in career, the job) depends on the results.</p>

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<p>YalegradandDad, You’ve made too many incorrect, and frankly arrogent, assumptions to begin to address them all but sufice to say that while it’s nice you enjoyed Yale your education left you woefully ignorant in the area of higher education itself.</p>

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<p>pugmadkate, as long as you want to be nasty, I guess your education didn’t teach you how to spell “arrogant”.</p>

<p>I’m waiting to hear what incorrect assumptions I’ve made from the dean of admissions of just the type of medical school the OP wondered about in the first post.</p>

<p>In that this is a discussion on medical school admissions and prestige institutions of higher education, I trust I have more first hand experience on this matter than you ever will.</p>

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<p>Whoa, YaleGradandDad, one thing I have always admired about Yalies is that they seemed less arrogant to me than Harvard students :slight_smile: (No slam at Harvard . . . well, not much, anyway)</p>

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<p>There is no chance the dean of admission is going to reply to you with anything other than a canned “we look at each of our candidates carefully and there are many factors” response. And indeed, why should he give you anything more? Settling internet arguments is a waste of his or her time.</p>

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<p>I’m waiting to hear what incorrect assumptions I’ve made from the dean of admissions of just the type of medical school the OP wondered about in the first post.</p>

<p>Unless you included a big, fat donation check with your letter, I wouldn’t expect much of an answer. Even with a big fat check, the dean is going to be hesitant to give a meaningful answer. </p>

<p>Besides…there’s no such thing as all things being equal except for GPA. Each student is going to have other factors to consider. It’s doubtful that each student is going to have identical course curricula. The CSUF kid may have be a double major in Bio and Chem, so his coursework might be more impressive than the Stanford History major who’s taken pre-med requirements. </p>

<p>*That is why I concluded that a student should never choose a lesser school because they will end up with a lower MCAT score *</p>

<p>This is not a given.</p>

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<p>Mom2college-
Nice post, very well put. Claiming that someone would necessarily get lower MCAT scores if they went to a non prestige school is hogwash, among other things is leaves out that the MCAT, like all standardized tests, is generally about preparing to take it rather then the level of the college they went to, the basic knowledge on an MCAT are things if someone did well enough in a college program to consider applying to med schools, they should do well on them (and consider the not so cottage industry around prepping kids for these tests, it says a lot about the disconnect from real knowledge and more about test prep). </p>

<p>The other thing is assuming that at an ivy all kids will be at the level to take advantage of research opportunities and the like…which comes back to my original point, that statistically the ivies attract a higher percentage of uber students then other schools do, who would take advantage of research opportunities that those schools do offer. But what Yaledad is saying is that simply going to an ivy is going to boost opportunities to get into high level med schools, and that is something that epidemiologists know only too well, attributing a cause to an outcome without looking at all the relevant factors (an example of this is some idiot on a blog posting that a topnotch research hospital was a terrible place to have a baby,that they had elevated rates of babies dying in childbirth, and cited statistics comparing said hospital to community hospitals…only problem is, the research hospital got a lot of high risk cases that the community hospitals wouldn’t touch, and when you do that, well, you get the point). In our story here, it is making the claim, based on high level medical school admissions, that going to an ivy or whatever increased your chances, when there is a causal fact that ivies because of their brand attract a larger group of high level brainiacs then a typical other school would, and these kids excel in med school admissions to the top schools, because there are more of that level at the ivies and such…</p>

<p>There is another interesting part to this story, one that if you read articles that anonymously interview admissions officers to college, grad schools and professional schools, is that they look for kids who stand out but they also want kids who represent diversity as well (not talking racial or gender here). They probably see a lot of resumes from kids from ivy league schools, and in interviews you hear the sigh a mile off, saying “yeah, another kid who spent their whole life getting into an ivy, then spent 4 years working to get into med school”, meaning other things were lacking, like maybe showing a passion for something or an interest other then getting into harvard med…someone else made the same point, that interviews for med schools are important, they are looking for people with the personality and passion to be a good doctor as well. Maybe a kid with the caliber to go to an ivy but instead went to a school they could afford and did well, was a lot more interesting then a kid from a well off background whose family could afford full freight at an ivy, did all the requisites, but seemed in effect to have it handed to him/her. Plus a high level medical program that admitted kids solely because of what school they went to (i.e said “Oh, John Smith graduated from Harvard, Harvard boys are our kind of boys, of course he gets in”) would find themselves with a lot of dead wood and their rankings tanking…</p>

<p>The reality of ivy league schools is they are very competitive, and attract for the most part a high level student body, and do offer good teachers and an interesting environment, but it worries me when so much weight is put on them, or the idea that somehow if you don’t go to an ivy you won’t get the opportunities in life, opportunities are what someone puts into them, and it also leaves out the very real fact that many graduates of ivies and similar schools end up not doing any better then kids from other places, that for the shining lights you also get the schlubs <em>shrug</em>. There was something similar to this in a discussion about legacy admits to ivies UG, and one of the claims from some of the snob types was that legacies got in at a higher rate because being the kin of people who went there, they were better prepared, had gone to elite private schools, etc…until someone posted reports that showed that on average the legacy admits were often far less qualified then non legacies who got in…I suspect med schools, who are looking for students who will make the school look good, can’t afford to do that.</p>

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Quite apart from the speculative nature of this argument, they couldn’t possibly know what their experience at the lower-tiered school would have been and therefore cannot provide a useful response to that question.

You don’t actually provide any negative impact to outclassing one’s peers outside of an “honors college,” so I’m not sure why we care.

Please let me know when JAMA starts publishing articles from the illustrious lab of Dr. Most People. And send me the cite. Not to mention that you can’t even claim Dr. People’s support without a sufficiently large opinion poll.</p>