<p>The problem is that it isn’t all that easy to get into a top 50 med school! In fact, the rankings of med schools matter very little. My son in law went to a state medical school and got a great residency placement as did many, many of his classmates. The undergrad schools that fed into this med school were all over the board, by the way. It is all GPA and MCAT score.</p>
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<p>This is not always true. My niece’s pre-med advisor at Penn suggested that she not take a premed requirement at her local state university in the summer but rather take it at Penn despite the cost. In the end, she received several med school acceptances with free rides, including one from Penn. However, she chose Harvard which offered her scholarship money.She will graduate next spring with little debt.</p>
<p>If it’s all GPA and MCAT scores, I doubt her advisor would discourage her from taking required courses at her local state school.</p>
<p>With health-care reform looming, doctors’ salaries can only decrease and it’s important to keep your debt low. My H has been in practice for 30+ years and is happy retirement is in the near future.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean “all” completely literally. For MOST students applying to MOST schools, the major factors are the stats. Much more so than with undergrad admissions.
By the way, Penn is very picky about where they will let you take summer courses. You have to get advance approval. We went through that with our son.</p>
<p>The message from the advisor is that it does matter where you take your required classes despite what Sakky said, thus they do look where your grades come from.</p>
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<p>I’d like to see stats to support this.</p>
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<p>I think I trust Michael McCullough on that one. Not only does he have an MD from UCSF, he’s also a former Rhodes Scholar, and the advisor for the Quest Scholars premed program at Stanford. </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>
<p>You google an article and made it sound like you know something about medical school admissions.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you my niece’s advisor’s name but he was also an MD on the faculty of Penn Medical school for whom she was doing research while an undergraduate. His opinion obviously differs from Michael McCullough whose opinion was based on speaking to ONE admissions officer. Since he is a Quest Scholar advisor, his target audience is not be the same as majority of medical school applicants and he has to tailor his advice to them. In addition, the path to medical school admissions of Quest students is quite different from those who are unhooked. I am sure my niece would have a different take on this based on her personal experience on med school application. Next year she would be a Harvard Med graduate , a Rhodes Scholar finalist (losing to a minority candidate from her state) , Phi Beta Kappa (junior year at Penn) with acceptances to all the top 6 medical schools in the country including several free rides. I doubt many have experience with free ride offers from top medical schools. Many medical school applicants would believe her story.</p>
<p>Oh ofcourse, when a university has recognized prestige it will only likely better your chances getting the job you want, higher salary, more connections ( alumnis etc…), and higher education etc… Though not attending a prestigous university you still have opportunities to all these options, just may be more difficult.</p>
<p>cbreeze- Your niece is certainly not the typical applicant and is not representative of the majority of students applying to medical school. There are very few free rides to medical school. Period. I do know that the graduates from my son in law’s state medical school (a good state for med schools) got some extremely prestigious residencies, including a few where only one or two doctors were selected in the entire country. These were not Ivy undergrads, either.</p>
<p>cbreeze- I am highly, highly skeptical of your claims of a free ride to medical school- I asked my sister who is in med school now (a graduate of Yale College, which I think is pretty well known), and none of her 30+ pre med friends got anything off the sticker price. Perhaps your niece comes from an extremely modest financial background (family AGI <20,000) or won an outside scholarship; otherwise tuition + living expenses would be financed entirely through loans- it is quite typical for med school graduates to hit 250,000 to 300,000 in total debt if they went to private schools for undergrad.</p>
<p>Also, my cousin is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School- though he is not involved in admissions, he has yet to see an MD student in his lab with a merit based scholarship to HMS and he’s been there about three years.</p>
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<p>Cmburns 14-Just because your sister’s Yale College grads didn’t receive aid to medical schools doesn’t mean that others didn’t get scholarship. However, was any of your sister’s friends a Rhodes scholar finalist ? NCAA track star? Phi Beta Kappa ? </p>
<p>I was a little surprised to see Stanford and Harvard offer my niece scholarships when in fact their websites don’t mention scholarships.
And no, she doesn’t come from low income family.She received free rides from Penn, Pitt, Vanderbilt and Washington.
I was floored to see her acceptance from UCSF even though she is not a California resident.
Having a debt of $250000-$300000 is just being irresponsible when you won’t make over $50K in the 4 years of residency and interests do accumulate. My friend’s D was chief resident at Stanford who made around $45000 and she is in a fellowship program at Harvard now making around $40000. Her Mom sends money periodically for her to eat well. My H’s medical tuition 30+ years ago was about $5000 per year.</p>
<p>MOWC- I never said state medical schools are subpar but I would like to know which internships only admit one or two doctors in the country into their training programs.</p>
<p>I was wondering if I should even apply to any med schools because I know that the classes are full of college geniuses and summa cum laudes.</p>
<p>Things don’t change by wimping out early. Med school will be filled with the cream of the cream of the best.</p>