<p>I am currently a Undergrad Biology Major and I plan on attending Medical school. I have many colleges in mind however one of the colleges I hope to get into is Harvard Medical School. People think its crazy to want to go to a school like that and tell me i'm clueless. I see nothing wrong with dreaming. What are your thoughts? </p>
<p>if it’s a realistic goal (per your scores, grades, etc), why not?</p>
<p>What’s the reason to attend harvard and work as a medical doctor in the future? :-/ </p>
<p>Why don’t you ask physicians you respect what sorts of schools they would recommend? Which schools have a good reputation for creating the sort of doctor you want to become. What do you hope to do with your medical career? Research? Academia? Policy? Health/hospital administration? Or focus on healing only?</p>
<p>These should factor into your choice – not just HMS for the sake of it. I can tell you 100% that HMS isn’t the best for every one of the options I listed above. Perhaps one or more that might be important to you.</p>
<p>Name brand doesn’t matter in the medical field. Wise doctors go to cheap state schools and save thousands. Doctors from Harvard will be paid the same as doctors from state schools. If you have the money and want the prestige of going to HMS, go for it but you won’t be treated better than any other doctors.</p>
<p>^^ Well, maybe, but if you go to HMS you may get a better residency in a better hospital which may translate to a better practice and more money. Clearly, however, the specialty you choose is what will really make all the difference – family practice is very poorly paid. Facial surgery, however, is very highly paid.</p>
<p>Name brand matters if you want to be in academic medicine. It matters much less in other fields.</p>
<p>Whether or not name brand matters, the ivy league is not a particularly strong brand either. Dartmouth and Brown medical schools are ranked in the 30s and when there’s only 126 medical schools, that doesn’t carry nearly the weight that being in the top 15 out of thousands of colleges does.</p>
<p>* ^^ Well, maybe, but if you go to HMS you may get a better residency in a better hospital which may translate to a better practice and more money.*</p>
<p>Unlikely. Maybe the residency part, but few people I know what residency their doctor completed and doctors are reimbursed the same regardless of what medical school they went to. I think most people are more concerned with their doctor’s office’s location and how much they like the doctor’s personality, as well as what they perceive the doctor’s skill level is - but that’s not always correlated with med school prestige.</p>
<p>One of my current specialists is an attending physician and associate professor at Columbia. I assumed he had an Ivy League or high-ranked med degree, but he went to the Chicago Medical School (part of Rosalind Franklin University, not a standout in medical education). I do have one Ivy-trained doctor (Columbia) who works at NYU as a surgeon and professor. And like I said, my favorite doctor ever was a DO from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything wrong, per se, with wanting to go to HMS - but I think you need to examine the reasons that you want to go there. If I was trying to go to med school personally I’d be aiming for Stony Brook, SUNY Downstate, SUNY Upstate, or UB. Stony Brooks yearly tuition & fees for the med school is $36,000; SUNY Upstate is $32,000. Compare Harvard, whose tuition + fees is $53,000 per year. That’s $80,000 over 4 years which is a LOT of money.</p>
<p>I was very impressed by one of the nephrologists that I called for a consult. The guy was smart, very well spoken, and knew enough to impress me and the other physicians on the team. Surely, he must be an Ivy man. So, after posting a lot of opinions to similar threads like this one, I went digging to see where my favorite nephrologist went to school. St. George’s University!!!</p>
<p>I love everyone’s response, Harvard has always been a school I wanted to go to since I was in 8th grade, therefore that will probably always be my top school of choice. However I do have at this moment 10 other schools I am looking to apply to, many in which are in my state. I am steadily doing research on different schools and If I do not get into an Ivy I will be okay as long as I get into at least ONE medical school…</p>
<p>“St. George’s University!!!”</p>
<p>Not at all surprising since many Americans who can’t get into medical school go there. There are also many successful doctors in US who never got their MDs or DOs from US.</p>
<p>HMS has something like 2.5% to 3 % admit rate.</p>
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<p>then likely your reasons for wanting to go there aren’t sound. They’re likely based on, “well, everyone says that Harvard is the best.”</p>
<p>not at all. I have my own PERSONAL reasons for wanting to go and you are just making an assumption. I feel there is nothing wrong with having a top school of choice rather it’'s an Ivy or not. Many people do. Now if I said that was the only school I want to go to, then that will be a problem there and the reasons for wanting to go would not be sound. HOWEVER, I did not say ,that I’m only saying I desire to go there. I will apply for that school amongst many others.</p>
<p>^Fair enough. You have to remember though the vast majority of 8th graders don’t know anything about harvard medical school other than that it’s in boston and that people generally consider it the best. So it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that if you decided in 8th grade it was the school for you that that’s all you knew about it when you made the decision.</p>
<p>Only you can tell if it is “wrong to want to go to an Ivy League Medical School” for you personally or it is the correct choice for you. There is no general type of thinking here. Everybody choose what fits them personally the best. If this is YOUR criteria #1, why not? Not sure how anybody else can tell you if it is right or wrong for you to have this goal. </p>
<p>…BTW, as a reference, D. ended up at Med. School that was her “dream” Med. School way back in HS. Who knows how and why and why not. At the end, it took her awhile to choose, she gave up some higher ranked and cheaper schools while she all forgot about her HS dream. It has occurred later to us that in fact that is where she ended up going. Strnage things happen! She never had any dreams about Ivy league at all, but many in her Med. School class in fact are graduates from Ivy leaque UG’s</p>
<p>How about this for reference: I didn’t even apply to my “dream” college from 10th grade (MIT).</p>
<p>If we’re going to reflect on HS:
-I did not go to Harvard or Yale for undergrad
-I did not go to Johns Hopkins for medical school
-I did not make an important biomedical discovery by the end of college
-I am not going to be a surgeon</p>
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<p>-I chose a school that fit me well and was relatively inexpensive, so I have no undergrad debt
-I chose a medical school that I absolutely love and is also relatively inexpensive, so my debt is theoretically minimized
-I decided on clinical research and designing community-based interventions regarding my chosen medical field
-I cannot possibly imagine choosing to be a surgeon, and I am so excited to pursue the field I’ve chosen</p>
<p>Not intending to be “profound” or anything like that, but you might consider giving yourself permission to change your mind or attitude about things. Just because you decided at an early age about something, by no means do you actually have to follow through with it. Who knows, you might discover a passion for something entirely different, and you sure wouldn’t want to miss that opportunity because you’re so tunnel-visioned in on going to the school you determined was a good one when you were 12.</p>
<p>^Well, it just happened that D. ended up at her “dream” Med. School way back in HS and she IS going to pursue her “dream” specialty" also from HS days. But I almost feel that both are just accidents (have to admit though that D. is grounded, non-intense type of person whousually sets goals that make sense for her and does not listen much to others, including the prestige / ranking type of information, that do not influence her too much and never did). D’s goal has always been to feel comfortable at the place/location and be surrounded by her type of people and stay away as much as possible from everything / everybody that would disturb this type of balance, which sometime wa not possible so we went thru some “disturbances”.
On the other note, some Ivy’s have Med. Schools that are not that impressive at all. I am talking about ranking, since prestige / ranking seems to be a goal of OP (otherwise, what else is there when chasing Ivy’s?)</p>