<p>Since thread is talking about, may I ask few related questions. I am a rising high school junior, learning many things from CC discussions. Thanks to all for the valuable info.</p>
<p>(1) Most of threads say that, "Medical school name is NOT that much important to get good MD job. Residency is the one that matters."</p>
<p>Based on my discussions with one of the parent whose has 2 MD kids, he says: Very likely good residencies are always given to BIG NAME college kids. </p>
<p>These kind of contradictions confuses a lot. Can some one clarify on which one is correct? </p>
<p>(2) Regarding the comment
"Medical schools typically are looking for: gpa>3.5 & top 10% in class"</p>
<p>Are we sure this is correct? I understand there are always exceptions, but I am talking the broader percentages. Let us say in any HYPSM (Ivy/Stanford/MIT), atleast 50% of enrolled UG kids must be from top of their Highschool/city/county. At the end of HYPSM under-graduation, 90% of these kids will NEVER be in top 10%. Does it mean, they dont get what they want, because top 10% from state schools took their spots. If this is true then it really scares everyone who wants to become MD after attending HYPSM. Being top 10% within HYPSM seems to be too too hard. Because most of the kids in these HYPSM schools are in same skill level.</p>
<p>Are you an international?</p>
<p>And, no, the “good residencies” do not only go to those who go to big name med schools.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the posts. Appreciated.</p>
<p>I dont know where that top ten percent stuff came from. Colleges dont rank their undergrads, so when you apply to med school, there isnt an indication that a person was top ten percent. So, that premise that you mentioned does not apply.</p>
<p>med school name doesnt matter. Just because a parent has two MD children, (who probably went to name schools), doesnt mean that they know anything. their kids may have gotten great residencies and they are assuming that the school name got them in.</p>
<p>We heard thoughout the last 3 years, that Med. School name may play role in applying to selective residencies. However, if you research the selective residencies (including the most selective specialties at the highly ranked residencies), you will see that some participants have come from very low ranked Med. Schools. Apparently, your personal achievements override everything even at this level.<br>
This inforamtion is easily available on internet for every residency that we have checked. Check it out instead of receiving our general answers. You will see details that may be specific to your situation.</p>
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<p>MiamiDAP</p>
<p>You’re correct. S’s med school was not “top tier” but he and his classmates last year matched in a wide variety of specialties at residencies including at Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Michigan, U Wash (Seattle), UTSW, WUSL, UCSF, Mayo Clinic, USC, UCSD, Cedars (LA)… What got them matched were their med school/interview performances, not the name on top of diploma. I’m not saying that graduating from a “well known” med school isn’t a plus, it can be the cherry on the cake. But it’s the personal achievements or the more bread/butter factors (Step 1,2, GPA, third year performance/evals, LORs, MSPE, AOA (bread/butter??), etc) that are going to get a student an interview.</p>
<p>In addition, S indicated that many fellow classmates with very strong med school performances choose not to apply to selective programs because of personal reasons such as a desire to stay/return to areas where their families (or significant other’s families) lived; or that significant other was either a lower level med student (e.g. MS2/MS3) or a PhD student with a year or more remaining in their program. You have to remember that you’re not dealing with wide eyed 17 year old HS students trying to get into a “top “ colleges, but with adults who are in their late 20s, 30s, maybe even 40s. You can’t just automatically jump to a conclusion solely based on the med school’s name and whether/where a med student can match without knowing the student’s back stories (e.g. personal achievements, families/kids, etc). </p>
<p>Yes, we can only hope that location will work out. But there is no way to control it at all. One lucky factor is that there are 3 programs that D. will apply at her location and 3 additional in-state. There about 3 or so that are further but still somewhat desirable, but they will be much harder to adjust in terms of life outside of the medicine. That is why, D. keeps saying that she will be ecstatic to match, but where she will match is not so much in her control.
In addition, their GPA is not under their full control either. All pre-clinicals are p/f. Clinicals mostly depend on evals, shelf exams are very small percent and in addition sometime it can only bring the grade down, but never up even if the score is very high. Evals are written by very busy people. Sometime they even do not look at the format. She showed me her evals with the extrememly positive comments written in the column for the negative comments. I am talking about something like “One of the best I have seen in the past 20 years”. Imagine, if the person who is in hurry making the decision for the final grade, does not read what is in a column but instead just count negatives and positives, then she is screwed. Since negatvie column is the first and positive column is the second, most comments (all very positive) are written in the negatvie column. This is just one example. The others include the fact that some are looking for very specific examples to give an H, while people who write evals just do not take time to provide specific detailed examples when student went way beyond and above. What I am saying is that evals are very subjective, but at D’s school GPA ended up based strictly on evals. Sometime you lucky, sometime you are not, despite of all efforts. At least, it is a lesson in maturity, many times our lives is in the hands of others.<br>
I tell my D. just to stay cool and do not think much about next March. Just go by your daily business with the best positive outlook possible under circumstances.</p>
<p>Hi Mom2CollegeKids: Thank you so much for the response and knowledge. Appreciated. To answer your question “I dont know where that top ten percent stuff came from?”, I saw in one of the Medical related threads in this forums saying “You have to have GPA > 3.5 and Top 10% to have a good shot at MD seat”. While I tried to reply to that thread, some how it never got posted there. It got put into this new discussion here. Not sure why this S/W did that. Either way, thank you.</p>