Ivy League... be prepared

Parents Forum
221

It’s sad that pre-meds have to chase grades at the expense of learning. IMO, if my kid was at a great school and could not ace the class that was in his/her major that would be a big red flag. You should be able to be comfortable with courses in your major or it is either: the wrong major or the wrong school.
As for grades in a class, let the professors teach. It should not be allowed to grade on a curve, esp at an IVY league. It’s not about competing against each other but competing against yourself. And holding yourself up to a high bar. I think many of the comments regarding most students getting A’s at Ivies are written by non-Ivy graduates. In my fields ( was a dual major) I had others in my class undergrad and grad who were internationally competitive in that field. They have written books, done amazing things etc. We could ALL follow the professor and while I don’t know what others got for grades I believe many got A’s ( and an occasional B) not because the classes were easy ( averaged about 10 books per class, plus written papers and tests all original thought based on the class they abstracted ) but because the calibre of the students was off the charts! When I had to take other classes for graduation requirements, I was out of my league ( entirely). This is as it should be. An engineering student might not excel in literature, and a literature major might not excel in law. It is also true that A+ was rarer than rare. It was given only for exceptional performance on papers and tests.

If a student can learn to think and absorb information and then be able to spit it back out with new thinking that is the key. Memorization and rote thinking hits a wall at some point. Sad that so few are interested in true learning as opposed to GPA for professional goals only. When I was an undergrad I just wanted to learn as much as possible.

222

No, I’m not saying you have a class full of Caltech geniuses. (And yes Calc 1 at Caltech is not the same course as Calc 1 at a normal school.) I am saying you have a fabulous professor and they all get As. My kid had a math teacher in high school for precalc who managed to get the entire class at the Calc AB level by the end of the year. And he wasn’t even supposed to be teaching calculus. He was just that good.

223

@bluebayou And that is why Caltech tries to ease students into their level of rigor a bit. The first 2 quarters are pass/no record so that they can get used to not being the top student in all their classes and getting some non-A “shadow” grades that only they can see.

Also, they provide a strongly-suggested (but optional) online course over the pre-frosh summer called “Math 0, Transition to Mathematical Proofs” that provides grading with detailed written feedback on their proofs. Even the tests to place out of courses provide detailed feedback. The feedback my son got on the test over the summer where he passed out of CS 1 was really the first time anyone actually critiqued his coding style.

Other supports they provide:

– On campus summer program pre-frosh summer for some students who score lower on the math placement test. Part classes and part research.
– 2 tracks of math and physics for the 2nd and 3rd quarters and 2 physics tracks for sophomore physics.
– One section of a lower track of math the first quarter with a small class size. It omits the “series” topic, which they take 2nd quarter.
– A short “boot camp” class for those who haven’t had any multivariable calc during the 2nd quarter so that they can handle the E&M physics that quarter.

They are not trying to weed people out of tough majors, because what major would you go to? CS is reportedly at least one of the more flexible and “easy” majors, but it is quite theoretical and has a heavy workload.

224

But isn’t that the expected result when medical schools use GPA without context along with MCAT as the first screen for application reading?

According to http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21550810/#Comment_21550810 (replies #70-71; #67-69 may also be relevant), medical school application readers (reading applications after the initial GPA and MCAT screen) may not have too much visibility into how challenging the applicant’s course selection was (possibly some through a committee letter statement, but not all applicants come from schools that do committee letters).

However, taking pre-med courses at other schools during summer sessions may be a little too obvious as grade-grubbing to application readers.

225

“Sad that so few are interested in true learning as opposed to GPA for professional goals only.”

Students attend college for many reasons, some for love of learning, some as a preparation for a profession, some to prepare for grad school. None of them should judge the other on why they’re in college.

226

My daughter wants to be a doctor more than anything. She also loves learning. I wish you could see how excited she gets learning new things. BUT, she really only gets one chance to get into medical school and so that has to be primary. She has her whole life to engage in life long learning. I have no doubt she will. However, if she misses her chance to get into medical school because she chose to prioritize the esoteric value of “true learning,” I think she will always regret it. Unfortunately, sometimes multiple goals and desires conflict and people have to make realistic choices.

Please note that I am not pushing her to med school. If during her college experience she decides that medicine is not for her, that is a completely different matter.

227

College and life is a series of balancing interests and goals. Yes, it is important to get a high GPA for medical school. However, there are many factors to admission besides GPA, and a high GPA does not mean one needs to only focus on grades and ignore learning, nor does it mean that taking the lowest possible level of rigor is the best option, even if the only focus is grades. For example, the article mentioned that the majority of persons in the 2008 Santa Clara summer class were Stanford students. Suppose the class was graded with the usual type of curve you see at less selective colleges where most students gets B’s and C’s and only a small portion get A’s. If this was the case, then only a minority of the Stanford students in the class would get A’s, possibly a smaller percentage of Stanford students received A’s at Santa Clara than occurred in the Stanford version of the class.

While some students do focus on grades over learning/passions/interests/rigor… , there are also plenty of students who do emphasize learning and do take rigorous courses in fields that interest them and/or they are passionate about. I’d expect the vast majority of this group primarily gets A’s at colleges that give the bulk of students taking rigorous classes A grades, like Stanford. Most students I know who did attend medical school appeared to have other primary focuses in college besides grades, including some interesting out of classroom activities. It appeared to me that they were truly passionate about such interests and often doing amazing things, rather than just trying to game the system for med school admission. Most students I knew who took pre-med and did not attend med school appeared to do so out of following these other passions, a good portion of which ended up getting PhDs instead of MDs.

I did pre-med, but I also usually took the most rigorous version of courses offered and majored in EE, while also working towards 2 co-terminal MS degrees in engineering fields. I pursued these many different paths out of following a variety of interests and passions, rather than chasing highest GPA. I chose to pursue engineering as a career, rather than medicine and did not apply to med school. However, I believe my GPA was still high enough for med school, even though I didn’t get all A’s.

For example, among white MD Applicant members who attended Stanford for their undergrad and scored a 33-36 on the MCAT (lower MCAT scores have a small sample size among Stanford grads), the acceptance rates by cumulative GPA are below. MD Applicants obviously has some sample issues, such as being self-reported, biased, and often older. Nevertheless, a lot of students are getting acceptances who get well under straight A’s, as well as under Stanford’s average GPA of ~3.65.

3.75-4.0 – 100%
3.5-3.75 - 86%
3.25-3.5 - 67%
3.0-3.25 - 100% (small sample size, all were varsity athletes with leadership positions on team)
Under 3.0 - 100% (2 out of 2, both pursued additional degrees prior to applying where they achieved much higher GPAs)

228

@data10 where do those numbers come from? I’d love to see them from other schools.

229

^^WashU publishes their data on p.21. However, few schools make such data public.

https://prehealth.wustl.edu/Documents/Handbook2017Online.pdf

230

@gallentjill Amherst used to publish #s but doesn’t anymore. But from 2006 Amherst’s definition of “well qualified” was a 3.1 science GPA - https://sageorge.people.amherst.edu/outcomes.html

More recently, the general % has been 90% - https://www.amherst.edu/news/campus-buzz/node/501039 and committee letters are written for all students who take the required courses, no matter the GPA.

231

One needs to be careful with those numbers. Do they include DO schools? Offshore med schools? (nothing wrong with including those in the numerator, but prospies just need to be aware to ask the question.)

232

@blubayou is correct. For example, Lafayette boasts an 80% acceptance rate for all applicants, but then says that number includes DO and podiatry. It isn’t a safe assumption that other schools are limiting their numbers to US MD schools.

233

“Suppose the class was graded with the usual type of curve you see at less selective colleges where most students gets B’s and C’s and only a small portion get A’s. If this was the case, then only a minority of the Stanford students in the class would get A’s, possibly a smaller percentage of Stanford students received A’s at Santa Clara than occurred in the Stanford version of the class.”

You don’t have to suppose, the article basically says Stanford students go there for the easy A.

"The word is Stanford pre-meds see it as an easy A, allowing them to protect the high GPAs they need for medical school applications.

“The lab classes are notorious for ripping you a new one,” said one Stanford premed, who took physics and organic chemistry at Santa Clara. She asked to be identified only by her first name, Ashley, so prospective med schools wouldn’t recognize her.

“The Stanford students go there because it’s a guaranteed A,” said Gerald Fisher, who teaches physics at Stanford.

If the class was tougher than the Stanford version, very few, if any, would go to the Santa Clara one.

234

The Santa Clara class is almost certainly less rigorous than the Stanford class. However, less rigorous does not mean a larger portion of the class gets an A. Less selective colleges usually have a less generous curve than Stanford and other highly selective private colleges. The most common grade in Stanford and most other HYPSM… classes is an ‘A’. It’s quite common for the majority of the class to receive A grades. However, less selective colleges like Santa Clara often only give A’s to a minority of students and instead give the bulk of students B’s and C’s. Yes, various persons in the article made comments about how they are taking the class because they believe it will be an easy ‘A’ , but beliefs aren’t always accurate. The SC teacher may very well apply a Stanford-like curve with most students receiving A’s, but this is by no means guaranteed. If the SC teacher instead applies a typical SC curve, then it’s likely that that the majority of Stanford students taking the class would not receive an A, despite their beliefs about the class being an easy A.

There are also variety of other considerations relevant to medical school admissions besides just the grade. For example, are there other things you could be doing in your summer that might better improve your chances of med school admission, such as amazing medical related activities out of the classroom? At which class are you likely to best learn the material?.. which is relevant to admission for a variety of reasons that are not limited to just the physical sciences section of the MCAT. Are med school admissions going to be aware or care about choosing less rigorous summer science courses at another college, such as influencing the “academic strength” rating in the committee letter? The latest version of the Amherst pre-med guide referenced above calls taken summer science courses a “risk factor” for pre-med admissions, saying “You must show medical schools that you can do a heavy load of science and do it well, and taking summer courses may raise questions in that area.” There are certainly situations where taking less rigorous (“easy”) versions of classes can be helpful for med school admissions, but there are also numerous valid reasons to take rigorous courses as well.

235

Back in the stone ages, when I went to an IVY, the intro science classes were curved – not because they wanted to limit the number of A grades, but because all the grades were in the basement and without the curve the whole class would fail. It was a curve up, not down.

At a recent open house we attended at a far less selective university, my daughter asked whether the intro science classes were curved and was told that they were not. There was no need. The grades naturally distributed in a reasonable way. I take from this, that the top universities are teaching at a much higher level and so the curve is necessary. At the less selective colleges, the A students are capable of getting A grades without a curve because the rigor is less.

236

@gallentjill Yes, this is what our D experienced. Her HS classmates at less selective schools took freshman courses equivalent to the AP curriculum. That was the starting point at her university where most of the class had already taken the class and scored a 5. Classes are more theoretical based, for example chem 1 is very mathematical based. Test averages are often dismal. Now, that does not mean there were not easier chem, math and physics sections, but those sections do not meet the requirements for a science or engineering degree.

There is definitely a divide within university levels of who can use AP scores of 5 to place out of classes. If classes were equivalent to the AP curriculum, these top tier schools would become 3 year undergrad schools. A similar student attending a top 100 school often graduates in 3 years or gets their masters degree in 4 1/2 years.

237

@KLSD right. So this is the choice my pre-med daughter is weighing. Does she want to be one of the A grades at a less selective college or fight the curve at a more prestigious one. Given that we also want merit aid, I think the choice will be easy.

238

@KLSD " Classes are more theoretical based, for example chem 1 is very mathematical based."

That is the case at almost every school. The struggle comes based upon what types of problems professors put on examinations. I find that most schools (some “top” and some not) with challenging general chemistry courses tend to have a good share of professors that use tons of multi-concept problems on the exams so if you can’t link equations between different concepts you are messed up. In addition, harder general chemistry courses tend to add more quantum and structural concepts than does AP chemistry, even those exposed to the material tend to struggle as one could sort of get away with math/plug and chug logic in AP. Students really struggle when professors start asking more conceptual questions in college because the students are expecting to just plug and chug. In organic chemistry, the more the section deviates from: “label this, draw the product of this reaction, and draw out a mechanism we already showed you in class”, the more students struggle and start to complain. It is a real pain when instructors expect students to do high level applications, even if given 2-3 hours per exam. HS in the US often doesn’t ready students for that level of STEM learning, especially not as early as sophomore year and top privates and publics are more likely to expect that level of learning early on.

@gallentjill “Does she want to be one of the A grades at a less selective college or fight the curve at a more prestigious one” .

I wouldn’t say it is as simple: You wanna make sure that the less selective college is actually strong in STEM education such that she doesn’t end up with some high GPA and then it does not translate to MCAT. In addition, I would not conflate “more prestigious” with “better and more rigorous STEM education”. The fact is, when you even look among top schools, the amount of effort invested into UG STEM education and level of rigor varies. Some will actually surprise you, especially when you compare between them. Some will be less rigorous for some pre-med cores, and then extremely rigorous for others simply because some of the STEM departments have a bigger focus on undergraduate education and some do not. Departments that have a focus on undergraduate education tend to have better instruction AND more of the good type (not memorizing, regurgitating, and plug and chugging…STEM education is ideally supposed to move beyond that and at a school with good students, having a foundation in that stuff should be a given) challenge in the classroom, which would translate to even B students in those initial pre-health cores doing very well on the MCAT because the MCAT is more about doing analytical thinking (albeit in MC format) and dealing with scenarios students have likely not been directly exposed to. Most students, if they get B grades (or in a case or 2 worse) in those cores in a challenging environment, can use relevant upper division STEM courses to raise the STEM GPA as many of them are more lenient grading than others (in terms of where the curve’s mean/median is set if there is to be a curve). Being more challenged could be beneficial if one can eventually adjust. In addition, it is possible that the student is ready for it/will embrace it and do well from the get go.

Also, do not write off the idea that the less selective place may have worked harder on its STEM education than the most selective. There are several publics that are not considered super prestigious, that have more rigorous life sciences than some of the top privates and publics because they specifically invested in UG life sciences education. The University of Maryland comes to mind, as well as several less prestigious LACs. I think the relationship between rank/prestige and rigor in STEM is much more grey than what people think, mainly because a lot of schools outside of the elites have been quicker to reform in ways that infuse their courses with the “good” kind of rigor.

239

And your take would be exactly the spin that the less selective colleges wants to you hear. But it would be wrong, (a point I made pages ago).

A Professor can easily write a test where the median grade is a 95%, or 65%, or 45%. In fact, over the course of a term, that’s exactly what they do. If a Prof didn’t care about grade distributions, s/he would make all tests’ medians an 85%+, but they don’t. They write the tests so that all students will average a high C/low B median over the course of the term.

Thus, a college officially claim that “we don’t curve, everyone who scores a 90+ will receive an A”. But that is bogus since no STEM prof in lower division premed course is gonna write tests that way. Just ain’t gonna happen. Not in their DNA.

In essence, the curve/no curve policy is a distinction without a difference.

240

Princeton has the Integrated Science Curriculum option for Freshman year and Orgo and it specifically does expose students to this type of thinking/problem solving but most pre-meds avoid it due to the GPA hit it usually evokes due to it’s rigor and the time sink taking away from other classes. It’s a Catch-22 - be better prepared for the MCAT or have a higher GPA. Of course those that get through generally have a fine enough GPA so the real choice is between having a varied social life or not :smiley: