Would a medical school application reader notice or care if an applicant from Harvard had Math Ma and Mb versus Math 55a and 55b (assuming A grades in all)?
They do; that’s what the MCAT is for. Several years ago, AMCAS conducted a survey of Med School AdComs, and the #1 item for getting an invite to an interview was MCAT score. (That doesn’t mean that it has the most weight in admissions, bcos other items, such as GPA and recs were close behind, but since you have to be interviewed prior to getting an offer of admission, MCAT score places the ‘context’, just as LSAT places context of those who attend a directional State U…)
Probably not care. Calc is just one course of the science-math sequence, and not even required at some med schools. I would suggest that Organic is more important. heck, Harvard med only requires one semester of Calc.
@bluebayou : I think @ucbalumnus (and certainly I do) also wonder in general about standard versus advanced renditions of pre-health cores. I think the consensus is that they don’t care (I suppose some tippy top tier research focused medical schools may take more students with 'jagged edges" so getting an A in accelerated coursework may give an edge only for those schools). Generally, seems they just wanna see an A and no lower than B+. Basically, do not accelerate unless you know for sure that you can ace it which kind of defeats the purpose of taking an advanced or honors course in the first place. Is it worth the risk to learn more for oneself and get some Bs and maybe benefit down the road on the MCAT or in research? Or is it best to go a standard route, get lots of A grades, save up extra time to prep for MCAT, and then do well on MCAT as expected for an already good MC test taker? Looking great on paper seems to be key to getting an interview, so unless you know you are absolute cream of the crop, taking pre-health cores and STEM courses pitched beyond the standard at a school may do more harm than good from a strategic standpoint and I kind of think that is problematic in terms of facilitating certain intellectual attitudes, but if it selects good doctors, let them have it I guess.
As for Harvard med. requiring 1 semester: Well seems they are trying “competency based” admissions and in their long description of the ideal student almost encourage risk taking telling students that things like higher level maths, physics with calc., bio-physics, etc will count as “calculus”. They seem to want to encourage applicants who embraced more challenge than normal (but of course remained perfect on paper lol. This is especially the case for HST program) and this likely isn’t a good strategy to get in elsewhere. One I hope would not be naive enough to focus on just getting into Harvard med. as chances are so slim even for seemingly ideal candidates.
Also, the issue with MCAT is, despite it being excellent for a multiple choice exam, it is still multiple choice so most at elites will have what I wanna call higher “start values” (Although I still hold hope that it is well enough designed so that it doesn’t discriminate too heavily between very top ACT/SAT scorers which is the bulk at elites, especially among those in STEM. At least that shouldn’t too heavily predict who gets say, over 34 equivalent on new test. I would like to think that well trained students would have an advantage as well) to begin with regardless of curriculum, and with a fairly standard curriculum likely have enough to just take an MCAT course or train specifically for it and will do better than others who have not tested as well in the past. What does perhaps happen is that you see more students with Bs being successful on it at elites, but if they challenge themselves too much, they will be hurt regardless of their MCAT scores (sometimes happens to say…BME pre-meds from my understanding).
Either way, trying to challenge yourself more than the norm at an elite in STEM without being a true genius or extremely experienced in an area and aiming for medicine looks like it is akin to walking on egg-shells considering some of the things the “paper” portion of the admissions process values.
Right. And for many, the ability to test oneself against the best of the best, to be challenged and pushed to go further is more than a fair trade off for the lower GPA. For others, the GPA may be far more important, either for their own self-esteem or for some future goal like med or law school. Thus, students chosing the harder path should be prepared for what they are getting themselves into and students choosing the less rigorous paths should be aware of what they are giving up.
LS50 looks just like Princeton ISC. I wonder if Yale might add something like that soon. I don’t remember anything like that touted when we visited. My D wasn’t really that interested in Princeton until she read about ISC. If you are a high school student really interested in scientific research finding programs like that at various schools should be something to look for. Northwestern has ISP which has been around for a long time. What other schools have something similar?
@Dolemite : NU’s ISP is different from Princeton’s though. It is more like a string of courses over multiple disciplines already available at NU strung together for students who are ambitious and want to be feed into interdisciplinary research areas, whereas Princeton ISP is a result of faculty just creating new courses specifically for the program.
Also LS 50 at H is more like a year long biophysics course. Technically if one took it followed by the chem 17/27 sequence then the experience would be comparable to Princeton ISC. However, one could maybe argue the same for students on “standard” track at H for those who take LS1a/b, PS2/3, and then the biologically focused organic sequence. They intentionally redesigned/created those courses to be integrated, so H and to some degree Princeton also have “integrated sciences” for the masses.
Duke has several interdisciplinary options that are connected to its curricula. Penn has this thing called the VIPER program. Stanford has recently rearranged and redesigned its intro.(“for the masses”) biology courses to mirror its near peers and places like Chicago and has some special courses like this:
https://news.stanford.edu/2018/02/06/new-class-encourages-creativity-science/ ) . It isn’t worth discussing Caltech or MIT, because like Harvard they have lots of “super” courses accessible to freshmen (in fact some base level major courses at Caltech may mimic “just below” top tier honors courses at Harvard. For example a typical base level biology course is more like LS 50 at H. A physics course may be something closer to physics 15 series at H, but definitely not physics 16). Chicago also has lots of “super courses” or at least honors renditions/heavy tiering but I don’t know how many special tracks they have, though I believe they have some in the biosciences. Yale looks a lot like Princeton overall and has lots of honors courses or allows lots of flexibility for advanced freshman. For example, they do allow strong frosh chemistry students to take physical chemistry if they want so I imagine if there are biophysics courses available, they may be open to letting students try it.
However in terms of having “tracks” I would argue that Princeton and Harvard’s attempts at these sort of things is most unique in organization. Harvard is super rich and has heavy STEM subscription and so is Princeton on top of Princeton being fairly small so I am not surprised.
Again the heavy tiering and “super class” development seems more common at top 10-12 privates and of course publics can do these things if they want to. Publics can do a lot because of department and student body size and most of the very top privates can do so because they are mostly very wealthy and have historically attracted a constituent that buys into these “super courses”. It almost appears that some of the other privates are “too new” to try things like them at a similar scale. They attract lots of talent, but not necessarily the type with “jagged edges” (I got this term from the Churchill Scholar website and liked it a lot:http://winstonchurchillfoundation.org/criteria.html If your D is doing super well by the end of her Princeton career, maybe consider it? 
. ISP essentially primes students for such opps it seems) who are more gungho about academic training. Lots of them got to where they are by being very solid academically, but having a quality of life and stuff that older institutions kind of lagged on. Some of this qol comes from newer facilities, and some from simply having more “well-rounded” students, creating a less stressful atmosphere overall.
Either way, “jagged edged” type of talent ain’t coming unless they know there are programs that can “handle” them. The number of math prodigies and talents going to my alma mater clearly increased as the reputation of a key faculty member increased followed by implementation of a true honors math undergraduate course, so having these tracks and courses impacts recruiting in ways that you cannot see by just looking at scores and HS rank/GPA. I’m actually trying to keep in touch with my alma mater to push for creation of such programs (which it actually had a decent amount of pre-recession) because I think it would make the school more competitive in recruiting “talent beyond what numbers indicate” and because of the changing landscape of the sciences (life sciences especially). A lot of students can benefit from more integrated and advanced training options, especially the non-prehealths considering careers in research (or those considering MDPhDs I guess) as it goes through strategic planning (claiming a renewed focus on the “liberal arts” and the “undergraduate experience”…go rhetoric lol). I figured if it could successfully overhaul a chemistry curriculum (not easy at a research university. Duke tried it before…and completely bombed initially. Today’s is like a shadow of the original vision), then other programs or tracks shouldn’t be too horrible a stretch (though chemistry took 1.5 million in HHMI dollars just to develop the new courses and pilot them).
Regardless of what happens, glad to see my alma mater be a bit more aggressive with innovation in STEM education than other schools roughly in its tier (mainly privates ranked between like 14 and 25 or so) even if prospective students don’t care and no one rewards it in the rankings. Some things are just good for educating “the future” so to speak and such enhancements or reforms may indeed be thankless (at least initially) from external agencies. It likely took the test of time (allows them to prove the curricula results in awesome “products”) and heavy promotion for the very top tier privates to get their most well-respected curricular options noticed by prospective students, the higher ed. community, and others. It is what it is. Again, some choose to bash these tippy top schools for being “impersonal” and “stressful”, but there is a lot to be liked if one is serious about getting a high caliber education. Instead of bash them or say petty things like: “Why aren’t we ranked higher yet? Our SAT scores are the same or better than HYP”, I investigate more deeply to realize that they recruit a different caliber of “talent” that can’t be quantified by an SAT/ACT score. I would rather my school steal ideas from them (and then spin programs towards its own strengths and areas it wants to develop) than be among those who bash them and settle for my school only looking as good in the admissions arena. I want it to become a titan for real and not just on paper. Duke is one of the “newer” (not really, but certainly more so than most of the schools up there) places that clearly understood this concept and worked hard to get up there based upon improvements to academics and not just marketing and showboating.
“Duke is one of the “newer” (not really, but certainly more so than most of the schools up there) places that clearly understood this concept and worked hard to get up there based upon improvements to academics and not just marketing and showboating.”
Duke does a lot of marketing and showboating with this basketball program, where admissions are totally compromised for kids who are not going to attend class and leave after one or two years. And they use ED to artificially inflate their rankings, so unless they go SCEA or EA and compete with HYPSM and Cal Tech head on for an applicant, they won’t be in that tier. If it does do that, it will most likely go back to what it was when I was applying, a safety school for people that got into Yale.
“Problem solving may be an important aspect of stem classes, but its also a teachable skill. A test with a 40% average looks more like and ambush than a teachable moment. Why weren’t the students being asked to solve these kinds of problems all along? Why weren’t they part of the homework sets? That would give students an opportunity to practice and avail themselves of help in advance.”
Lot of it depends on the goals of the course, if it’s a weed out course like some stem courses are freshman year, you may get averages that low, but that doesn’t happen on every test, usually it’s later in the semester when the material gets harder. And you cannot make the test a copy of the problem sets, that would be like high school, where you regurgitate a lot of the concepts. Good college tests are going to have things that make you stretch and apply to a new situation, as mathmominvt points out.
I don’t know if this is a good analogy to make, but a lot of what happens in elite colleges is similar to special forces training in the military. Only the best qualified are selected to even attend SEAL or Green Beret school and the washout/weed-out rate is just as high as in the college introductory math and science classes. You will be tested in ways that you never encountered during basic training.
Not everybody in the military is cut out to be one of the elite in the Green Berets/Rangers/SEALs/Delta Force or even as a paratrooper. That doesn’t make them bad soldiers. Just as not anyone can necessarily survive the introductory science classes to be an engineer or physician. They might be successful in other fields/majors and that’s perfectly fine.
@theloniusmonk : Yes, but many schools use sports to raise their profile (and it works so they are right to do so, research shows that. It is a big disadvantage for my alma mater to be D-3 in this landscape. Places that make it to championships and those who win them benefit, even if elite). The fact still stands that they have done a very SIGNIFICANT amount of academic enhancements that other schools using similar strategies to boost their profile have not, and they were very aggressive in doing these enhancements. A lot of the places just stick to marketing and playing the rankings game with scores until they reach an upper limit and are not really addressing undergraduate academics but so much. They may believe that it is already “good enough”, but I have my doubts. Almost all of the top 10 schools, including Duke have implemented undergraduate programs and tracks (connected to coursework and curricula) that are capable of catering to the very upper margins of talent and ambition recruited to the schools for all 4 years much better than lots of other places. That is really all I am pointing out. I am saying that Duke clearly recognized a need to do this. It is just easier to truly challenge such students in and out of the classroom at some places.
Almost all schools have plenty outside of the classroom for them to do.any others just have their Scholarship programs and believe they are sufficient (basically catering to a very small slither is sufficient), whereas some schools say: “Hey, if you are talented or really ambitious, scholarship or not, we have something for you to do from year one to start really developing”. They are not just harboring and entertaining students for 4 years. If a student has “jagged edges”, their undergraduate options can “handle” most students without almost immediately sending them to grad. classes. At many others, that would be the only option if they had an abundance of such students along with immediately funneling them into a research position.
I just think a marker of success, regardless of other shady things the school has (yes, I do agree a lot about your concern with D-1 recruiting and what effects it can have) or does goes beyond constantly padding incoming stats until every student has a 1600 and goes into how well a school can cater academically to all its levels of talent, whether a student is “well-rounded”(likely has high scores, plenty of AP credits, but may not have focused in an academic area beyond that and will likely pursue a professional track or intends to kind of do a standard academic track and "enjoy life’ in a more stereotypical college experience way…and nothing is wrong with that, super common) or is supper pointy/jagged-edged (same qualities, but maybe did research/got published, went to IOs, maybe even got a medal, ISEF semi or finalist, w/e…heavily exposed to a or a few academic areas far beyond what even good HSs can provide in terms of classroom education) . A school is doing well if it can attract and challenge a decent amount of those latter types that may think to themselves on day one of freshman year: “I would like to be a leader in this field one day and will go far lengths to get there” lol. I guess those are the types that some who know Harvard called “academic admits” (though again, incoming stats would suggest almost all admits are).
The analogy doesn’t really work because the elite schools are weeding out people who could be successful physicians had they attended less rigorous schools. This is a crucial distinction for anyone who wants to be a doctor and may apply to other fields as well.
Also, I wasn’t just talking about how admissions impacted their rankings…I am kind of ignoring that because so many schools are gaming the rankings using whatever admissions tactics possible (my alma mater was so desperate to finesse these, that it made up numbers to report to USNWR…why care about education when you can look good to prospective students on paper? Because we all know that is most important for America’s future…the prestige and rank that selective schools have from being able to claim that they harbor perfect Patties and Patricks in a summer camp with some potential learning for 4 years is absolutely most important).
I am looking at the actual academic caliber and enhancements, NOT things that help to finesse the schools’ rank. USNWR could care less about the things I highlight. Also, I am not equating Duke to HYPSM so much as saying it shares far more academic characteristics now than it used to. Let us learn to give credit where it is due. If I had to leave it in its current versus trade it for some of those ranked below it who now have higher incoming stat. ranges and similar levels of applications like WUSTL or Vanderbilt, and maybe Northwestern(?) I would leave Duke right where it is because you at least see the effort to truly cater to its talent at closer levels to other top 10s than do those and the other schools in their tiers.
Again, I am not interested in how the admissions offices are playing with numbers and am interested in how the schools themselves are educating the students they admit which is closer to the topic of this thread. The fact that you bring up the admissions numbers and their plans somewhat suggests that you conflate that with “quality education”. I refuse. I care what the school does for the talent and what the “talent” recruited decides to do with their opportunity at those schools. When you look at outcomes, seems Duke is doing a great job in comparison to most below 10, ED or not, whether it is a true peer of HYPSMCt or not, basketball marketing or not. Marketing ain’t enough to make up grounds in the “outcomes” department. Love how you were so ready to ignore substantive things to bash a school based upon how it conducts its admissions. Plenty of places doing that do not yield similar results to those top 10 schools. I personally only bash (and yes, that includes my own school) when I see these schools playing with numbers in the admissions department, building new swimming pools, university centers, and dorms, meanwhile the top 10 peers they desperately want to appear like on paper are actually continuing to heavily invest in being and remaining leaders of higher education, including undergraduate education by doing more than just building facilities. That is what I mean by “showboating”.
To be clear, I think a place like WUSTL (a D-3 school), definitely tries hard with academic caliber, I just don’t think it is a Duke.
@gallentjill : I kind of agree, but I must say this. Those who truly want to be a physician will likely become one even if the weeder courses don’t go well the first time. I know as folks who went to elites, we love perfection and doing it right on the first try, but resilience is key and even if they can’t make it immediately post-graduation, those who want to be a physician will eventually get there, and if they have to pursue options to enhance their resume or transcript elsewhere afterwards, it would likely be a breeze in comparison and they’ll go into medicine with more “life experience” . From what I see, many people who struggle in initial weeders do end up eventually developing fairly well and at worst into marginal applicants who could probably get in the following cycle as long as they do something meaningful (which if they got good training in STEM and did “okay”, many great opps will be available. Medical schools seem to require paper based perfection in academics, but not many science jobs nor jobs that a pre-health may be interested in). in the interlude. I guess if one is only used to immediate gratification and success and is not open to that not being granted in some scenarios, then an elite is not the place. If one does take the risk, I recommend being as engaged as possible and taking advantage of an array of opps to develop a great skill-set such that if it doesn’t initially work out, or if one changes their mind even if qualified, they land softly and have those opps. available. I don’t recommend a checkbox mentality as tempting as I imagine it is to do so for the poor pre-healths. Checkbox usually means dodging every particularly challenging course and instructor, doing primarily only pre-med related ECs, and just generally not thinking about skill development and doing things that have long-term impact and benefit.
The less rigorous schools do more weeding out than the elite ones. If you get a F in ochem at a less rigorous school, you’re getting a F in the class, if you get a F at an elite school, you’re getting a B, maybe B- or have the option to change it to a pass or audited.
@theloniusmonk, source please for your post #353.
If you ever gave a student a D or below at a prestigious college. There will be problems especially in a school that costs $60,000. My dad had a student who didn’t understand the material and he got C. Now, please tell me how that happens. State colleges and Community colleges don’t hesitate to give low grades.
@theloniusmonk ”The less rigorous schools do more weeding out than the elite ones. .”
That is probably true, but I grading varies a lot by school and subject. I know that at Lehigh, an excellent school but perhaps not elite by cc: standards, orgo was curved to a C+ this year. That is pretty strict grading for a school with a middle 50 percent ACT of 30 - 33.
Not with their mean grades; sorry, this point is just not correct. (Brown has STEM courses where the mean is an A-; Yale and Stanford, too.)
Do you have any evidence that this is the true? (Remember, a high MCAT score can makeup for a lower GPA.)
@NASA2014 , why did your dad give the C grade to the student?
You tell me. Would you as a parent who is paying thousands of dollars and your kid is partying or not doing good in class. All the sudden he fails a class. Now he’s behind and you’ll have to pay an extra semester. What would you want, a grade deserved or a fake grade?