Would it be better to go Princeton (or other Ivy’s) and have an average (3.4ish) GPA, or a state school and have a 3.8ish GPA when it comes to getting into med school?
My kid would be an “average” Princeton student, but an honors college student at a non-ivy. The goal is med school (or md/phd, or just phd research) and it sounds like GPA matters quite a bit. For college admissions weighting the GPA helps, as does the school report… but does that also apply to med school? Will they see a 3.4 and think “ah, its from Princeton” and look at it more favorably than say someone with a 3.5 or 3.6 from a not-as-selective school?
They’d certainly look at it more favorably than a 3.4 from a lesser school. MD/PhD is less GPA based than MD (PhD even less than MD/PhD) and much more research oriented. Have to consider where the best research opportunities for undergraduates are and often state school means large graduate school and thus less space in lab for undergrads.
For MD admissions, the school name on the diploma is only of minor importance. GPA/MCAT/ECs/LORs are of much greater importance. See p. 5 of this document: https://www.aamc.org/download/462316/data/mcatguide.pdf
for how med school admission offices rank the importance of various factors.
Medical schools use GPA as a first round screener for admissions. While the exact GPA cutoff is not public info and is different at different schools, a 3.4 GPA, even from an Ivy undergrad, isn’t going to garner positive attention from adcomms. A 3.4 GPA will likely put a MD admission completely out of reach. Your child will not get an automatic 0.3 boost to their GPA just because it says Princeton (or Harvard or Stanford or MIT) on their diploma.
BTW, it’s faulty reasoning to assume that someone who earns a 3.4 GPA at Princeton will easily earn a 3.8+ GPA at a state flagship. At state Us, high achieving students tend to cluster in few mostly STEM majors, thus the competition for strong pre med grades at the state U will be stronger than you may think.
I just read somewhere on CC that Brown is the best school for pre-med with relatively high GPAs (detractors will say grade inflation) and excellent undergraduate teaching.
Also, more selective schools tend to have more grade inflation. Princeton is generally regarded to have less grade inflation than other super-selective schools, but still has higher grade averages than most state universities. http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Wow, 2nd time in roughly 24 hours someone has referenced my thread.
Yes, Brown’s grading is wonky and our curricular policies really make any apples to apples comparison with other schools impossible:
Failed courses are not listed on your transcript and the lowest possible passing grade is a C; therefore, a GPA below 2.0 is literally impossible at Brown.
No +/- but that cuts both ways. A- work is a 4.0, but B+ work is a 3.0.
ANY class can be taken Satisfactory/No Credit (aka pass/fail) and thus not factor into your GPA
The deadline to drop a class without a W on your transcript is reading period (aka the week before finals)
No gen ed requirements means only taking classes you want to take outside your concentration (aka major)
Brown grading system is unfair. Failed courses are not listed on your transcript and the lowest possible passing grade is a C; therefore, a GPA below 2.0 is literally impossible at Brown. Really? So now I understand why people want to go to an IVY school. They never fail anyone.
Please read my post again. **You can fail a course/b. It just doesn’t appear on your transcript, and if you don’t pass 30 courses, you don’t graduate. The transcript is meant to reflect what you have learned. If you failed a course, you clearly didn’t learn that material.
Traditional applicants are not given a pass for having a “low” GPA from an ivy. A 3.4 from an unhooked traditional applicant will likely result in no acceptances.
Go to a good school where the GPA is more likely going to be a 3.7+. That said, it’s not easy anywhere…he’s going to have to work for grades no matter what.
Thanks for all the replies, it will definitely help in the decision process when all her (odd everyone assumed a ‘he’) acceptances come and and she has to choose where to go.
In addition to Ivies and big state U’s, don’t neglect to consider liberal arts schools that are not Ivies. It is often easier to get hands on experience in the labs at primarily undergraduate serving institutions and class sizes are smaller as well. Courses will be taught by professors rather than grad students and teaching well is a bigger part of the professor’s job expectations.
Nah…when it’s ambiguous, the default pronoun use is male. Some use “they,” but that’s weird when referring to one person.
If you spend any time reviewing the acceptances or MDapps on SDN, you’ll see failed cycles from applicants from top 10 schools who had sub 3.6 GPAs. This cycle I’m familiar with a Stanford applicant with no acceptances, even with a strong MCAT.
In fact, I think med schools know that the top schools have grade inflation so if they were to see a 3.4, they would think that’s a student who wasn’t one of their best.
Med schools have long moved away from the “preference for elite college applicants.” Maybe because their desire for diversity also includes a desire for students who come from a variety of schools/experiences. My son’s med school happily mentioned that the cohort his year came from nearly 60 different undergrads.
“In fact, I think med schools know that the top schools have grade inflation” - I’ll have to read up on this more. The only thing I heard about was Princeton’s grade deflation (as a matter of policy), and even though the policy is gone, that it seems to still be an issue (though not as much as few years ago).
RE: grade inflation and grade deflation w/r/t med school admission
Med school adcomm members are busy people. They’re full time faculty members and administrators. They’re serving on the adcomm on top of their other responsibilities, typically without any relief time from their duties. They don’t have the time or inclination to decide or even discuss whether College X is grade deflated or College B has grade inflation. They can’t be expected to be familiar with the grading policies of the thousands of colleges and universities in the US and Canada. Because of this, adcomm members are inclined to take an applicant’s GPA at face value. The only exception would be if the adcomm as a institutional entity has had many years experience with numerous graduates from a specific college. (Think a state medical school that year after year receives hundreds of applications from the state flagship U. Or a private university that sends dozens of med school applicants to its associated med school every year.)
Without longstanding, first hand knowledge of a college’s grading policies, adcomms aren’t going to give an applicant–even from an Ivy or top LAC-- the benefit of the doubt and aren’t to “school adjust” an applicant’s GPA. They just won’t. (Also any “adjustment” of GPA is going to raise the specter of elitism and exclusionary discrimination. Which also raise the possibility of lawsuits from rejected applicants and their parents.)
Besides that’s what the MCAT is for. The MCAT is an objective method of comparing applicants from diverse academic backgrounds and grading schemes. It’s the great equalizer.
But for med school admission, the only thing having the strong GPA and strong MCAT score does is keep the application from getting tossed. It’s a quick screener used to eliminate some of the ten thousand applications a med school gets every year from consideration. Med school admission is a negative process. Admission officers are actively looking for reasons to remove candidates from consideration.
Actually you might be surprised how much is known about the academic rigor/grading policies of many undergraduate schools. Most if not all medical schools get a majority of their applicants from a fairly limited pool of undergraduates schools. Also while many who do medical school admissions are part time, there are full time members who are very well informed of such matters. My experience with this is dated but conversations with friends currently on the committees of other schools seem to indicate that not much has changed in this matter. My advice to the OP is encourage his child to attend an Ivy if that is his or her preference, assuming of course that the financials work. Going to a flagship State University like a Berkeley or a Michigan or a UCLA will not necessarily give one a better GPA then going to an Ivy. I suspect that in most cases that the reverse is more likely to be true as there tends to be significant grade inflation with the upper end private Universities in comparison to Sate Universities. One needs good grades and good MCAT scores as a base upon which to apply for medical school. Any weakness is a reason to winnow down the stack of applicant files and this does not matter where the applicant went to College.