Hey all! 
I’m considering Johns Hopkins and University of Pennsylvania for premed, but I’ve heard a lot of bad things about these two schools destroying essential admission factors like GPA. Can anyone back up this statement or negate it? Would you suggest one school over the other? Is there amything (in general) that I should know about the programs their?
Thanks!
I don’t really know anything about those two schools. Since you’re posting this here instead of http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pennsylvania/ or http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/johns-hopkins-university/ I’ll give you the best advice I can which is that Brown is the best place to be a pre med: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/1284648-brown-is-the-best-place-to-be-a-pre-med-p1.html
I also noticed from your posting history that you mentioned earlier this year that you were heading off to Temple this fall. Was that a lie or are you thinking about transferring? As a pre-med, I would advise against transferring unless you are so miserable at Temple that you think it is affecting your academic and/or emotional well being.
@iwannabe_Brown
I suppose I could have guessed that you would say Brown is the best place to go. Do you go there? Are you pre med? Can you tell me about it?
Temple University was my high point of interest when I was a junior, and I was going to go there a year early since I was offered admission without the completion of my senior year; however, I turned down that option since I am already a year ahead in school.
As for every other post in my history, please ignore them as I sound obsessed with college.
As a pre-med, any UG is fine as long as you are ready to work hard and get high college GPA. The goal in every class at college should be an A, no matter where you attend.
For the record, medical schools undoubtedly take undergrad institution’s rigor into account when assessing applicants. Of course the goal is always an “A” but I personally know many JHU students (I can name 12 off the top of my head) who have been accepted to top 10 medical schools with below 3.6 GPAs. They were difficult majors (BME, ChemBE, Neuroscience, Biophysics, etc.) and scored extremely well on their MCAT (36+ on the old scoring system), which is a common scenario for many students at Hopkins. For your own sake though, don’t look at undergrad institutions solely as stepping stones for medical school. Undergrad serves its own purpose, so please consider more factors than just “which one will get me into medical school.” There are many roads to medical school and focusing on medical school admissions during undergrad (especially your first two years) will cause you to miss out on many of the benefits and opportunities undergrad offers.
For the record, rigor, like school attended is not of zero importance, but I suspect the 12 students you can name with GPAs under 3.6 got accepted to top 10 medical schools more so because of their 36+ MCATs (old scoring), their impressive ECs, strong LORs, well written and relevant PSs as to “why medicine”, match with school’s mission statement, nailed their interviews, and perhaps even a telephone call from a JHU faculty member/administrator were at the top of the determining factors as to their acceptances.
^ Indubitably, but their GPAs were still .2 to .4 below the average accepted GPA for those schools.
So, what is the advantage or disadvantage of going to a certain UG? I do not see how name of the college could be higher criteria when choosing the college than the criteria of the best fitting place. Well, we went with what was important to our kid. We knew that being close to home (within 3.5 hrs driving) and believe it or not a pretty campus will make her happy, so why not? Why these should be less important to her than the “Harvard” name? She did not think so and despite of all the pressure from her GS, she did not apply to any Ivy / Elite colleges. However, if the name is at the top of the criteria list, go for it. Everybody is different.
There is no way the pre-med will slack at any place, I can guarantee you this one for sure and the applicants from the low ranked colleges get accepted to the top of the top Med. Schools. One thing that happened to my kid, she simply ended up attending at Med. School of her dream way back in HS, she did not even realize that, she forgot. What I am saying is that any hard working pre-med can make it work for him / her at absolutely any place. I disagree that Harvard and JHU are “obviously the best”, not for everybody, only for those who want to be there and I certainly hope that they have heavier reasons than simply the name.
I don’t believe anyone said JHU or Harvard were “obviously the best.” Only @iwannabe_Brown is coming out so strongly, lol. While prestige of a university undoubtedly turns heads and raises eyebrows when you say where you attended (and the associated rigor of getting into the school and doing well there), that hardly is the most important factor. I think the most important factors for selecting one UG over another first and foremost is “fit,” because you need to do well wherever you go, and emotional well-being and happiness determine GPA performance more than any other single factor. Call me un-romantic, but I also don’t think there is one perfect school for every person - I actually think the people who form your immediate friend’s circle end up determining your experience at a school more than anything else - and that is largely determined by the individual student, the class of students that year, and fortune. Beyond fit, for me, the most important selection criteria for UG revolve around pre-med advising and unique, meaningful, and easily available EC opportunities. JHU, Harvard and Brown all offer stellar pre-med advising that includes gap-year assistance and the all-powerful committee letter service (which fewer schools offer than you would imagine, I actually couldn’t confirm that UPENN offers this service). As for ECs, there are many things to consider: small schools have less competition for opportunities that are available, larger schools normally have more opportunities, schools in/near metropolitan areas typically have more opportunities and offer opportunities working with minority and/or disadvantaged populations (which med schools absolutely love). Also Harvard and JHU are massive research giants, and so if you are interested in the sciences (and honestly, any field in my mind) and want to reinforce the concepts you learn in class while gaining marketable skills (which is a huge problem for college graduates to demonstrate to employers), then I would consider research opportunities a huge plus not only for medical school (research isn’t required but being published and showing an aptitude for the sciences in a professional setting surely demonstrates desirable traits they are looking for), but for employment and/or grad school acceptance as a backup plan if medicine doesn’t work out.
As you said though, the problem is pre-meds everywhere are not slacking. Competition is continuing to increase with a rise in not only the number of applicants, but the age and expertise (more degrees, previous employment in healthcare, various certifications, significant research experience, etc.) of incoming medical students (as well as an increase in the GPA and MCAT scores of applicants and accepted applicants). The goal then as a med school applicant is to stand out. Some people accomplish this by attending very difficult schools and doing well, others with phenomenal ECs, while others with great MCAT scores, or a combination of these factors. There’s no one way to medical school, and no one is arguing that, but I would argue that many of these prestigious universities do offer the resources (both from the students/faculty they recruit and the opportunities they attract/create) to increase your odds of acceptance and keep you motivated on the path to medicine even after you graduate (since gap years are the new norm).
B-)
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The available data over the past decade, does not support these claims. The age statistics have been flat, while the percentage of matriculants choosing gap years remains virtually unchanged.
Not sure why you had a bone to pick with these statements since they are widely advertised and well documented in reports from AAMC. Where did you see decade-range data that didn’t support these claims? When you look at tables that only show integer values for age it may seem like for a few years it was stagnant, but in actuality the decimal values were still increasing.
Most students enter college at 18 and graduate by 22, and gap year(s) mean that upon completion of undergraduate degree (typically 4 years) you did not begin medical school the following summer/fall (also beginning at 22). I also provide data from students directly responding if they took a gap year (and not just reliant on age) so that helps control for age anomalies. I’m only addressing matriculant data since that is more important for admissions than applicant data (we want to know the success stories, though from what I’ve seen applicant data also reflects all of the same trends shown below).
There used to be a better table AAMC provided with the trends over the last decade with decimal values, but I couldn’t find it (they often replace and move around data tables on their website). If anyone finds it please post!
Here it shows that mean and median age of matriculants (both men and women) is 24 and 23 respectively from the last two cohorts (which is 1-2 gap years): https://www.aamc.org/download/321468/data/factstable6.pdf
Data on page 6 shows that the average matriculant is more likely to be in the 23-25 (one or more gap years) age range than 20-22 (directly out of undergrad) and that this trend has increased just over the last three years. Question 16 reflects this trend when directly asked about gap years: https://www.aamc.org/download/419782/data/msq2014report.pdf
Here is the same report from 2012 to broaden the scope, and the same trends are continued (Question 17a also reflects this trend when directly asked about gap years): https://www.aamc.org/download/323378/data/msq2012report.pdf
Might as well show that GPA/MCAT scores increasing as well 2003-2014 for matriculants: https://www.aamc.org/download/321494/data/factstable17.pdf