<p>I think when people say, “undergrad doesn’t matter,” what they really mean is “undergrad doesn’t matter as much as GPA.” I agree with that statement (although the relationship b/w quality of undergrad and GPA is still unclear to me). However, the prestige of your undergrad not mattering as much as GPA is not to say that the prestige of your undergrad doesn’t matter at all.</p>
<p>Similar questions come up when deciding which medical school to attend: the state med school that is cheaper, where you’d be more likely to make AOA or the prestigious private medical school that is more expensive and probably more competitive. </p>
<p>This question was examined in a paper published in *Academic Medicine *. I will freely admit that this is not a rigorous study and there was only a 50% response rate (reflecting roughly 1300 out of the 2600 program directors out there) but it’s the best we have. The study looked at the factors in a residency application that residency program directors valued most. 3rd year grades were most important. Step 1 score was 2nd most important. Grade in the senior elective in the specialty was 3rd most important. # of honors grades was 4th most important. No surprises. Medical school reputation ranked just below AOA in importance which surprised me as I thought AOA membership would’ve been much more important than simply attending a prestigious medical school. Medical school reputation ranked as more important than grades in the 1st two years of med school, research publications, medical school academic awards, research experience, and the MSPE (Dean’s letter).</p>
<p>Now, the quality of medical schools is much more homogeneous than the quality of undergrads. If med school reputation matters in residency admissions, should we be so niave as to think undergrad reputation doesn’t matter in med school admissions? </p>
<p>BTW: The citation for the article is:
Green M, Jones P, Thomas JX Jr. Selection criteria for residency: results of a national program directors survey. Acad Med. 2009 Oct;84(10):1322-3</p>
<p>Phrased another way, and in the experience of the one data point I have memorized, if you don’t attend a top school you dang well better be almost perfect on everything else to get interviews at Top 10 med schools. Any ding will usually kill you. </p>
<p>My kid had a MCAT “ding” against her (11/11/11, one time) and did not attend a “Top” UG (but did attend a very good one- Top 50 LAC). Everything else was very competitive for top schools, maybe even approaching “super-star”. Maybe. Her Top Ten tally was 1-5 on getting interviews (but thankfully for her, 1-1 on acceptances). She did much better one level down (#'s 10-25-ish) with multiple interviews and acceptances. </p>
<p>There is a bias in admissions at some top med schools, and it is readily apparent at my D’s school. Way over-loaded with Top UG kids. I did the math after she got a list of the Class of 2014 and it was overwhelmingly weighted to Top National Uni’s.</p>
<p>I would also like to say that for schools bragging about “90%+ med school acceptance rate” are usually the ones that weed out students so that the number that actually apply for med school is very low in comparison to the students who came into college thinking they were going to do pre-med.</p>
<p>And the prestigious national award your daughter won didn’t hurt either ;)</p>
<p>I’m happy for the success of your daughter but if not for the Yale acceptance and the fact she’s from TX, she very well could’ve not gotten into any top 20 med schools despite a spectacular application. I saw many applicants during my application year barely make it into a top med school. This one dude was slated for Suny Downstate until he got a last-minute acceptance to WashU. He was one of those 3.9/39-types from a state school.</p>
<p>My application was “meh” from a Cornell standpoint (so much so I didn’t even get an interview from Cornell’s own medical school or from UC Irvine, one of my low-end state schools) but I was still able to get 4-5 interviews from Top 10 medical schools which I think reflects the biases of top med schools.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine went to Notre Dame UG… she said the reason the med school acceptance is so high is that all along they “counsel” students to go in various directions so by the time it’s time to even start applying to med school, the herd has already been culled significantly. And again, once in med school, if your lucky enough to get there, specialties are culled in the exact same way. (cross post with PantherPride)</p>
<p>As for EC’s - at some schools, the lists are going to be endless (and some pointless) and others the list not so long and even a little competitive (applications to be in certain groups and clubs). In any event, what are considered good vs outstanding EC’s in general?</p>
<p>You get the point. Outstanding EC’s require a lot of talent and dedication and quite frankly not everyone can do them. People are always asking what kind of GPA or MCAT you need to get into top med schools but they rarely ask about the quality of EC’s that’s needed. A 35 on the MCAT is 95th percentile. Having a publication is 95th percentile (only 5% of applicants have a publication). In other words, the quality of your EC’s should match the quality of your objective stats if you want to get into a top med school. People always assume they can just get great stats with mediocore EC’s and still get into prestigious med schools. Not true.</p>
<p>norcalguy, I think DS has a couple of “good” ones in your post #26, and is likely one of the tier 3 in your post #20. He could get many interview invites (according to many CCers opinion, he has likely been helped by his school’s name. His stats are likely among the top 400-500 kids or so according to an AAMC link posted by kristi not long ago, but his application is definitely a “meh” one.) However, I am not sure whether he would be that successful on the admission part.</p>
<p>He shared the same fate as you did for the school which did not offer you an interview invite 3 years ago. (My guess is that particular school loves “EC-lopsided” kids as they are rarer? like Mayo/Vanderbuilt?) It was the only school that did not offer him an invite. Even though his “interview rate” is high (>90 percents), it does not mean he is good, as he did not even try out many top ones. I think his case is a somewhat strange one: quite successful in the first part of the game, not so in the second part. It is likely many schools rely on stats to decide who to invite without spending too much time reading the 5000+ applications, and the interviewer only goes over interviewee’s application package like 10 minutes in a hurry before he/she interviews an applicant? After all, the admission office for most medical school is definitely a small one and they can not afford to read so many applications in details.</p>
<p>Digressing a little back to the original question about GPA, what do you think about the quality of the GPA? </p>
<p>I come from an unranked school with a 3.8 GPA, but it’s comprised of classes that have been the hardest available to me (including some at graduate level) and I’d like to say I have a pretty nice breadth of classes too. If there’s anything outstanding about my app, I’d say it’s ECs and LORs. I collected 3 interviews to top 20s.</p>
<p>I have friends with slightly higher GPAs (3.9?) but who opted not to take a rigorous a courseload, and they have not fared nearly as well as I have when applying (perhaps it’s also due to other factors than GPA). </p>
<p>I’ve been told at all of my interviews that the quality of the work that goes into the GPA really matters a lot.</p>
<p>To that end, I wonder how, say, a no name 3.8 (with tough classes) compares to a brand name GPA (with easy ones). I’m sure there’s no easy way to “convert” them, or even if “converting” them would be worthwhile, or even if there is such thing as “easy classes” at prestigious schools. Just thinking and typing :)</p>
<p>kristin, I think what you really shines is your ECs. — Are you sure your friends with slightly higher GPA who were not as successful as you had ECs of the same quality as yours?</p>
<p>I think one CCer (likely ncg) posted in the past that once your GPA passes some threshold, it does not matter if it is 3.8 or 3.9 – thay may be regarded as about equal by adcoms, or its effect is very minimal. But 3.5 and 3.6 may be different.</p>
<p>Regarding the quality of the grade of the courses taken, a problem is adcoms may not have means or time to know which course is harder, unless the medical school knows your undergraduate very well.</p>
<p>Absolutely! (and you can throw Reed and UC Berkeley/UCLA/UCSD into the mix of grade-deflated schools)</p>
<p>When I went to my med. school interviews, every single school at which I interviewed (Penn, Duke, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Baylor, Harvard (where I went), UCSF, Univ. of Chicago, etc.) made more than passing mention of my GPA (in two very disparate majors), in the context of coming from a school renown for its grade deflation. In the mid-80s, med. schools seemed to care deeply about the rigor of the grading system. Had plenty of friends at Stanford, with high GPAs, who applied to medical school, who didn’t fare as well, and it was said to their faces that Stanford, with its dynamic of dropping classes at the final and not recording anything below a “C”, was considered to have grade inflation.</p>
<p>BTW…How do they drop a class and finish on time…new to the med school topic? Summer or double up later? If would be tough to double up lab based courses (how many have to take more than 1 lab based course on a quarter basis?</p>
<p>My D mentioned that this happened in her Calc course, toward the end quite a few dropped the class (hurt the curve for those who thought they were on middle to above-middle).</p>
<p>PS What percentage do some requirements AFTER they get their 4 yr. degree? Curious since D wants to study abroad and if she don’t do summer course, then she may need to take more classes later. What percentage of those type applicants eventually get into Med school, is it lower?</p>
<p>SWHarborfan,
Your points are very valid. However, vast majority of applicants are NOT interviewed at schools that you have interviewed. More so, vast majority of applicants do not apply to these schools. My D. has applied to mixed range of 8 schools and eventually got accepted to 4, including 2 privates in top 20. She is graduating in May from state school. She has never mentioned ANY interview discussion about her GPA. The most popular discussion at all interviews was her Music Minor. However, interviews that she went to could be very different in comparison to interviews at Penn, Duke, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Baylor, Harvard , UCSF, Univ. of Chicago. D’s GPA is her strongest point (according to our own assessment). She has decent MCAT score and EC’s comparable to others (Research, shadowing, volunteering, leadership sorority, study abroad, Supplemental Instructor’s (chem) job, great interest and minor in Music).</p>
<p>kristin, I think one thing that is happening is the rec letters. Your schedule and performance in those classes probably produced rec letters from profs who really sang your praises. All this app stuff fits together. View it as a dynamic “whole”. </p>
<p>norcalguy…You know it, bro. Thank God for Texas …and a Yale admissions dude with a sense of humor. ;)</p>
<p>Edit: And I agree, too, that her “award” (and the research behind her award) bought her a couple of points at schools where research is king.</p>
<p>We keep mentioning top 10, top 20 med schools. Do you think we are all talking the same schools? IS it USNWR or a more CC list? Personally I think Princeton Med School is #1 ;)</p>
<p>I know when I use the terms, I’m talking about a floating idea of Top 10-20-25 not entirely dependent upon but related to the USNWR Research rankings of Med Schools. If somebody has historically been Top " -", a temporary blip doesn’t remove them (i.e. Baylor). That’s why I said Top 25-ish above describing schools where my kid got some love and was including Case, Mayo, UVa, and Dartmouth with Pitt, Baylor, and Southwestern. I find it difficult to make a hard cut at “20”. So I don’t. ;)</p>
<p>I don’t even know that I’ve looked at the rankings this year (if they’ve changed). But I probably will now. Thankfully, it matters even less than it did. ;)</p>
<p>As far as my personal view of Top Ten/Twenty? I don’t know that I’ve done that.</p>
<p>Harvard
Penn
JH
UCSF
WUSTL
Duke
U-Mich
U-WA
Yale
Columbia
Stanford
UCLA
U-Chi (Pritzker)
VAndy
Cornell
UCSD
Mt Sinai
Northwestern
Case Western
Emory
UNC-CH
UT-SW
Baylor
UVA</p>
<p>Does that grouping seem reasonable? Any schools you might add to TOP schools? Reading through the 2nd 25 it seems like some amazing schools are ranked in the 2nd grouping. I think any of the top 50 are mainly excellent schools, the fixation on top 10 by some novice posters seems even more silly and pointless when I read the list and actually think about it.</p>
<p>Their busses are gassed up for Big D (Dallas) last I heard. :D</p>
<p>btw: IMO, Cal’s reputation for grade deflation is over-blown. Like many top colleges, it has a B/B+ average gpa. What makes the UC’s so competitive for premed (and engineering, for that matter) is the cut-throat nature, classes stocked with gunners repeating AP courses, and Frosh courses with a strict curve – A’s are capped, and lostsa D’s and F’s for those unprepared from HS. (In contrast, Stanford dropped F’s from its system years ago – it is thus virtually impossible to flunk out of Stanford.) Further, I would guess, and its only a guess, that the big three UC’s have a higher % of premed wannabes than other top colleges, with the possible exception of say Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>fwiw: according to gradeinflation.com, there are only a few privagte colleges which still adhere to a low gpa average, Reed being one, and if I recall, Swat is another. OTOH, UChicago (‘where fun goes to die’) reputation precedes it since it has a mean gpa similar to Northwestern.</p>
Thankfully, it matters even less than it did. ;)</p>