Med School Admissions: GPAs weighed same for all undergraduates at all universities?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>*Absolutely! (and you can throw Reed and UC Berkeley/UCLA/UCSD into the mix of grade-deflated schools)</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>I’m not certain that I fully understand what grade deflation means. I think I do, but I’m not sure. My understanding would be that it’s the opposite of grade inflation - where the majority of students are getting As and Bs…few Cs, Ds, Fs. </p>

<p>So, at a school with grade deflation, would there be more of a true Bell Curve or not? Please clarify for an old mom. :)</p>

<p>When people say that UCLA and UCB have grade deflation, are they saying that many students (particularly premed) end up with lowish GPAs? or what?</p>

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<p>Pitt is #14 where it has been for awile according to this.
[Research</a> Rankings - Best Medical Schools - Graduate Schools - Education - US News](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings]Research”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings)</p>

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<p>I just grabbed the research list, so many people say the PC list is less reliable.</p>

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<p>

Gee. That just sounds “peachy”. lol.</p>

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<p>The top UC’s are not for the faint of heart. :)</p>

<p>For premed/prelaw types, the mid-tier UCs offer better odds (but no D1 sports).</p>

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<p>Sorry about the Pitt absence, they should be between these two:</p>

<p>U-Chi (Pritzker)
VAndy</p>

<p>I’ve been up all night with a sick dog, trying to stay awake until the vet opens, typo!</p>

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<p>*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. *</p>

<p>A’s are capped at UCs? Really? Is there some kind of guideline or is it an unwritten rule so as to weed kids out or what?</p>

<p>*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>*</p>

<p>I think students need to look at the long run. If the goal is med school, why matriculate at an undergrad where the competition for top grades is going to be 4 years of hell and perhaps failure (not grade failure, but failure to have an adequate GPA)?</p>

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<p>Most people seem to think that whatever schools they (or their children, friends, etc.) are deflated. You could think of deflation in an absolute sense (“What percentage of students get A’s? What’s the average GPA awarded?”) but it makes more sense to also consider the pool of students.</p>

<p>When that correction is made, I found quantitatively that the UC’s are not particularly rough. In fact, the highest-tier schools (Harvard/Yale types, and especially MIT) seem to be much much harder.</p>

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<p>bdm:</p>

<p>I think you need to consider both aspects: % of A’s/mean gpa; and caliber of students.</p>

<p>If the mean gpa of Brown is 3.6+, and mean grade in a premed science course is an A- (according to several Brownies who post on cc), one could suggest that Brown is more inflated than say Dartmouth (which has similar stat students) since Dartmouth curves it premed courses to a B/B+, and has a mean gpa of ~3.45. Similarly, if Y & S are ~3.6, and H is sub 3.5…</p>

<p>But I agree that it does not make much sense to compare Berkeley’s mean of ~3.3 to Stanford’s 3.5+.</p>

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<p>gunners repeating AP courses can be found at every top college, pubic or private. In my guess only, I suspect that at some flagship state university as well as some “premed-attracting” majors at some private colleges, there may be more students who would spend disportional amount of their awake time on academics (e.g., devoting most of their weekend time) to the exclusion of their all important ECs. Then, at the medical school applications time, these poor premeds got screwed due to the fact that their ECs are not as good or “too homogeneous” as that from those top privates.</p>

<p>Actually, the same phenomenon happens at the high school level. It is rumored that in California, many students whose family can afford it go to a high quality private high school instead, to avoid those gunners (who do nothing but academics – well, I may exaggerate it here) in the public high schools.</p>

<p>At the medical school level, there is a chance that some medical schools have more of these kinds of students as compared to other medical schools. (Some said if a top medical school has more very top students from top state schools, it is more likely like that. I do not know if it is true though.)</p>

<p>It is rumored BME at JHU (may be Duke, Rice as well) are full of these kinds of kids. Since somebody mentioned Brown, I heard a joke about Brown: A student walked into a classroom, and noticed there are too many students who are of that type I referred to above. He immediately walked out of room and tried some other classes where there are not so many these kinds of students. (Actually, a similar event happened in the competitive public high school where DS went to many years ago. This above-average student would like to secure a spot in the flagship state university due to the top 10 percents rule in our state.)</p>

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<p>“Personally I think Princeton Med School is #1”</p>

<p>Princeton could have had a medical school in 1998 and it would not have cost them a penny but was too risk averse to seize the opportunity. At the time I was a medical student at MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine owned by the Allegheney Health and Research Foundation (AHERF) that had been locked in a bidding war with the University of Pennsylvania Health System to buy up as many hospitals and physicians practices as possible in the Philadelphia area. It was ruinous for both systems. Penn’s Medical system lost $600 million that year and the Head of the Medical School and Hospitals, Dr. William Kelly, who had not been keeping the University informed of the situation, went to U of Penn President Judith Rodin and informed her that he needed $200 million in cash that day to keep Penn’s Medical School and hospitals from being seized by the creditors. Rodin was shocked and reportedly told Dr. Kelley that the University would provide the money out of its endowment but that he should go back to his office and clean out his desk because he was fired.</p>

<p>AHERF, run by a shady character named Abdulhak, had no one to turn to for a bailout and filed for bankruptcy. Tenet agreed to buy the hospitals but only if it could find an academic partner to operate and eventually take ownership of the medical school. At that time not only MCP Hahnemann and Penn were were in deep financial trouble but most other academic medical centers, including Harvard/Mass. General, UCSF and Stanford, were losing huge amounts of money and were close to the brink. We heard that Tenet first went to Princeton and offered them the medical school. Princeton replied that they were aware that they were the only Ivy League school without a medical school and seeing what was happening to universities that did have medical schools they were glad that did not have one and saw no reason to risk obtaining a potential financial black hole that could bring down the whole University. </p>

<p>Tenet next to Villinova who had the same reaction Princeton did. We were visited by a representative of the AAMC and told to be ready to pack on a moments notice because the AAMC had drawn up a plan to distribute all of MCP Hahnemann’s students to its member medical schools throughout the United States because unless Tenet found an academic partner within a few days the medical school would close. However, at this time a new President had taken over at Drexel University, known as a staid engineering school, and he was tired of living both literally and figuratively in the shadow of the University of Pennsylvania and figured the best time to acquire something is when nobody else wanted it. He reached a deal with Tenet that would have Drexel run the medical school, receive a $60 million dollar endowment from Tenet and have the option of taking ownership of the school in the future if it chose to. Two years later Drexel took ownership of the medical school and despite their original pledge that they would retain the venerable names of The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University quickly changed the name to Drexel University School of Medicine. Because I had a Service obligation and had to take six month leave of absence from the school, even though I graduated with my class I did not receive my diploma until November of 2001. I may be the last doctor to have received a diploma that said MCP Hahnemann on it since in 2002 they all said Drexel.</p>

<p>The Queen Lane campus was the envy of the other medical schools in Philadelphia. It was the newest and by far best equipped facility in Philadelphia and had some capabilities that were unique. And, unlike Penn and Temple, was located in a reasonably safe area of the city. Princeton could have had it all for free plus $60 million in cash and no longer be the Ivy without a medical school if they had been willing to take a risk in 1998.</p>

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<p>Thanks for sharing with us an interesting story. This reminds me of the aborted Rice-Baylor merger. Baylor then recruited a director (or someone with other title) from Mt. Sinai in order to clean up some of its financial mess. I heard 10 to 15 years ago, Mt. Sinai was not in a financially healthy condition also but they have improved significantly since then.</p>

<p>Is it true that many medical schools are not in a very good financial standing?</p>

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<p>In the late 1990s probably most medical schools were having serious financial problems and there lots of reports of possible mergers. Since that time there has been very significant improvement and I think for the most part medical schools are financially healthy.</p>

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<p>^^GREAT story, thanks for sharing.</p>

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<p>gradeinflation.com is a fascinating website, which I’d never seen before. A quick perusal suggests to me that grades are fairly consistently awarded to students with similar attainment levels at different colleges, with exceptions. Looking at the California universities, since I have some familiarity with them, I note that the top-tier UC Berkeley and UCLA campuses have overall average 3.2+ GPA’s in recent years, while next-tier (in terms of UC campuses) Irvine and Santa Barbara have ~3.0 GPA averages, and the least-selective UC Riverside seems to be around 2.8 territory, similar or a bit above most of the CSU’s. That pretty well tracks the expected performance of their matriculating students, suggesting that a student who gets a 3.5 at Berkeley would probably also get a 3.5 at UCSB or UC Riverside. The private college of Pomona, however, boasts a 3.5 average GPA which does not track my expectation of the expected performance level of its student body - that actually looks like grade inflation to me.</p>

<p>The other thing the author does is to pooh-pooh the suggestion that the student bodies are getting more highly qualified and better-prepared over time, as average SAT scores have increased in parallel with average GPA’s over similar time frames. (UC famously concluded that SAT’s were a poor predictor of “success” in college, a study I have commented on before after reading it. I think the analysis was flawed, whatever the truth of the matter might be.)</p>

<p>But I think any parent who a has a familiarity with the academic quality of students in the past and now would agree that UC admissions selectivity has increased over time. A student who might have been likely to be accepted into UCLA or Berkeley in the 70’s or 80’s is likely to go to Irvine or Davis now. This is hardly surprising. The number of seats in top universities has hardly increased at all over the past decades which attendance figures have skyrocketed. The pyramid has gotten steeper; the colleges at the top can be ever more picky with who they admit.</p>

<p>My bottom-line quick assessment: Med schools are probably correct to disregard the identity of the UG institution attended by applicants. With some exceptions (such as, apparently, Pomona) it probably doesn’t make much difference. A 3.6 student probably would have been a 3.6 student regardless of where they went to college. Interesting. I wouldn’t have expected to see that.</p>

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<p>I tend to agree with BDM on this.</p>

<p>If you compare Cornell’s and UMich’s undergraduate data, you can see that Cornell applicants are scoring higher on the MCAT when you control for GPA. Much higher. </p>

<p>[UM</a> :: The Career Center :: Students :: Pre-Medicine :: Medical School Application :: UM Application Statistics](<a href=“http://www.careercenter.umich.edu/students/med/medappstats2009.html]UM”>Site Not Found | Student Life)
<a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University;

<p>This suggests to me that a school with a better student body more than makes for grade inflation. In other words, top private colleges with grade inflation and superior student bodies are harder than state colleges.</p>

<p>And Umich is one of the most competitive public schools while Cornell is one of the weakest top 20 private schools in the country. This would be the most favorable comparison for state school-supporters. If you use Princeton (a school with similar grading as Cornell but better student body), the data would be even more skewed. And if, instead of UMich, you picked a more representative state school, the data would practically be off the charts.</p>

<p>So, I’ll come out and say it: if you have a 3.8 GPA from a Cornell or WashU or Harvard, you have proven more than if you have a 3.8 GPA from a state school. Unlike what the poster above me suggested, I don’t think the difference in the quality of the competition is completely compensated by the difference in grading.</p>

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<p>*But I think any parent who a has a familiarity with the academic quality of students in the past and now would agree that UC admissions selectivity has increased over time. A student who might have been likely to be accepted into UCLA or Berkeley in the 70’s or 80’s is likely to go to Irvine or Davis now. This is hardly surprising. The number of seats in top universities has hardly increased at all over the past decades which **attendance **figures have skyrocketed. The pyramid has gotten steeper; the colleges at the top can be ever more picky with who they admit.</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Do you mean “application” figures have skyrocketed.</p>

<p>Oh yes. As a native Californian it’s just gotten crazy. And, more kids are applying to more schools. When I was growing up, people applied to their local Cal State and a desired UC. The idea of applying to 5,6,7,8, or more schools just didn’t exist.</p>

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<p>When looking at the UMich stats, again I see that those who had a 3.9+ GPA and a 30-34 MCAT did very well. I’m guessing that the ones with MCAT 35+ and a 3.9+ GPA likely only applied to elites. Either that, or maybe their so-called “safeties” rejected them because they assumed that they’d go elsewhere.</p>

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<p>kluge alludes to the excellent point that there are multiple kinds of grade inflation.</p>

<p>What do we want when a school issues grades? We’re trying to get an assessment of where candidates stand – who had the better college career? To do that, we need two primary things.</p>

<p>(1) We need consistency. We need to know that a 3.8 from one place means roughly the same thing as a 3.8 another place.</p>

<p>(2) We need meaningful separation. If the best students in the class get a 3.65 while the worst ones get a 3.6, then a lot of what determines a “good student” is going to come down to a single B or something like that – something that could easily be determined by luck. In general, then, we’ll prefer grading systems that use the entire spectrum in a non-arbitrary way. Kids who get patterns of C’s really are probably worse than kids who get patterns of A’s. But if everybody’s getting a mix of (say) A’s and A-'s, then it’s really hard to tell what’s excellence and what’s just luck.</p>

<hr>

<p>Objection #1: Grade inflation over time. For example, Princeton English majors now get much higher grades than Princeton English majors used to.</p>

<p>This is the phenomenon with which Gradeinflation.com is chiefly concerned. It may be that students now are just smarter than they used to be, but (a) I doubt it, and (b) even if that’s true, it doesn’t prove that this is the best way to issue grades now.</p>

<p>(1) Is it consistent? This isn’t a problem, since nobody really needs to compare a Princeton grad from 1970 with a Princeton grad from 2000.</p>

<p>(2) Does it give us good separation? Ah, this is the problem. As grades rise and rise, we’re using less and less of the spectrum – and more and more grades are being determined by arbitrary factors.</p>

<hr>

<p>Objection #2: Some institutions are more inflated than other institutions.</p>

<p>Again, I think this is true – even if the conventional wisdom is precisely backwards. Actually, most folks complain about inflation at Ivies, but really it turns out that Ivies and their ilk are deflated, not inflated.</p>

<p>In any case, though, it’s still a problem.</p>

<p>(1) Consistency is a problem because we would like GPAs across institutions to mean roughly the same thing. Ideally, a 3.5 from UMich would be roughly the same as a 3.5 from Princeton. Right now, it’s not.</p>

<p>(2) If you want to use the entire spectrum, then the solution is to push down Princeton grades, while pushing Michigan grades farther down.</p>

<hr>

<p>Objection #3: Some majors are inflated relative to each other. Again I think this is a serious concern, because students are naturally drawn to fields where they will do well. This results in a dearth of the hard science, engineering, and technology majors that our nation needs so badly.</p>

<hr>

<p>EDIT: Hopefully that’s clearer.</p>

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<p>If GPA is considered together with MCAT (which it is) why we care so much? I would love if GPA is given more weight than MCAT, but it seems not to be the case.
On the other hand, 4.0 is 4.0 and nobody is debating it as far as I know. However, there is no point in chasing it by no means. Just enjoy your classes and it will work for you. It helps though to have awesome profs who are there not just for their research, but actually love teaching their classes. I was pointed out by one pre-med who goes to one of the top private colleges that sometime it is not the case at her school. Some profs teach because they have to, their primary focus is their own research. So, school name and prestige which is largely depend on research do not always result in best UG classes.</p>