<p>The numbers he says make sense, at least the GPA, I don't know about the math class. I remember the transcripts saying something along those lines (although I don't have the exact numbers provided in the above post). Nonetheless, induction into Tau Beta Pi this semester (the engineering honor society) had a cutoff of around a 3.7gpa for juniors. Since the top 1/8th of all engineering students are inducted as juniors, the numbers reported above have to be close to accurate.</p>
<p>Its difficult to accurately describe grade inflation or deflation from one class. While the 30/40/30 distribution above sounds high, the 10% A's described sounds slightly low. While I hesistate to conclude on grade inflation from any given class, the overall GPA of the school does seem a little high to me.</p>
<p>I have served on the admisssions committee of one of the leading medical schools. I would like to correct some of the information mentioned here. The largest number of students attending Hopkins Med are from Hopkins undergrad and the same is true for Harvard Med (about 25/150 per class). I would venture to say the same is true for Duke, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, etc. One reason for this is that the admissions committee members know the premed advisors well and trust their assessments of the applicants, so there generally is a short-track to admission to the "home" medical school. It should be pointed out that typically students are compared with others from their own school at the elite medical schools, in addition to those from other schools. So students from say Harvard, Hopkins, MIT, Amherst, etc. are compared with those from the same school.</p>
<p>pmyen would you say, since you served on the admissions committee, that med schools consider applicant's GPA without regard to the difficulty of the curriculum and the difficulty of the major? (Would you not take an engineer with a GPA of 3.5 from MIT and instead chose a Yale history major with a 3.6-7 all other things being equal?)
Thanks.</p>
<p>I've been on two of these committees. In both, we tried to have a diversity so that we'd have someone to say that Princeton's organic chemistry or Duke's BME was especially tough. Overall, though, we always knew much more about our home schools and our typical feeder schools than about schools from which we rarely got applications.</p>
<p>While aware that some majors are harder, it is generally very hard to know whether Yale history grades harder than MIT EE. Further, depending on the interviewer (or application grader), a history major might be seen as more interesting than EE. "Harder" isn't necessarily better, especially when you're trying to create a well-rounded class. </p>
<p>By the way, I agree with the above comments. All schools tend to have large numbers from their undergrad school. They know and generally trust the premed advisor, have some institutional interest in accepting a large number of their own undergrads, and many of their best undergrads tend to want to stay at dear old State U. Regardlesss of the State. If the med school is very highly ranked, however (as in JHU, Harvard, COlumbia, Cornell, Stanford, etc,) it remains true that most well-qualified applicants will still get rejected.</p>
<p>I agree with clear-eyed guy that there are not major distinctions for the major. Med schools want students who demonstrate academic excellence in whatever are their chosen fields of study in college. In general, they do not care whether the major was "hard" or "easy." Additionally, they want to build a well-rounded class, not one composed of just EE and Chem majors. In addition to high grades, MCAT scores within their acceptance range, they also place high emphasis on ECs, character, and commitment to medicine. The weighting of the latter is very subjective and likely depends on the overall enthsiasm of the candidates' advocate (uusally the interviewer(s)) for the candidate before the whole admisssions committee. Hence, the packaging of these aspects in the personal statement and interview is very important once the candidate makes the first cut, and has been invited for an interview.</p>
<p>I also would add that top med schools want future leaders in a variety of fields-medical researchers, radiologists, general internists, OB-BYNs, pediatricians, and dermatologists, etc. These fields all require different skill sets and interests, and the composition of the class will reflect this diversity. It is hard to predict whether the history major or the EE major will make the best pediatrician. On the other hand, as clear-eyed guy has commented in another thread here, picking top future scientists for M.D./Ph.D. programs is a much more "objective" enterprise as you are comparing candidates with similar skill sets and experiences as well as using common criteria as science course grades, MCAT scores, and undergrad research productivity and experience.</p>
<p>"pmyen would you say, since you served on the admissions committee, that med schools consider applicant's GPA without regard to the difficulty of the curriculum and the difficulty of the major? (Would you not take an engineer with a GPA of 3.5 from MIT and instead chose a Yale history major with a 3.6-7 all other things being equal?)
Thanks."</p>