<p>Crewdad - You are quoting one program. There are several that don’t need it as well as several that may need it.</p>
<p>HPME, Texas Tech, Caltech UCSD, Rice/Baylor to name a few.</p>
<p>Caltech/ UCSD
this program is only open to 6 freshman a year and REQUIRES they maintain a 3.5 GPA from Caltech- not an easy thing to accomplish at an exceedingly rigorous UG school.</p>
<p>Texas, I quoted the university you used as an example–Berkeley. You mentioned none of the others.</p>
<p>Caltech has joint programs with USC and UCLA med. Both USC and UCLA require the MCAT
</p>
<p>[Degrees</a> and Programs](<a href=“http://keck.usc.edu/Education/Degrees_and_Programs/MD_Program/MD_PHD_Program/Admissions_and_Financial_Aid.aspx]Degrees”>http://keck.usc.edu/Education/Degrees_and_Programs/MD_Program/MD_PHD_Program/Admissions_and_Financial_Aid.aspx)</p>
<p>Before we go any further, are we talking about the same type of programs?</p>
<p>Or better yet, supply a link to what you’re referring to.</p>
<p>^^
re “are we talking about the same type of programs?”</p>
<p>the programs texaspg is talking about are 8 year UG/MD joint programs, where freshman applicants are accepted by both the UG University as well as the associated medical school, like the Caltech/ UCSD program.</p>
<p>Thanks MPM</p>
<p>Now I understand the confusion. Early assurance programs! Hobart, NU, etc. have one a well. Same 3.5 gpa requirement.</p>
<p>I though Texas meant MD/PhD joint programs. .</p>
<p>crewdad - I was referring to UCBalumnus when I said UCB since he said all medical programs require MCATs. Caltech has only one program where they admit freshman with a conditional admission to UC San Diego as MPM mentions above.</p>
<p>MPM - Yes, it is hard to get a gpa of 3.5 at Caltech. I understand they sent the very first group of 6 students to UCSD in 2011.</p>
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<p>LOL–When I read UCB, I’m programmed to think of UC Berkeley. It didn’t occur to me you were referring to a poster.
I’m glad we have that settled. Carry on.</p>
<p>
But admissions committees at med schools are other professors. Anyway asked my husband (who only does MD/PhD admissions), he says they see some summer courses, more post grad courses, probably about 10% of the total. Of course students who are thinking about also getting PhDs in science are probably get rid of most of their pre-med requirements just taking courses for their science majors which is what most of them are, though my husband did recently interview one (terrific) student who started off as a drama major, and worked as a technician for a couple of years before applying to MD/PhD programs.</p>
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<p>I understand your point, but not all committee members are professors. Depending on the school, some are administrators, current medical students, leaders in the community, etc. Regardless, the committee will more or less adhere to accepted admissions standards.</p>
<p>Ironically, some kids will take a premed req at Harvard or peer institution during the summer to make their application look MORE impressive than if every req was taken at their home institution.</p>
<p>This is just silliness to approach as if it is a rigid set of hoops to clear. As mathmom points out, the committees are comprised of human beings as are the applicants. Some highly angular kids will be able to gain admission without doing every single aspect of the process according to prevailing wisdom.</p>
<p>FWIW, our son interned at a healthcare think tank the summer he did his physics at a public university nearby in the evenings. His premed advisors at Harvard endorsed this plan, thought the overall summer would look exceptionally strong from the perspective of any applications committee. It helps, of course, if you are clearly not struggling to survive in the core science courses at your home institution. If your overall transcript presents as a strong, successful academic achiever then you are most certainly fine in taking a prereq offline during the summer at a different institution.</p>
<p>Some on this thread clearly have a kid accepted into medical school and seem to think they know every aspect of the process. Life is rarely so simple.</p>
<p>" thought the overall summer would look exceptionally strong from the perspective of any applications committee"</p>
<p>-D. did close to nothing every summer. She was able to obtain few shadoing / voluntireering opportunities at our home town, no single summer class. We would have to pay for her summer classes, Merit scholarships covered only one summer, which she used to get credit for her trip abroad. It was very hard to get anything in our very economically depressed place. D. could do it only because of her very persistant attitude. Most time in a summer she just relaxed and spent time with her HS friends. She had to do all her EC’s during her school year, had no problem obtaining great job, Med. Research Lab internship, volunteering of her choice, all lasted few years and rsulted in great personal relations and awesome LOR’s for Med. School applications.
It does not matter when they do what needs to be done, except for Med. School required classes. D. personally did not need to take any summer classes. However, many on pre-med threads are strongly against taking Med. School required classes in a summer, including at your own college. Somebody must have negative experience with that, cannot comment from personal experience though.</p>
<p>Having just returned from out of town I’d like to interrupt the med school discussion 
if I may, and go waaaay back to Quantmech’s posts on 1/4:</p>
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<p>Can you speculate on why this might happen? Since you and I, at least, seem to be in agreement that these students are not “robotic” or lacking in basic social skills - what might be happening? </p>
<p>And even in this thread “robotic” refers to students who don’t do more than the minimum to achieve an A, which I guess means the non-robotic students are greater-than-A-students, and also to refer to students who supposedly spent more time than is socially acceptable getting As, rather than using their time in a more worthwhile fashion, in which case the non-robotic students are less-than-A-students. hmmm</p>
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<p>Is it possible for this type of student to be disadvantaged in the admissions process? Serious question. I am reading sewhappy’s take on what she thinks current Harvard students she knows regard as prestigious work… very interesting. I am reading a few of you talking about fewer PhD aspirants from HYPetc, which corresponds to my own experience, and I start to wonder if admissions is deliberately weeding out some future scholars? (Though why the top ones??) Given the difficulty of getting into a PhD program and the increasingly dismal job market for PhDs maybe this isn’t a bad idea? Maybe it is in their best interest? Though if it is happening I doubt that is exactly what the undergraduate admissions committee has in mind 
Because the logical conclusion becomes (right?) no graduate programs at HYPetc which I don’t think anyone at the universities is really going to be supporting. That changes the whole game. Anyway - why aren’t the students in the small subset always the most desirable?
…
Thank you menloparkmom for answering my question. I am extremely embarrassed not to have known about USC. I’ve never lived on the west coast and am really quite provincial. It seems to me your post demonstrates how the undergraduate institution matters very much for graduate school admissions success.</p>
<p>edit: no. I’m wrong. (not unusual!) the logical conclusion is HYPetc will be getting graduate students from other institutions, where they may or may not have had access to top scholars in the field as undergraduates (depending on where the top profs are located) - </p>
<p>so maybe it only matters for the small subset (assuming the top depts in their field in at HYPetc)</p>
<p>I think the students in that small subset ARE the most desirable. And in fact in my unscientific experiential sample HYS do a really amazing job of sniffing them out in the application pile. Because they aren’t necessarily the obvious “stats & ECs” candidates. My son’s high school class had a kid just like that, and he ranked below my son (not much) and several others, did not have better test scores, and had comparatively very unimpressive ECs. Yet he was the one who was accepted at Harvard and Stanford. And my (hyperintellectual) daughter had met another friend of my son’s, from a different school, at a party the previous summer and came home and said, “You know who is really interesting? [My younger brother’s] friend X. My housemate [then a college senior applying to MD/PhD programs] and I talked to him for two hours, and he’s just really thoughtful.” Yup, Harvard took him, too, even though his ECs were less than impressive and he had no external awards or things like that.</p>
<p>^^what will those two do after college, assuming they are still in college?</p>
<p>^Good question. I was wondering about that, too. Does life need smart?</p>
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<p>This is why the LORs really do matter. While it might come across in an essay, it might not. But when a teacher or two describes a kid as is a real thinker versus a kid who is smart, the college will pick up on that.</p>
<p>The physical sciences need “smart.” Not sure about life :)</p>
<p>I think that the “building a class” analysis explains quite a lot of the relatively odd outcomes. If, say, the top 1500 students–in an academic sense–could be reliably identified in any given year, and HYPS(M) all wanted them, the yields at most of those schools would drop considerably from where they are now. Undesirable, I think, in terms of yield prediction. </p>
<p>The students that Harvard (once) referred to as “bridge students” are more numerous, and so if one of HYPS(M) admits one, the odds that all of the other schools will have admitted the same student as well are lower. Also, just wanted to note that these are all strong students.</p>
<p>I have a limited set of anecdotal evidence, and our locale sends fewer students to HYPSM each than JHS’s, I think. So all sorts of factors could come into play. I can’t really fault H or Y, based on what I know about local admits. I’m a little uncertain about P, but the class size is smaller, and other factors might explain the outcomes there. S is a bit peculiar, in my opinion–on the one hand, they are looking for “intellectual vitality,” but on the other, that criterion can apparently be met by writing an essay about a passion for shopping (per a statement attributed to an admissions officer there). On the other hand, it is possible that there are odd local factors operating with regard to S admissions. M admissions were downright odd when Marilee Jones was in charge. I think they have been moving in a more sensible direction under Stu Schmill, but I don’t know whether they have really arrived yet.</p>
<p>Also, just an aside to JHS: I think that the admissions committees can do a better job of identifying the interesting thinkers if the HS teachers and GC recognize (and like) interesting thinking. In a number of US high schools, this cannot be taken for granted. My own high school, ages ago, had a large number of teachers who had a scholarly orientation and liked thoughtful questions. In contrast, I felt that the teachers with that quality at QMP’s high school were substantially fewer in number–they were rare and cherished–despite the school’s being rated highly by Newsweek/other rating systems, and despite the lack of better options within a 90-minute driving radius.</p>
<p>^^I think this is a very happy comment on the schools the kids of JHS and mimk6 and Sewhappy attend - that these parents assume teachers both identify and then appropriately recommend this type student.</p>
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<p>So are admissions concerned that some in the small subset won’t attend and thus sometimes don’t admit them? That makes more sense to me than some explanations.</p>
<p>Is it kind of like when very desirable students apply to very competitive and limited enrollment graduate schools and sometimes pretty much have to informally pledge to accept before receiving an official offer?</p>
<p>Thanks, guys, for getting us off the stupid med school track (which I got caught up in, much to my chagrin).</p>
<p>I think the last several posts are really getting at the truth that bewilders so many high stats “perfect” kids (and their parents) on CC. There is a voice and a perspective that transcends the confines of the common app sometimes and when buttressed by unusual teacher letters catapults a kid into the supernova schools. It always perplexes bystanders who scratch their heads and think “well, my kid is higher ranked or played a varsity sport – what gives?”</p>
<p>All that said, I really think alh raises an excellent question about the caliber of teachers at high schools, how at some high schools the really remarkable kid could most definitely get overlooked. I feel terrible about that. My own kids were rescued from such a high school, I’m pretty sure. My kids aren’t musical and if they had gone to our district high school ONLY the “music kids” got supported for top schools. Period. </p>
<p>Human institutions are as varied and capricious and strange as human beings themselves and our kids are very much shaped by their high school experience – for better or worse.</p>
<p>I do think there is an element of Darwinism in all of this. If you sense that your school district and the high school your kid is headed toward is not a place where he or she is going to be truly understood and valued – then move heaven and Earth to get them out.</p>
<p>Now. I want to be clear in this post that I don’t think going to some stratospheric college is necessary to have a good life, make a good living or even reach your full potential. But it is, in general, a very good thing to try to make happen for our kids.</p>