Not accepted by Harvard Graduate School(s)-What then???

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>Hi there,</p>

<p>I<code>m an international and I have to decide now whether to go to Harvard or to Heidelberg (in Germany).
If I go to Heidelberg, I can straightly study Medicine/Law/Business etc. without bothering about Undergraduate and Graduate Studies.
But if I go to Harvard,there is still this big risk that I may not be accepted by Harvard Law School or Medical School etc. after having gone to College. If I don</code>t get accepted,I "lost" (in a sense) 4 years of my life,holding only a bachelor degree in one particular subject,but that won<code>t really help me.
Do you know what Harvard College graduates do when they don</code>t get accepted by any Harvard graduate school (I mean only Harvard because of the need-baised aid) or how many Harvard College graduates get rejected by Harvard Graduate schools?</p>

<p>Please answer me, I`d be thankful.</p>

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<p>
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Do you know what Harvard College graduates do when they don`t get accepted by any Harvard graduate school?

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<p>They get a job (Harvard bachelor's degree opens lots of doors), or they go to a non-Harvard grad school (some of those really aren't too shabby).</p>

<p>You remind me of a lot of the older pre-meds I know here, who seem to think Harvard Med is their only Med School option.</p>

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<p>lol there is life outside of Harvard...the difference between Harvard's grad schools and the runner ups isn't really that much.</p>

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<p>indeed, the gap between #3 harvard law school and #2 stanford law school (the runner up to #1 yale law school) is only one place.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/brief/lawrank_brief.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/brief/lawrank_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>lol well put f.scottie</p>

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<p>If all you ever wanted in life is to be a lawyer or a doctor, go to Heidelberg. Being a doctor in the U.S. requires 4 years of college plus 4 years of medical school, not to mention the internship and residency that follows. Being a lawyer requires 4 years of college plus 3 years of law school.</p>

<p>Harvard Medical School's class size is around 175, and of those 35-40 come from Harvard College, meaning many other premeds from Harvard College go elsewhere for medical school. There are many fine options, such as Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at San Francisco, Yale, Columbia, Washington University, Stanford, Cornell, NYU, UCLA, etc.</p>

<p>Harvard Law School's class size is around 600, and of those about 100-120 come from Harvard College, meaning many other Harvard College graduates go elsewhere for law school. There are also many good options here, including Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, University of California at Berkeley, etc.</p>

<p>Going to Harvard College leaves all these options open. But if all you want is the shortest, most straightforward to a medical or a law degree, perhaps you should go to a European school where the training is typically only 6 years or less.</p>

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<p>Harvard College sends about 80 students per year to Harvard Law School. 100-120 students per year was just my estimate after hearing all these people around me get into Harvard Law. It can be pretty hard to get into Harvard Law, but from Harvard College, all you seem to need is a B+ average and a decent LSAT score.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.law.harvard.edu/admissions/jd/colleges.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Enrollment at Harvard Law School 2005-2006:
Harvard College 232
Yale College 126
Stanford Univeristy 91
Princeton University 65
Duke University 55
University of Pennsylvania 53
Brown University 51
Columbia University 44
UC Berkeley 43
UCLA 41
Cornell University 40</p>

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<p>Yes. Harvard College is always - with VERY few exceptions some years - the best represented undergraduate institution at all of Harvard's professional schools every year. By the way, how do you know that about 40 students at HMS each entering class are from Harvard College? And I definitely agree with you, just<em>forget</em>me. It's ridiculous when people think that and forget all about the other really great med schools out there.</p>

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<p>if you want to practice medicine in the states, then you should go to an american medical school. It is possible to go to a foreign school but you must do your residency here to be accredited. It is almost always harder for a FMG (foreign medical grad) to match into a US residency compared to a allopathic med student here. In the long run, if your goal is to practice medicine in America, then you should go to medical school here. And its always helpful to your life as a whole to have four extra years to mature and think about the decision to go into medicine. Seeing as how you mention law, business, and medicine in one quick sentence, I would recommend the time that college affords in terms of maturation and self reflection. You have your entire life to work in your field, why not live a little...</p>

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<p>Regarding the 35-40 figure, Harvard Medical School divides its students into 5 "societies", with each society numbering about 30-40 students. The incoming students' photos (with their names and undergraduate colleges) are posted at various locations at the Medical School. Looking at these photos, I've noticed that there are about 6-8 Harvard College graduates per society. If someone has more precise figures, I would be interested to know.</p>

<p>Here's the enrollment data for Yale Law School:
<a href="http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/students.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/bulletin/html/law/students.html&lt;/a>
Harvard College 94
Yale College 85
Stanford University 40
Princeton University 29
University of California at Berkeley 21
Columbia University 14
Williams College 14
Brown University 12
Duke University 12
University of Virginia 11
Dartmouth College 10
Northwestern University 9
Amherst College 9
Cornell University 7
UCLA 6
University of Pennsylvania 2</p>

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<p>don't forget to think about class size Ske. Amherst's 9 is more impressive than Uva's 11 (or many others for that matter). A great breakdown would be per capita as that would really tell you the strength of an institutions' feeder ability.</p>

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<p>If you plan to study law and ultimately live in Germany, go to Heidelberg for sure. Harvard or any other US law school will teach you <em>American</em> law, not German. The laws differ between the countries to a much greater degree than do medicine and even business.</p>

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<p>That's a good point about class size, Crimsonbulldog, but then you would have to also consider that the percentage of premeds can vary widely from school to school and that enrollment figures are not exactly the same thing as acceptance figures. You would have to divide the number of successful applications by the number of applicants from a particular institution to each law school or medical school. That kind of information is not readily available. Also, you can ask whether how many freshmen entered wanting to be doctors would be relevant. </p>

<p>As a purely hypothetical example, let's say 600 freshmen entered school X dreaming of becoming a doctor, but many got weeded out because of the stiff competition, and only 200 ended up applying to medical school and 120 ultimately went to medical school. Let's say 200 freshmen entered School Y thinking about medicine, but only 100 eventually applied, and 60 went to medical school. Although the acceptance to application ratio is identical for the two schools, I would argue that one has a much better chance of realizing his or her dream at School Y. For example, I've heard of so many people going to Johns Hopkins to "major in premed" but their outcome in terms of getting into top medical schools doesn't seem all that dazzling as far as I can see.</p>

<p>I think that it's simpler and more meaningful to work with raw numbers instead of highly processed numbers. One just has to be careful not to equate enrollment data with "feeder ability".</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2005/mwhite.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2005/mwhite.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Looking at the the number of medical school applicants from each school in 2005, I'm amazed at how many people apply to medical school from large state schools like UCLA (704!!), Berkeley (605), Michigan (605), etc. The numbers from the Ivy League and similar schools seem comparatively small. Harvard is not even in the top ten. </p>

<p>Cornell 441
Penn 306
Harvard 304
Stanford 295
Hopkins 284
Duke 283
Yale 213
Columbia 189
Dartmouth 186
Princeton 164</p>

<p>When you look at the makeup of the student body at Harvard Med or Law, with the vast overrepresentation of Ivy League grads, one can not help but conclude that the Ivy League is worth the price tag.</p>

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<p>I just have a question since you applied to Heidelberg and I know nothing about German Universities. Is Heidelberg "better" than Gottingen? Gottingen I know is famous for having the 3rd most nobel prize winners of any university in the world. I was just curious if there is a ranking system or something of that nature for German or even European universities in General that says Gottingen is better than Heidelberg or vice versa or ranks all European universities.</p>

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<p>In Germany, Heidelberg is definitely the best university. They have more Nobel Prize winners teaching over there than any other german university.</p>

<p>By the way, how can an International go to NYU,Columbia etc. if they don<code>t support him with financial aid? That</code>s why I`m only thinking about Harvard and those colleges.</p>

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<p>The same way as Americans who get little or no financial aid: you work and save and pay yourself, or your parents pay, or you take out loans -- or some combination of the three.</p>

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<p>according to this site:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation#Nobel_Prizes_by_university_affiliation%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation#Nobel_Prizes_by_university_affiliation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Gottingen has 32 Nobel prize winners affiliated with it. I don't see Heidelberg on there, but I know for a fact that they have them. You are probably right, Heidelberg is probably the best university in Germany but I just was interested to see how it compared to Gottingen, I was curious if it's a battle between the universitites of the Harvard-Yale ilk.</p>