Opinion of Top State Schools

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>OK, I am by no means one of the those people obsessed with prestige, but I do want to attend a top medical school because I am considering academic medicine (maybe some day in the future be one of the head people at a uni's med school) or a career related to medicine...something like Sanjay Gupta....</p>

<p>So, next year I will be applying to some Ivy schools, but I will also apply to UMich and <a href="mailto:UT@Austin">UT@Austin</a>. UT and UMich are, obviously, schools to seriously consider because admission to top schools like Ivys is so tough.</p>

<p>I know an education at UMich and UT would probably lead to good MCAT scores so I'm not too worried about that but I want to gain an understanding of what the general opinion on this board is of attending a top state school. </p>

<p>These schools have huge weedout classes and most classes have avg. GPAs of 3.1/3.2. But even though they are top state schools, after going on mdapplicants.com and viewing the profiles of students from such schools it seems like it would be very hard to get into a top med school at all, even with a great GPA.</p>

<p>A lot of UMich students with great marks (3.7+) and high MCAT ended up at schools like Ohio State, Wayne State, Toledo, and others. While UT students with great stats usually had to pick from state med schools like UT-Galveston, UT-Houston. </p>

<p>So, what do I make of this? If I managed to get into a 'lower' Ivy or a school like Rice/Emory, should I just go to those schools? Again, this is not about prestige but about getting into a good med school that can help me if I want to go into academic medicine/the like. I know people say that top schools already start with top students, but then why isn't a 3.8 and 3.7 MCAT from UT good enough for a TOP 20 med school in a lot of cases?</p>

<p>I am going to try to find some examples but look at this (where he was rejected vs. accepted): MDapplicants.com</a> - View Profile</p>

<p>(of course, he got into lots of good schools, but 4.0 and 40 with great ECs from, say Rice may have gotten him into more top med schools perhaps.....what do you think?)</p>

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<p>3.8 and 37 is enough to go anywhere from any UG. 4.0 and 40 is almost impossible (very few people will achieve it). MCAT score is function of your effort preparing for MCAT, not your UG. You are thinking way too ahead. Got to try waters before swim.</p>

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<p>I thought going to a good school would also help for the MCAT (people said that if you go to a good school you will need to study harder to compete to get good grades–> you then learn more —> better MCAT?).</p>

<p>And yea, I know 4.0 and 40 is pretty much impossible, but it was just an example because I am pretty sure a 4.0 and 40 from HYP would get that person into a top med school (at least more of them).</p>

<p>Usually the debate is state school vs. Ivy…but what about top ranking state school vs. Ivy? Is there any difference/help if one aims to attend a top med school for academic medicine/something that helps to have attended a top med school?</p>

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<p>Getting into top med schools is more than a matter of just getting high MCAT and GPA. You need something else that’s great about your application. The guy you posted had awesome stats with fairly mediocore EC’s. He ended up getting into 2-3 Top 20 med schools. I would say that he did just fine, about as well as can be expected with his resume. </p>

<p>Unless you’re black with 5 pubs and a 43 MCAT and a 4.00 GPA from Harvard, it’s hard for anyone to get into more than a couple of prestigious med school regardless of how good you think their application is.</p>

<p>Great stats + great overall application will always get you into a top med school regardless of what undergrad you attended.</p>

<p>Great stats + average EC’s can squeeze you into 1-2 Top 20 med schools if you attended a prestigious undergrad. </p>

<p>That’s where the advantage of attending a Harvard vs. a UT Austin comes in. You don’t need to a Marshall scholarship or a Fullbright Scholarship or start your own biotech company to get into a top med school if you attended a top undergrad. If you have a 3.8/36 from Harvard and a few shadowing experiences/a club sport/2 years of research w/o pubs (ie what I call fairly average EC’s), you can get into a top 20 med school. If you have the same qualifications from UC Davis, I’m not so sure. </p>

<p>So, based on that, I think the kid from UT Austin did very well. I suspect he wouldn’t have done nearly as well if he had had 3.8/35 instead of 4.0/40.</p>

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<p>And those are not great EC’s by top med school standards. There’s nothing that suggests to me that this kid is anything special besides his scores. No real sign of creative thinking, leadership skills, or initiative. All of the things he’s done can be accomplished by most premeds.</p>

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<p>It sounds to me like the guy you mentioned did pretty well for himself. He was accepted at WUSTL, UMich, UCLA, and UT-Southwestern. Those are all top-20 research medical schools.</p>

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<p>I am wondering what exactly would be great ECs? Just interested since I’ll be an incoming freshman premed.</p>

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<p>Here is a list of EC’s of people I’ve met in med school or while interviewing for med school:</p>

<ol>
<li>Any kind of prestigious national scholarship (Rhodes, Fulbright, etc.)</li>
<li>Multiple publications (I’m not talking posters or presentations; I’m talking publications in peer-reviewed journals)</li>
<li>Starting a successful company</li>
<li>D1 athlete</li>
<li>Borderline good enough to make the Olympics</li>
<li>Professional football player</li>
<li>Writing and publishing a book</li>
<li>Working as a six-figure executive at a major investment bank</li>
<li>Learning to be a chef in France and then working as a chef at a prestigious restaurant in Europe</li>
<li>Any kind of PhD</li>
</ol>

<p>A lot of people post questions like “what kind of EC’s will get me into prestigious med schools?” Those questions get an eye roll from me. I can tell you that what I’ve written above are considered great EC’s but it’s not like you can just roll out of bed tomorrow and achieve one of them. If you want to do something fantastic and noteworthy, it should come from something YOU are interested in. I met a girl in med school who liked to sew so she started a sewing club at the local Indian reservation center and was able to do health counseling with Native American women while sewing with them. You think she got that idea from a message board? To me that’s impressive because a) it’s a unique activity that combines her passion into something useful and b) she did that AFTER she had already gotten into med school. It wasn’t a resume padder activity. It was something she genuinely had an interest in. </p>

<p>Many people wonder why their 3.9 GPA’s and their 38 MCAT’s weren’t good enough to get them into Havard Medical School. To be perfectly frank, most premeds, even the really smart ones, aren’t amazing enough people to be selected. Top med schools can afford to be very choosy and so they look for not only premeds who are smart but also who have talent, initiative, social skills, and determination. Filling out an application and volunteering at your local nursing home is nice but shows none of that. Taking and completing an EMT course is nice but shows none of that. Sleepwalking through 200 hours of hospital volunteering shows none of that. Most premeds can’t think outside of the box, aren’t willing to take risks, and just aren’t top med school material. It has nothing to do with their scores or what undergrad they attend.</p>

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<p>Most Med. School applicants would not have any of 1 thru 10, and they will be exceptionally happy to get into any American Med. School, one is enough.
Setting goal of getting into top Med. School while still at HS is way premature. See how you do in UG, then decide. About 50% of freshmen pre-meds never make it, they change to something else. The most important is to have great 4 years in UG, not just academically, but overall, mature in many ways, have fun, pursue your interests that have nothing to do with medicine and forget chasing unrealistic goals, just try to fit where you belong.</p>

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<p>Here’s one thing that a local undergraduate did that I thought was pretty awesome:</p>

<p>I learned about this while I was rotating through a pediatric clinic that’s staffed by attendings from my med school. An undergraduate from a local college approached them about an idea: upon finishing the doctor’s appointment, clinic volunteers would approach the patient and do a sort of “exit interview” with them. They would ask the patient about what they thought the doctor had told them to do. Then the undergraduates would ask the doctor the same thing and get the physician’s view of what he told the patient to do. And the idea was to see if these two views matched up. What they found was that the patient often left the doctor’s office without truly understanding the doctor’s instructions. So, what we, as physicians, mistook for “non-compliance” might simply be an understanding issue. So, now the attendings at the clinic always leave the patient with written instructions and also have the patient repeat back to them their understanding of their medical condition. </p>

<p>You guys are always complaining of how you can’t do much at a clinic or a hospital because you don’t have any medical training. This is something that an undergrad with no medical training was able to come up with. His research turned out to be immensely useful and if someone told about this experience to me at an interview, I’d be far more impressed than with someone who simply sat around stapling papers at a clinic for 3 hours/week.</p>

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<p>Agreed with ncg 100%. If I remember it correctly, 70%-75% of “admitted” applicants from prestigious colleges like ivies go to their state medical schools in the end.</p>

<p>One CCer from U. Penn. posted a few years ago that it is not easy to become a leader in a major club at these prestigious colleges. The reasons: 1) A leadership position in such a club alone may even open a door to a very good job/career; the students fight for one of these prestigious positions more fiercely than fight for their grades. It could be a much more valuable credential than a very high GPA obtained at your school – unless you want to be a researcher on the PhD track in your future plan. 2) These schools are flooded with students with this kind of attitude/potential because these students were heavily recruited (even more so for students with mere high stats) in the college admission cycle 4 years ago.</p>

<p>This is why colleges like Havard college routinely reject a high percentage of kids with 2400 SAT. A high stat kid is just not that rare/valuable in the eyes of these adcoms. I guess for the top medical school admission, this may be even more so. It is the ECs that distinguish a student with great stats from thousands of other students with equally great stats but with not so great ECs.</p>

<p>I think DS will be extremely happy if he could be as successful as the kid that was referred by OP. (For a record, DS’s stats is not that high.)</p>

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<p>OK, I fully understand what all of you are saying, but it leads me to my next question. NCG said if the UT guy had 3.8/35 he wouldn’t have been nearly as successful. I’m sure he wouldn’t gotten into a couple Texas state med schools but nothing much more. I’m sure than we can agree with this.</p>

<p>Now, what about 3.8/35 from a top notch undergrad school? I know this has been discussed countless times on here but none of us can predict how successful we will be in undergrad so I can’t assume I will get 3.8+ and 36+ MCAT at all. So, would one’s chances of getting into a top med school with 3.8 and 36 from a top undergrad school be much higher than the same stats from a top state school?</p>

<p>Basically, how big of a difference is it between a top state vs. top private school? Not just random XYZ state school and Harvard but UMich/UT vs. UPenn for example. We aren’t talking about any med school because I am really interested in academic medicine and maybe even going back to my home country to try to become the head of a med dept. there or something like that. If we were discussing just med school, I wouldn’t be posting on here and I would go to w/e school fits me best…but the problem lies within the top med schools…</p>

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<p>Hmmm…just curious, so I look at what the mdapp kid (who OP referred to) has posted:
“I spent more time learning English than other Americans…That is why I SHOULD have a stand in top medical schools.” It may be OK if other people compliment him on that, but it is him himself who said something like this about himself. It appears to me he comes out a little bit “cocky” when he almost wrote he should deserve a slot from one of these top medical schools. (not exactly his words – Somwhow I could not cut-paste his words here.)</p>

<p>However, I think he did achieve a lot on the stats front. (It would be even more amazing if he came to this country in his middle/elementary school years. But we do not know about this. Actually, some top medical school adcoms may have given him some break on his 10 verbal on mcat, which is a somewhat low verbal score for many top medical schools. Some even claims some schools may evaluate an applicant based on his/her lowest mcat subscore.)</p>

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<p>I think it can make a significant difference. </p>

<p>If the top med school happens to be local, then you won’t be at a disadvantage. For example, UMich grads don’t have any trouble getting into UMich Med School. UCLA grads don’t have any trouble getting into UCSF for med school. However, for some other med schools, especially the ones on the East Coast like Havard, Columbia, JHU, Penn, etc., I think it is noticeably more advantageous to attend a Cornell or a Dartmouth vs. a UT Austin or a UMich. This is especially true if you are a solid but not a superstar applicant (such as someone with a 3.8/35 and average EC’s).</p>

<p>I personally feel that the best med schools on the West Coast and in the Midwest are much more egalitarian. But, the top med schools on the East Coast are very snobby in my opinion in terms of who they choose to interview. This is my opinion after interviewing at places like UCLA Med, Northwestern Feinberg, UMich, WashU, Penn, Columbia, etc. and seeing the interview rosters. Even with the guy from UT Austin, he got interviews/acceptances from places like UMich, WashU, UT SW, UCLA, Baylor, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Duke but didn’t even get interviews at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, etc.</p>

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<p>^YEA, that’s exactly what I noticed as well. That was one of the points I was trying to make: he got many top med acceptances but the ‘big name East Coast’ ones rejected him.</p>

<p>Also, I have no AP and no IB where I go to school. So, I am very scared of these intro. science classes. I fear that my GPA would take a big hit. That is why I don’t know if I can pull off 3.8+. How hard is this going to even be…? How well does the MCAT correlate with the SAT?</p>

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<p>Getting into these UG schools is really tough if you are out-of-state. Don’t expect it to be easy to get in.</p>

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<p>^As I mentioned before you are thinking and worrying way too much. Enjoy the rest of summer, work as hard as you could during academic year at any place, be flexible, open to any opportunity, you will do just fine. AP or not is not that important. D. was prepared much better w/o AP in Gen. Chem (her HS did not offer this one) than others with AP. She ended up with over 100% in every test and offer from prof. to be his Supplemental Instructor - the best job on campus, which prepared her for Gen. Chem portion of MCAT very well also. Do not worry too much ahead of the time, not worth it, relax. Serious, this is your best bet.</p>

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<p>Viggy, UT didn’t hurt your applicant. And Rice wouldn’t have helped. UT is a well-respected school and the differential in reputation (between UT and Rice) for med school is inconsequential (if it even exists). (UT vs HYPS? Yep. A boost for the HYPS grad.) </p>

<p>He doesn’t communicate that well on his md apps (although I do appreciate his work with adapted children ;)) so that makes me wonder if maybe his PS wasn’t that strong. </p>

<p>Like others have mentioned, his EC’s and level of involvement in those EC’s don’t seem to show much passion (except for making grades and MCAT) or leadership. </p>

<p>Bluntly, there is simply nothing showing that this student is somebody that is going to be a “leader in medicine”. Some schools select for that quality as much as anything else (assuming at least a competitive MCAT and GPA). </p>

<p>I also agree that had he had the same lackluster ho-hum resume he presented on MDapps and a less star quality MCAT, he may well have had a less successful season. As it is, he did pretty dang well.</p>

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<p>This is very true. At least this top medical school strongly prefers those students who have shown the leadership quality.</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - Getting into med school: In search of the top 250 applicants](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/scitech-news/2009/01/28/getting-into-med-school-in-search-of-the-top-250-a/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/scitech-news/2009/01/28/getting-into-med-school-in-search-of-the-top-250-a/)</p>

<p>"Yale School of Medicine Dean Robert Alpern said: Our mission is to train individuals who will be leaders in the medical community.”</p>

<p>A few years ago, YSM admitted a student who was an elected member in some local government organization. The job of this government organization is to serve the poor (homeless.) He really spent a significant amount of time during his last two years in college on community services, plus 3 years in paid research jobs. Although he was very success*** in getting into top medical schools on the east coast, he was not that successful on most west coast schools (rejected by most top schools in California, e.g., ucsf, stanford, ucla, I think. I guess an elected government official in a small city government still does not count significantly when you apply to a school on the other coast.)</p>

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<p>On the [url=&lt;a href=“http://mdapplicants.com/profile.php?id=17178]example[/url”&gt;http://mdapplicants.com/profile.php?id=17178]example[/url</a>] you posted, note that the applicant got an interview at 16 of the 20+ schools he applied to. </p>

<p>Med school admission is very much a numbers based game. I would suspect that his excellent GPA and MCAT scores gave him an interview at most schools, but other factors contributed to him being rejected to some (worth noting that he was waitlisted to Hopkins but did not get interviewed at HMS, Penn, and many others). Also, he got into some very good schools (notably UMich, UCLA, Texas Tech w/ a full ride).</p>