<p>ok so here is my question:</p>
<p>does successfully completing the pre-med track at an elite school necessarily give you an advantage in medical school placement? in this i mean - do medical school admissions officers value a 3.6/3.7 at an elite, top 20 undergrad school over say a 3.9/4.0 at a state school? assuming mcat scores and all other factors are the same?</p>
<p>also: i have applied to Duke, Emory, Wash U, Notre Dame, and Northwestern and would like to (at least at first) take classes with the intent of attending medical school in 4 years. does anyone have any information on those schools and there pre-medical program? i.e.: good preparation for mcats? grade inflation? etc...</p>
<p>my decision, if i have a choice come april, will be largely based on which school i think has the "best" premedical curriculum and where i think i can perform best. so any input would be GREATLY appreciated.</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>As some people have discovered, it does in fact seem to be the case that GPAs among accepted applicants tend to be a little lower at some universities than others. For example, it might be (and is, in fact) the case that Duke can get its kids into, say, Emory Med with lower GPAs than a Berkeley undergrad would need.</p>
<p>Some things to notice:</p>
<p>First, the gap is not (I don't think) ever as large as .4 GPA points. That's a huge gap. If I recall correctly, the largest gap I've ever seen is something closer to the .2 range.</p>
<p>Second, the gap is not 100% correlated with the prestige of the school. Some schools' accepted applicants have lower average GPAs (implying a better premedical track) than schools that might be considered more prestigious and even more grade-deflationary.</p>
<p>Third, there are always going to be factors at play other than GPA and MCAT scores. I'm not quite sure where this idea is coming from that the process is completely numbers driven, but at the 25 med schools I applied to, it most certainly was not true. Some undergraduate schools are going to be better at allowing you to have better experiences and letters of recommendation (with the former, I assume, being more important). As has been emphasized on the Berkeley thread, advising is key.</p>