<p>Can anyone rate Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke, and Princeton's pre-med programs according to grade deflation, acceptance into med school, research/academic opportunities, and happiness/stress level of students? Thanks!</p>
<p>why don’t you get into all these schools first, before you ask their pre-med programs to be rated.</p>
<p>Brown has the best grading practices – forget the others.</p>
<p>^^^ hahaha, Bluebayou did you go to brown, alma mater pride?</p>
<p>not me, nor I could I convince my kids to even apply. But any school with a mean gpa of ~3.6 should not be ignored by those aspiring to professional schools (which are almost all about gpa+test scores). :D</p>
<p>It. Doesn’t. Matter.</p>
<p>If you get into all of those schools, go where you’ll be happiest.</p>
<p>Except not Duke. Don’t go to Duke. I may be biased though.</p>
<p>bluebayou, Brown is a great school and it has nothing to do with the grading policy. It is one of the top 5 in the country with the highest number of pred meds getting accepted. There is one student who was accepted into Harvard Med who took all his courses Pass/Fail. Clearly, it has to do more with the quality of the institution and the student’s app (MCAT, ECs, LORs ) than the GPA.</p>
<p>…and part of what has to do with that is Brown’s grade inflation. Even schools like HPY don’t have as high of a mean gpa as Brown does and they can be considered better or in the same league as Brown.</p>
<p>^^^ Clearly, you know nothing about Brown. The fact that someone taking all courses Pass/Fail gets accepted into Harvard Med School has nothing to do with grade inflation nor deflation, DOES IT?</p>
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<p>How can you separate the two? Part of what makes Brown Brown is its liberal grading policy. Since top law schools are even more stat-driven that health schools, I would guess that Brown does well in law school placement as well.</p>
<p>Sure Brown is a “great school” – never said it wasn’t. But the simple fact is that professional schools highly value gpa+test scores. And since Brown has the highest mean gpa AND is a great school, its students SHOULD do well. (In contrast, podunk college with the same gpa would not fare so well in grad school admisstions.) </p>
<p>btw: I hope you don’t base your opinions on anecdotes of ONE. :)</p>
<p>Where did you get the information that someone at Brown took all courses P/F and got into HMS? It sounds like a made up rumor to me. There is no way any medical school will accept someone who took all their pre-reqs P/F, at Brown or not. Why? Because you need a GPA to even get considered for med school.</p>
<p>^^entirely possible that the kid was the Dean’s son, or related to Warren Buffett?</p>
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Even if this is true, like the warning on the jack:eek: videos, Don’t try this at home.</p>
<p>Very funny. If someone thinks that taking everything P/F (which means just getting at least a D or above in every class to get a P for credit on the transcript) can get someone into HMS, then they clearly don’t know anything about getting into medical school. It doesn’t matter how high someone’s MCAT is or how good their ECs are, you need a GPA, and don’t think that the Brown name alone will let someone circumvent that. Even the PLME kids can’t take all their courses P/F, because it says in the PLME handbook that their biology requirements need to have an A or a B to go onto the med school (this was recently imposed for the c/o 2012-- for classes before that, a minimum 3.0 GPA was required).</p>
<p>From the horse’s mouth.
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<p><a href=“WELCOME TO HEALTH CAREERS ADVISING | Health Careers Advising”>WELCOME TO HEALTH CAREERS ADVISING | Health Careers Advising;
<p>Be careful out there, folks.</p>
<p>And from Harvard University
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<p>When UC Santa Cruz was first opened, it was designed as a bucolic, NE-style liberal arts college, without those pesky grades which create "competition. Thus, the whole school was P/F – every course. For quite awhile, it was much more selective than Cal or UCLA for admissions. But then the realities of grad school applications set in – kids just didn’t fare too well. Over the next decade or so, UCSC went from the most selective UC to the easiest – anyone who was breathing with a B- average was guaranteed admission!</p>
<p>curmudgeon
Required premedical courses SHOULD never be taken pass/fail . It is not the same as
Required premedical courses MUST never be taken pass/fail. Is it?</p>
<p>bluebayou, </p>
<p>What I am talking about is that at these top schools, there is a certain philosophy about learning and about grades. At Yale Med School, exams are OPTIONAL during the first two years. I think that speaks wonders about the kind of students they want. The same goes for Brown.</p>
<p>Why are you comparing the grading systems at Yale Med School vs. Brown undergrad? There is no comparison. Medical schools in general have a more lenient grading system than in college in that as long as you pass you’re in good standing, because the weeding system takes place in undergrad and not medical school. So I have no idea what you intend to mean by “I think that speaks wonders about the kind of students they want”. </p>
<p>btw, “Required premedical courses should never be taken pass/fail.” sounds pretty straightforward to me. The use of the word “never” in particular makes it a finality.</p>
<p>Read in context, I believe that there is zero wiggle room in these two sentences.
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<p>Please, everybody. Check with a couple or 3 med schools or your pre-med advisor . Taking any required course P/F would be application suicide.</p>