<p>i know this question has probably been asked a couple of times, but is pre-med at mit really as difficult as people make it out to be...?
the two most common arguments against going to mit for pre-med, according to what i've read so far, are grade deflation and bad advising... while i don't really buy the latter, i do think the grade deflation might hurt my gpa and make it more difficult for me to maintain a high gpa at mit than at another school.
is this just unavoidable at mit as a pre-med, or would i be able to work around the grade deflation by carefully picking courses that arent as grade deflated...?</p>
<p>What major are you interested in?</p>
<p>bio</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>There’s a premed thread in the MIT 2014 forum, and there’s also a premed thread in the Facebook MIT 2014 forum, it might be interesting for you to look into those since a lot of the arguments were summarized there already.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard of the bad advising one - I think the preprofessional office here is great. Granted, they don’t “parent” you and you’re responsible for getting good grades, doing the activities, and seeking recommendation letters, but they are excellent at answering my questions (in person, through email - sometimes the turnaround time is just a day!). There’s usually ~70 premeds applying in one year too and I don’t frequent the preprofessional office often but the staff always recognizes me by face. My current premed adviser is a internist at MIT Medical, so that’s also extremely convenient. What is so bad about our advising?</p>
<p>Re: grade deflation. So yes, I have a 3.7/4.0 at MIT when if I went to a state school, I’ll probably have had a 4.0 if I worked hard enough. MIT is hard, and it is heartbreaking to work your guts out for a class and realize after finals that you got a B+ (which is equivalent to a B, which is equivalent to a B- in our external transcript since the +/- don’t come out and there’s no difference in numeric GPA with modifiers). However, I feel like in the long-term the grade difference isn’t enough to make that big of a change in the applications. I’m going through the app cycle this year and I feel like over my last 3 years at MIT, I had a wealth of excellent opportunities and so what if the courseload was a bit more difficult? Even if I went to a state school and breezed through with a 4.0, I feel like the experience will have been totally different, and I don’t regret coming to MIT. I’ve learned to push my limits here (especially in science), and I’m honored to go to a school with great faculty and equally awesome students.</p>
<p>I’ve learned to work around the GPA barrier by strategically positioning my science classes out so I don’t get overworked, and I admit that I do ask my friend sometimes which classes have easier curves when it comes to the final grading, and I am pretty sure many other premeds here do the same. At the end of the day, though, I think we all manage in the end. So yes, in a word, I don’t think the grade deflation had really made that much difference, but I guess we’ll see next year, right? : P</p>