<p>I'm sure we have all heard about this at some point in time or another. Which schools do you think "kill" the most pre-meds? Their tools are harsh curves and grade deflation and even specific classes to "weed" out the weaker students. Do you think the worst culprits are Johns Hopkins University, UChicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Cornell University, Northwestern University, Berkeley?? I might even be Duke, Vandy, or Rice. The list goes on; just rank or tell which ones you feel make life the hardest for struggling pre meds.</p>
<p>All schools have weed out classes with even Honors pre-meds falling out. Sorry to be of the topic.</p>
<p>Hmm…I happen to notice that the majority of the schools that OP listed happen to have a prestigious medical school associated with it (JHU, wustl, Cornell, NW, Duke, Vandy) or Ph.D programs (Chicago, Berkeley). These assocated medical schools and/or graduate schools serve as a magnet which attracts high achieving or at least ambitious premed students. Even though it may be tough to excel there, it is a fact that these colleges also produce a lot of successful premeds.</p>
<p>When a school has established some reputations (in a major, a medical school, a graduate school, or even its undergraduate), it is likely that it is not a pure coincidence. It is likely that there is some reason behind it. Those schools/majors have been working on their name recognition for many years (e.g., BME at JHU, Duke) If you think you are up to the challenge and win (at least not lose badly), it is definitely good for you to join the “battle” there, as being a winner at such a place will only do you good come medical school application time. If not, be cautious about going to such schools. This is related to what some will regard as the “fit” factor for a student w.r.t. a school.</p>
<p>Somewhat tangent to this thread: Recently, I keep thinking whether there is some valid point when sakky pointed out that premeds may have some incentive to cherry-pick their non-pre-req classes. (I believe this is the essence what what he said. I apologize that I could not recall the details.)</p>
<p>Will doing so help “safe-guard” their overall GPAs even when it is not done not so much for the purpose of boosting their GPA (e.g., when student’s accumulated GPA is already good enough, say, at 3.7+)? Will doing so enable pre-meds to allocate more time to do ECs in a leisurely way?</p>
<p>The answer to such questions may have some implications on the major or school that SOME (lopsided) student should be in.</p>
<p>For example, some schools have more strict/extensive general education requirement (Columbia’s core course requirements come to my mind for this requirement, while Brown is just the opposite.) Some schools have a very relax rule on how a student can satisfy their general education requirement. Heck, some schools even allow the student to AP most of the requirements out.</p>
<p>If a student is lopsided and is relatively not good at some subjects, should that student go to a school where s/he can essentially “dodge” some classes that s/he may do poorly there? </p>
<p>A hypothetical example: some pre-meds who are particularly not good at calculus may choose to go a school which allows him/her to take a non-calculus based physics if they need to so. (To be sure, many students purposely choose to take a algebra-based physics for some other reasons, even though they will do very well if they need to take the calculus-based ones. I happen to know a case where a 2400 SAT scorer with an AP 5 still takes a lower-track physics, just because he wants to save time to do other things, e.g., maybe bio?)</p>
<p>As regard to the major, it is well known that some majors have extensive pre-req and core requirement for the major (some engineering major, especially the traditional one like Chemical Engineering, is a good example.) Of course, if a student chooses that kind of major, he may be relatively good at it. But what if he is sort of good at it, but he is still not good enough to get a good GPA when he still needs to allocate a big chunk of time for his clinical-related ECs?</p>
<p>Also, some majors may require the students to take a lot of required courses but some majors may not. If you are in a major where there are not many required classes, do you then have more opportunities to cherry pick classes either in your own department or in other departments, that are perceived as “easier”? (No offense to the athletes here: It is rumored that if you happen to be in a class where many students even wear uniforms to go to the class, you can put in much less efforts as your competitors need to devote so much time to their intense activities - sport.)</p>
<p>Because the difficulties of majors are different, I think the medical schools will still insist that a competitive applicant be from an academically-rigorous major.</p>
<p>Caltech and Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>MIT. </p>
<p>I don’t know about Cornell so much. Cornell is definitely not a cake school, but I don’t think it’s quite as strenuous as many people play it up to be.</p>
<p>And med schools don’t care if you pick an easy major. Don’t get a 3.0 in astrophysics if you can get a 3.9 in economics. Yes, given equal GPA’s and courseloads, then you may get a negligible bump for having a tough major, but like I said- negligible. Same goes for school prestige. Not talking about 5 slots in USNews either… anything in the top 50 is pretty much equal as far as medical adcoms are concerned.</p>
<p>Based on Sakky’s posts, it seems that MIT students have huge problems getting into medical school (based on the fact that many pre-meds are engineers at one of the toughest programs in the country, and still require 3.7+ GPA’s before med schools give them any love)</p>
<p>Interesting that no one has mentioned a state college or university in this thread, particularly since most state colleges or universities of any consequence routinely curve grades with a “C” as the mean grade. It is by no means easy to achieve a high GPA at most state schools.</p>
<p>Yea…I heard that Berkeley and Georgia Tech (I believe it is a state school?) are tough. Maybe any flagship state university is a tough cookie, especially when you are in a department which happens to have a top-notch Ph.D program. Most engineering schools or most engineering majors at a school like CMU may be tough.</p>
<p>On the LAC front: maybe Reed and Swarthmore.</p>
<p>If more and more students are applying to medical schools in the future, there is a chance that medical school adcom may want to see an applicant from a tough college who also does well there. The admission to many prestigious medical schools is already like this. (Somebody on this forum posted that these medical schools are full of top students from top colleges.)</p>
<p>Trust me! Berkeley almost ruined my life!</p>
<p>Stanford baby.</p>