<p>Med schools look mainly at your GPA overall, science GPA, MCAT, LOR, ECs, shadowing, and research. </p>
<p>They are not obsessed with one class anyone takes and it is mostly irrelevant which classes you take if you meet the required classes.</p>
<p>I’m not certain that’s true, exactly, if you are talking about “top 20” medical schools. I don’t think Harvard or Hopkins, etc., take students purely on numbers, and I think one of the things they may care about is academic ambition and aggressiveness. The other thing is that the LOR writers may care if you pushed yourself academically.</p>
<p>I imagine that the answer may differ somewhat if you are a science major vs. non-science major. If you are a biology major, I doubt anyone cares whether you took honors intro bio or gen chem. Your impressive course work will be high-level stuff you did later, and really being involved with research. If you are an English major taking the minimum pre-med requirements, I think your recommenders, at least, are going to notice if you did well in an honors course vs. a general one. But if you are an English major applying to Harvard Medical School, you are going to need something a lot more interesting on your resume than that you took Honors Intro Bio to catch the admissions committee’s imagination.</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>A lot of discussion here is about colleges like Yale or Brown. What if you had a choice between Chicago, cornell & UMich and Pre-med was a strong interest.</p>
<p>Which would be a better option?</p>
<p>Personally, I think none of them for a premed if my kid was applying.</p>
<p>Chicago and Cornell seem to too hard on GPA and Michigan sounds too big and one has to wonder about weedout classes. People do go from these schools to med schools but it seems to be hard work on student’s part than schools pushing them along.</p>
<p>Just curious about your statement about schools pushing them along. You seem to imply that students at Yale, Brown or Williams don’t have to work as hard to get in medical schools, say compared to Yale? </p>
<p>How is that possible. I am not too familiar with grade deflation. Do Yale or Brown give their students easy grades for similar handwork? Or Chicago just has harder course load for its students than say Yale or Brown?</p>
<p>Is it the advising that is lacking?</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Brown and Duke are the 4 best schools in the country to be a premed IMHO.</p>
<p>“schools pushing them along”</p>
<p>It is a given that higher GPA helps. If there are perceived hindrances to getting there, i.e., grading on a curve that may say the average is a C, then they are making it harder for one to get into medical school.</p>
<p>I did not specify Yale or Brown as part of pushing students along. However, the belief does exist for Brown since 50+ percent can get an A in a class which may not be true of most other schools.</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Brown and Duke? But it seems like Johns Hopkins and pre-med are almost synonymous, right?</p>