<p>I agree with pmit and say that the OP shouldn't get too arrogant. The top-tier schools see plenty of applicants with stats that are similar to the OP and reject plenty of them. Take Caltech for instance. The OP's SAT score would place him/her at less than the 25th percentile of Caltech's entering class. </p>
<p>Having said that, I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you want to do premed, then you want to go to a school in which you will get high grades, which may or may not be a top-tier school. You may indeed be better off by going to a no-name school and pulling high grades that get you into med-school rather than going to a top-tier school and getting bad grades such that you don't get into med-school. The grading at a particular school is based on the philosophy of the school and the competition from the other students. At some schools, it's practically impossible to get a truly bad grade, as long as you do the work. At other schools, many students do massive amounts of work and study like dogs and still get bad grades. Med-school adcoms, however, don't really seem to care very much that some schools are more difficult than others. They just want to see high grades, period, and don't really care much about how hard it is to get them, as long as you get them. You may want to ask calkidd what he has to say about that.</p>