<p>Who says that I'm bashing MIT premeds? If you read between the lines, you should see that if I'm bashing anybody, it's really the med-school adcoms that I'm bashing. </p>
<p>Look, pmit, you can bring up anecdotes all you want. But at the end of the day, the average GPA of admitted MIT premeds for the year 2003 was a 3.7/4 (AMCAS adjusted MIT's 5 point scale). Furthermore, only 74% of all MIT premeds who applied to med-school actually got in. That's what the official MIT data says. Surely, you're not saying that the data is wrong, are you? </p>
<p>Furthermore, you say that some MIT people aren't reporting their data. Yet, what does that have to do with anything? First off, I a not aware of any good reasons as to why those MIT premeds who don't report their data would be skewed in any particular way, either above average, or below average. Secondly, you may say that some MIT premeds don't report their data, but then again, some premeds at any school don't report their data. Keep in mind that these are RELATIVE comparisons that I am comparing here. The only way that the unreported MIT data would skew the data relative to unreported Princeton data or Duke data or Berkeley data or anybody else's data is if MIT's unreported students are skewed to one side, relative to the data from the other schools. I am not aware of any reason why that would be the case. </p>
<p>Now, to bigndude, again, everybody can point to official med-school adcoms websites that say that they are going to do this and that to people's GPAs. Yet the fact remains that the data demonstrates that there seems to be little evidence as far as who gets admitted to support the case that they are boosting people's GPA's. Why don't we ask people like Calkidd who have actually been through the premed process and see what he has to say about the whole idea of grade compensation.</p>
<p>And besides, I'm afraid that all of you have missed the point. We can talk about why is it that premed adcoms seem to admit certain people from rigorous and top-flight premed programs only if they have top grades, and we can talk about the supposed problems with MIT's students social skills, and/or strange things that may or may not be happening at Berkeley, or so on and so forth. Look, guys, according to the data, 26% of all MIT premeds who applied to med-school got rejected from every med-school they applied to. You might say, well, that may be because that 26% had bad social skills. Yet, even if that was true, so what? It still only goes to show you that going to MIT, for whatever reason, did not seem to do very much for that 26%. We can argue about why that is until the end of time, but it doesn't matter why. For the purposes of this discussion, it only matters that it is not happening. All of the other details are neither here nor there. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that, for some reason, MIT is not as successful in getting its students into med-school as you would think. For some reason, Berkeley is not as successful in getting its students into med-school as you would think. I am not trying to bash any school. These are just statements of fact. If anybody is to 'blame', it's not the schools, but rather the med-school adcoms themselves. Yet even the blame game is not the real issue. The issue is that, for whatever reason, many top-flight programs do not seem to give as big of an advantage in getting their students into med-school as you would think they do. </p>
<p>The point is that, to answer the OP's question, there seems to be little evidence that there is a whole lot of advantage to attending a highly rigorous and top-tier premed program. If there were a significant advantage, you should be able to see it in the data of the admitted premeds from those top-tier programs, particularly in the GPA data. For example, if the advantage was large, then med-schools would be admitting lots and lots of premeds from Berkeley, MIT, Duke, or any other prestige program with conspicuously low average GPA's. And plenty of premeds at those high-prestige programs, especially Berkeley and MIT, do not get into med-school. Hence, if there is an advantage to attending such programs, it seems to be small at best. If it were large, it would show up in the data. </p>
<p>The OP asked whether he would be at a serious disadvantage if he went to a third-tier program relative to a top-tier one as far as getting into med-school. The evidence seems to be that, unless we're talking about certain top-tier programs like Princeton, there seems to be little advantage in attending a top-tier program as far as getting into med-school. If you don't believe me, maybe you can ask the 26% of MIT premeds who didn't get in anywhere. Maybe you can ask the 37% of Berkeley premeds who didn't get in anywhere.</p>