<p>Pmit, you can choose to see or not see yourself at a disadvantage. That's your prerogative. All I can tell you is that plenty of MIT students have not looked, or and when I present it to them, they get ticked off. Not at me, not at MIT, but at the medical school adcoms.</p>
<p>Look, we both know that MIT is a difficult school. An extremely difficult school. With the possible exception of a certain school in Pasadena, MIT is the most difficult school in the country. Yet, at the end of the day, the fact is, only 74% of MIT premeds who apply to med-school manage to get admitted, which means that over a quarter who apply to med-school get rejected from every one they apply to. Furthermore, the average GPA of those who did get admitted is a 3.7/4 (converted from MIT's 5-point scale to the AMCAS 4-point scale). I didn't make up those numbers. I am not responsible for those numbers. Those are the numbers that MIT publishes about itself. Don't blame me for MIT's numbers.</p>
<p>Compare that to Princeton's premed success rate which touches 90%. And in particular, Princeton's admited premeds have a GPA of only about 3.6/4, which is actually lower than the GPA of MIT's admitted premeds. This is despite the fact that Princeton is generally a less difficult school. So think about that. Both Princeton and MIT are about equivalently difficult in terms of getting in. However, I think there is widespread agreement that once you're in, it's easier to graduate with high grades from Princeton than it is from MIT. Yet the fact is, even though Princeton is, on the consensus, easier school, the fact is, Princeton is more successful in getting its premeds into med-school than is MIT. Let me turn the numbers around to really make it stark. About 26% of all MIT premeds who apply to med-school get rejected from every med-school they apply to. About 10% of Princeton premeds who apply to med-school get rejected from every med-school the apply to. Hence, the MIT rejection rate is more than 2.5 times higher than is Princeton's. </p>
<p>Nor is Princeton peculiar. I have also seen the premed numbers for Yale and Harvard (they don't publish them online, they are only available in hardcopy), and they are pretty much the same as Princeton's - about 90% of Yale and Harvard premeds who apply to med-school get admitted somewhere. Yale and Harvard are also known for being just as grade-inflated as Princeton. I consider Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT basically to be peer schools in terms of selectivity. Yet the fact is, MIT's premeds are significantly less successful in getting into med-school than are Yale's and Harvard's. It really begs the question - why is that? </p>
<p>So whether you choose to feel that you are at a disadvantage or not is up to you. All I can tell you is that Princeton, Yale, and Harvard premeds are getting in at a substantially greater rate, and with similar or lower grades, than MIT premeds are. That's what the numbers say. Again, those are not my numbers, so don't blame me. I am just telling you what the numbers are, but I did not create the numbers. </p>
<p>That also means that one of your sentences is really a non-sequitur. You say that lots of students decide later in their undergrad years that they want to be premeds but then it's too late to have medically related EC's and other things. Yet that begs the question of why isn't this also a problem at places like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale? Basically, you are saying that MIT premeds disproportionately suffer from this problem ,but then you have to ask why that is. </p>
<p>I have also heard you blame the anti-social nature of MIT students for their lack of success in the premed process. However, I would argue that MIT is certainly not blameless in this regard. When you assign massive quantities homework and study to your students and make grading extremely difficult, you are only encouraging people to do nothing else but study and never develop social skills. I think there is some truth that MIT does tend to admit quite a few antisocial nerds, so it's certainly not all the fault of MIT that it churns out lots of antisocial people. Yet that doesn't mean that MIT gets off scot-free either. You and I both know that the MIT culture of hard-studying and hard-work, in many ways, tends to reinforce the antisocial nature of its students. </p>
<p>But again, this sounds like I'm somehow blaming MIT for what is going on. Not at all. The REAL culprits here are the med-school adcoms themselves. I am not blaming MIT for what is happening, I am actually blaming the adcoms for not understanding (or not wanting to understand) what the MIT experience is all about. </p>
<p>Consider the anti-social issue. The adcom might be thinking "This guy is a genius, but he's also an antisocial lout, so we're not admitting him." My response would be "Yeah, but he's an antisocial lout because he came from MIT, where the opportunities to develop your social skills might not be great." The adcom would respond "We don't care, we're still not admitting him." Or consider the other aspect. The adcom might say "This guy's grades really aren't that great". My response would be "Yeah, but he came from MIT where the grading is really tough". Their response might be "We don't care that MIT's grading is tough, all we care about is that his grades are subpar, so we're not admitting him". </p>
<p>{Now, don't explore that last analogy too closely. In reality, the MIT guy with the subpar grades won't even make it to the point where a human being is reviewing his application. What would actually happen is that the mechanical filters that adcoms use in their Round-1 app process would filter that guy out to the reject pile. So because his grades are subpar, his application would be thrown away before it is ever read by a human being. Hence, he never even has a chance to explain that his grades are subpar because he came from MIT - his application is rejected mechanically. The analogy just serves as an illustration}</p>