premed at 3rd tier?...

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<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>

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<p>Or maybe you can ask the kids from third tier Sacred Heart with perfect gpa's where they got in.... Obviously you seem to be trying to discourage people from taking your spot in top schools by saying they are better off in a third tier. Med. Schools will usually be able to tell just how hard of a school you went to for pre-med, and if its a rediculously easy school, whats to say they WONT penalize you?</p>

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<p>so the best solution: find the school w/ highest rate of premed to med students, i would assume.</p>

<p>guess its time to go statistics hunting.</p>

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<p>look, i go to MIT. I'm a premed and I don't see why I'm at a disadvantage. If anything I have an edge over others. Again, I don't know if you go to MIT, but a lot of students decide later on in their undergrad years that they want to take the premed track, but by then it's too late to have medically related EC's and other things. Also, there's certain majors that have a really high acceptance rate (e.g. Brain and Cog has an almost 100% acceptance rate). I think the best solution is go to a school you sincerely enjoy being at and everything else will just fall into place as long as you balance your time well and do your work.</p>

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<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><a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/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>

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<p>I would also elaborate on the last point that pmit made and discuss the idea of going to a school that you sincerely enjoy. That sounds great, but the problem is that whether you will enjoy a school or not has a lot to do with how well you are doing at that school. It's very difficult to enjoy a school at which you are doing poorly academically. Even if you fit the MIT culture perfectly and you love the MIT lifestyle and you love Cambridge, the reality is, if you're pulling straight C's or worse, you're probably not enjoying MIT. And the other problem is, you will never know how well you will do at a particular school until you matriculate there, and by that time, it's too late to change. What happens if you think you will love MIT or some other school, go there, and then find out that you're just barely hanging on academically? And believe me, there is a not insubstantial number of students at MIT who are just barely hanging on.</p>

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<p>If I can interject with an opinion that would seem to cover all arguments being made.</p>

<p>The lack of acceptance of pre-meds who attend rigorous schools (or those who seem to need an even higher GPA to be admitted) can be explained by the need to include outside activites and medical related work-study. A MIT student who is achieving top grades is less likely to have the time to persue these necessary adjunct activities. Science weighted GPA and MCAT are absolutely the top criteria, but if the outside activiites are lacking it will take an extra tenth or two to convince the adcom.</p>

<p>Stereotyping that the top tier school applicants lack social skills as a reason is introducing a non-quantifiable factor into an otherwise logical argument. </p>

<p>Don't underestimate the importance of some of the fringe criteria (like working in a hospital, doing minor independent research, even charity) to sway an adcom when considering 2 apps that are within a hair of being equal.</p>

<p>All that said, go where you will be successful. That success has to include the possibility to achieve the grades plus the ability/time to perform the extras.</p>

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<p>I don't disagree with what you are saying, gizmo9187, yet that is also another reason not to choose a difficult school and/or a difficult major. As I've been saying throughout this thread, if you want to maximize your chances of getting into med-school, then you want to choose a school and a major that maximizes your chances of getting into med-school. While that might sound like a tautology, it really isn't. </p>

<p>The point is that med-school adcoms grade on results. Not on potential. You either have what the med-schools adcoms want, or you don't. Simple as that. If you don't have what they want, the adcoms won't care about why you don't have it. They will just see that you don't have it. For example, the adcoms will say "We want you to have top grades". If you say "Well, I could have had top grades if I went to an easier school and/or completed an easier major, but I didn't. I chose a difficult school and a difficult major". The adcoms will retort "We don't care about all that, we want you to have top grades." Similarly, the adcoms will say "We want you to have done EC's and other medical-related work". If you try to respond with "I chose a very difficult program that took up all my time. If I chose an easier program, I could have easily done all those EC's", the adcoms will retort "We don't care about why you don't have those EC's. All we care about is whether you have them or not." </p>

<p>Now obviously the above was a gross simplification of the process. But it does serve to illustrate my basic point, which is that the med-school adcom process is merciless. Don't expect that because you chose a difficult program and/or a difficult school, that you are going to get rewarded for it. </p>

<p>And that serves to illustrate my other basic point. I am not telling anybody that they shouldn't necessarily choose a difficult program and/or a difficult school. What I am saying is that if you do decide to do that, you should understand that you are probably hurting your chances of getting into med-school. That's the trade you are making. You can still get into med-school, but your odds are lower, just like if you drive without a seatbelt, you can still get home safely, but your odds are lower. Whether that tradeoff is worth it is up to the individual, but you should not fool yourself into thinking that the tradeoff doesn't exist.</p>

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<p>Finally a good reason to support sakky's view! I think gizmo brings up a great point. You are far less likely to have time to do EC's if you attend a rigorous school. I'm currently doing research while participating in a student health organization (as editor for their health publication, etc.) at Cornell and that's about all I have time for.</p>