<p>Do all 8 of the ivies have a premed program? what about stanford and MIT?</p>
<p>I wouldn't recommend going to an ivy for premed because:</p>
<p>1) costs more</p>
<p>2) less personal interaction with professors; thus, your letters of recommendations might not be the best</p>
<p>3) your GPA might not be as high due to a some rigorous courloads, which as well includes Standford and MIT.</p>
<p>For premed, major in anything, have an high GPA, high MCAT, good recs (small private school would be the most beneficial), extra. activ. you enjoy. </p>
<p>Overall, coming from a pretigious college/univer./tech school will give you somewhat better chances at med. school admissions if you have the exact stats as everyone else.</p>
<p>RHS student, do you go to rampart high school?</p>
<p>RHSstudent, I think you're mistaken: in all of the Ivies except Cornell, from what I've heard it's not terribly difficult to get a good GPA. Yale and Harvard are particularly well known for their grade inflation (giving out a greater % of As in each class than tougher schools such as MIT or Caltech). Though there is some debate about whether those students are geniuses to begin with and deserve those As, the fact is that if you get into Yale, Brown, Harvard, as long as you work hark you'll most likely do pretty well.</p>
<p>Anyway, just some thoughts. I've never been to the Ivy League colleges, but that's from what I've read and heard.</p>
<p>Radioactive, why don't you look it up yourself, just wondering?</p>
<p>I'm sure they all do.</p>
<p>Most schools don't offer a straight Premed major, but they do offer counseling for people intending to apply to med school</p>
<p>He was referring to a pre-med program, or a track, I believe. They probably should have the pre-med courses.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I wouldn't recommend going to an ivy for premed because:</p>
<p>1) costs more</p>
<p>2) less personal interaction with professors; thus, your letters of recommendations might not be the best</p>
<p>3) your GPA might not be as high due to a some rigorous courloads, which as well includes Standford and MIT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Of the 3 reasons you listed, I can only agree with #1, although I would say that some people find the Ivies to actually be THE CHEAPEST option. That's because the Ivies tend to be far more aggresive with their financial aid packages than other schools are. For example, Harvard explicitly guarantees a full ride (including full stipend) to any student whose family makes less than 60k a year. No state school that I know of will offer such a guarantee. I know 2 guys who got into both Berkeley (as in-state residents) and Harvard, and found out that it was actually cheaper for them to go to Harvard once financial aid was factored in. I will always remember one of them acidly joking that he had always dreamed of going to Berkeley, but he couldn't afford it, so he had "no choice" but to go to Harvard.</p>
<p>As for #2's and #3, I would say that it all depends on what schools you are comparing them to. As far as personal interaction is concerned, I would say that some Ivies (Cornell, and to some extent Harvard) have rather distant undergrad-faculty relations, but others, such as Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown are as tight as any school, including the LAC's. In fact, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown are basically themselves LAC's that just also happen to some graduate programs. It's hard to find too many schools that have tighter undergrad interaction that those schools.</p>
<p>As far as the grades are concerned, again, it depends on the Ivy you are talking about, but in general, I disagree. The only Ivy that may fall into the category of being a tough grader is Cornell, and even that's debatable. The other Ivies, as well as Stanford, are well known for their grade inflation. </p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. George Bush and John Kerry managed to graduate from Yale, and Al Gore managed to graduate from Harvard, despite the fact that all 3 of them have admitted to being highly unmotivated and irresponsible college students. George Bush has freely joked about his dissolute days as a young partyboy. John Kerry admitted that as a college student he was more interested in learning how to fly airplanes than in his studies. Al Gore too has admitted to not being the hardest-working student. Yet they all managed to graduate anyway, despite their poor attitudes (with Al Gore even managing to graduate cum laude from Harvard). And remember, all 3 of these guys were students BEFORE the grade inflation that took hold during the era of the Vietnam War draft (as profs feared flunking students out for fear that they would lose their student defements and hence might end up being drafted for the war), and has existed ever since. </p>
<p>Take a look at the grades given out by various schools and notice how the average grades at the Ivies tend to actually be HIGHER than grades at other schools. In fact, I would say that it is actually far easier to flunk out of certain no-name state schools than it is to flunk out of an Ivy. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com</a></p>
<p>Personally, I think that the Ivies (and Stanford) are some of the best deals going. You get a highly prestigious degree AND the grading tends to be relatively easy.</p>
<p>all private schools cost a lot
i go to a non-ivy private that is costing me $50,000 each YEAR</p>
<p>Not all private schools cost a lot. In fact, some of them cost nothing. For example, Cooper Union charges zero tuition. That's right - ZERO. You still have to pay room/board. Still, it's hard to beat a price of zero. Nor is Cooper the only one. Olin College also charges zero tuition. </p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Engineering%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Engineering</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, even those private schools that actually charge are only expensive on a sticker price standpoint, yet not everybody pays full price. Take my brother. He could have gone to a state school like Berkeley. Instead he went to Caltech which offered him a full merit ride + stipend. So his choice was to either go to a state school and have to pay, or go to Caltech and GET PAID. What would you do? Seems like a no-brainer to me.</p>
<p>Then there is the whole aspect of financial aid. Like I said, some people actually find the private schools to actually be cheaper than the public schools, once financial aid is factored in. Like my example above - would you rather pay to go to Berkeley, or go to Harvard on a full ride?</p>