<p>Allright pebbles, but you know what I've been saying. In a nutshell, there are lots of people in the world who have already decided that they want to be doctors, and have indeed tried to plan their life out, maybe not 20 years ahead but certainly the next 10-15 (first undergrad, then med-school, then the residency). The sad part is that some of them do that and then find out they don't get into med-school. I've seen it happen. It's a bit incongruous to suggest that you could just get admitted into med-school just 'like that' when some of these people have dedicated their whole lives to becoming doctors, and then can't get into med-school. </p>
<p>I agree that statistics are flawed, but what's the alternative? You can't base crucial life decisions solely on what your emotions tell you at the time. Sometimes you have to look at hard-headed reality. I know people who would like to be able to smoke every day and believe they are not hurting their health, but the statistics say otherwise. You know and I know there are MIT premeds who can't get into any med-school. Will you be one of them? I don't know. But there are such people out there. </p>
<p>None of this is to say that you should or shouldn't choose to come to MIT. The point is not to steer you one way or another. The point is to get people to candidly assess the tradeoffs that are made by coming. MIT is good at some things, not-so-good at others. You are lying to yourself if you tell yourself that there are no tradeoffs.</p>
<p>that's nice, but you just repeated yourself; nobody is arguing that there aren't tradeoffs.
(not trying to be mean, just trying to wrap it up a little :-D)</p>
<p>I just came across this thread. Interesting discussions!</p>
<p>Well, my take is this: Even at H, P, Y, or S, there are still about 10% premeds that did not get in any medical schools. So it's not a guarantee! And although the number is a little higher at MIT (~20%), I will take my chances if I really like MIT. And since I really like it, I will really work hard and hopefully I will end up in the 75-80% group.</p>
<p>There are a lot of ex-premeds wandering around MIT (I'm one of them). Take that as you will.</p>
<p>MIT is a good school, a life-changing experience with amazing research opportunities. Anyone who gets in, premed or not, can benefit enormously from attending it.</p>
<p>However, it is not a school designed for premeds. In my opinion, it is not a good place to be a premed, which, if you notice, is somewhat different from saying that it's not a good place for the individual premeds. It might be a great place for them, just not a great place for them to be premeds at. Whereas there are some schools where I think the students don't benefit as much, but that are better places to be premeds.</p>
<p>I blame the med school admissions process, mostly. If it didn't cater so much to grade-grubbers this would be less of a problem.</p>
<p>Figure out what sort of trade-off you're willing to make.</p>
<p>I just stumbled across this thread and felt that a lot of the posts suggesting that MIT was not a good premed school were highly misleading. I went to MIT as a grad student and ended up going to law school much later and found it still gave me a major edge in the admissions process. I have been involved in the medical technology field for over 20 years and have met a number of MIT trained physicians, most of whom running big departments at teaching hospitals. </p>
<p>The fact is that MIT has the highest acceptance rate at Harvard Medical School after Harvard itself with around 10% of the entire entering class recruited from MIT. Some of the other top institutions also take a disproportionate number of their students from MIT. </p>
<p>Even Yale or Princeton do not get more graduates into HMS. This obviously has to do with the caliber of students at MIT but just as much with the location of MIT and the highly incestuous relationship between the two institutions with many HMS professors also involved with the various MIT health sciences labs. HMS (as most top medical schools) places tremendous importance on the personal interview. Out of about 6,000 applicants it narrows its selection to about 800 students that are then interviewed to get to the final 160 enrollees. An MIT student who has done some research as an undergrad in one of the many biotech labs will inevitably come in contact with HMS faculty on a regular basis and may even such a faculty member as an advisor. </p>
<p>If the student wants to do an MD/PhD or a PhD in medicine at Harvard then the cards are even more stacked in favor of the MIT grad as these programs are jointly run by the two institutions. Just ask Mollie about Harvard and MIT batlling to get her into their programs. </p>
<p>Using published acceptance rates into medical schools is very misleading as most schools preselect their applicants weeding out the less able (or committed) and do not disclose where their applicants get admitted. At least MIT is totally transparent in that regard. </p>
<p>As Sakky correctly emphasizes, getting into med school still requires dedication. It can't be just an afterthought or backup solution. The premed requirements may conflict with a student's schedule and generally involve some juggling. Also at the critical interview process, if you are not totally committed to med school, that will become apparent. </p>
<p>MIT breeds a particular type of individual which many top medical schools desire: creative, logical, smart and most importantly technically savvy. Medicine is changing rapidly and what was current five years ago may no longer be applicable today . Technologies such as imaging are now being imbedded into routine medical practice in nearly all specialties and physicians are increasingly required to update their skills on a regular basis. MIT grads are generally better able to deal with such a changing environment than most other students. This is part of what got them into MIT into the first place.</p>
<p>I'm afraid I still have to return to my original thesis, which coincides with that of jessiehl which is that I don't think MIT is a particularly good school to go to for premed, relative to MIT's peer schools. The major problem seems to be with the grading at MIT, as med-school adcoms seem to care first-and-foremost about your grades (along with test scores) in the first cut, and the fact of the matter is that MIT students have difficulty presenting the high grades that students from HYPS can. This problem is not evident in doctoral admissions, but seems to be restricted to professional school admissions.</p>
<p>Taking molliebatmit as an example, I strongly suspect (and I think she would agree) that while she got into most of the top PhD programs she applied to, she would have great difficulty getting any of the top MD programs simply because her grades (a 4.4/5) are too low. She is actually one of the top grads of her class and poised for a brilliant academic career as evidenced by her numerous successful PhD applications. But MD programs don't care about that. They want to see high grades, and if you can't present high grades, that's a problem. </p>
<p>The other aspect that has been presented to me in other threads is that old MIT stereotype - that MIT doesn't produce graduates with strong social skills, and medicine is a profession that requires the ability to interact with patients. I don't know if that is true, but if it is true, I would submit that there is a simple explanation for this - that MIT grads may not have the social skills of the grads of HYPS simply because they never had the time to build them. You can't build social skills when you are forced to constantly studying, and let's face it, MIT does tend to encourage a certain quirky nerd mentality that others in the real world find off-putting. Hence, I think that even if MIT grads don't have strong social skills upon graduation, they have the potential to develop them. But again, MD adcoms don't care about that. They just want to see that you have strong social skills during your interview, and you either have them or you don't. </p>
<p>That's why I have to point out that about 25% of MIT premeds who apply to med-school don't get in anywhere, as opposed to about 10% of at HYPS. Hence, that basically means that a given MIT premed applicant has more than DOUBLE the likelihood of not getting in anywhere relative to premeds at peer schools. Now, obviously there are many MIT graduates who go on to become highly successful doctors. But that also means there are plenty who don't, including many who don't get into medical school at all. You can't just look at the survivors of a winnowing process to draw conclusions. You also have to take into account the non-survivors. By only looking at the survivors, I could conclude that nobody died in World War 2, which is clearly not the case. </p>
<p>I agree with jessiehl that the real problem is the admissions process. The admissions process keys upon characteristics that MIT premeds have difficulty demonstrating. It doesn't matter if a MIT premed has the ability to become a great doctor if he/she can't get into medical school in the first place.</p>
<p>I just don't buy Sakky's premise that med schools only look at grades and that because of MIT's supposed grade deflation, MIT students are at a disadvantage compared to students from HYPS schools. As I can tell from searching past threads, he has made this point numerous times before without any ever providing any factual backup. The stats he refers to are way off (90%+ of premeds at HYPS accepted to med school) and are impossible to objectively compare to the data collected at MIT.</p>
<p>Med schools look at a lot more than just grades. (as do mots professional and graduate schools). You only need to look at the wide range of GPAs and MCATs from successful applicants. Most premed students admitted to top medical schools will tell you that the interview is the key to admission. As long as you can get past the first phase of screening other factors have much greater importance such as any medical research or internship experience. </p>
<p>To claim that Mollie would not have made into med school based on her grades is simply ludicrous. PhD programs are always more selective than the corresponding MD programs at the same school as they accept much fewer students. Statistics show that most MIT PhD candidates go for a joint MD/PhD program and are very seldom turned down by the medical school once their PhD application has been reviewed.</p>
<p>Again, well over 80% of the premeds from MIT get into med school and official surveys show they get into better med schools than applicants from virtually any other college. I am also willing to bet that those who are serious about their intentions and who do not get in on their first try get accepted eventually.</p>
<p>I was actually trying to search for some factual backup for the claim that says 90+% of HYPS premeds got accepted to medical school every year. However, I haven't had any luck in finding such data so far. Can anybody help?</p>
<p>Acceptance rates aside, one thing that I see too much of among MIT premeds, as a life science major myself, are the premeds who are so worried about getting into med school that they make themselves intolerable. The ones who take notes in six colors, who hold up recitations for 15 minutes because they need every single little thing to be spoonfed to them right then and there instead of, God forbid, making a note of it and looking it up on their own or asking the TA later, and who go and cry to the profs because they didn't get an A on the test and ZOMG the curve was unfair.</p>
<p>Future premeds who might be reading...please, please don't do this! It irritates the hell out of everyone else, and probably isn't good for your emotional health either! And it makes the more reasonable premeds ashamed to share a label with you.</p>
<p>Unless there is a change in the perception that grades are the utmost important criterion in med school admissions, that kind of attitude will stay, at MIT and elsewhere. It goes back to the very basic nature of human beings: the survival instinct.</p>
<p>"PhD programs are always more selective than the corresponding MD programs at the same school as they accept much fewer students"</p>
<p>This is not true in my experience. At my school (Harvard), the Medical School has an acceptance rate below 5% while the Ph.D. programs accept 10-20%, with a yield of around 60%, which is highest in the nation but still wouldn't come anywhere close to the Medical School. I don't know the exact yield for HMS, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 90%. I do often find the PhD students to be smarter in some ways, e.g. analytical thinking, creativity, etc. but Harvard Medical students are no dummies either and their GPAs are much higher. Yes, interviews can make or break but it's very unlikely that you will get the final nod at HMS unless your grades are stellar. Just because you got an interview with a 3.6 GPA, it doesn't mean that now you are on an equal footing with your classmate with a 3.9 GPA, and now the only thing that matters is the interview.</p>
<p>In contrast, one can get into top-notch Ph.D. programs with relatively mediocre grades if you have a strong letter from a top scientist attesting to your brilliance and something concrete to support that, e.g. co-authorship on an important paper.</p>
<p>"Statistics show that most MIT PhD candidates go for a joint MD/PhD program and are very seldom turned down by the medical school once their PhD application has been reviewed."</p>
<p>Please show this "statistics" since I find it hard to believe. If an MIT PhD candidate goes to medical school after finishing his or her degree, he/she is automatically an MD/PhD, so that's besides the point. If an MIT PhD student drops out of his program to go to medical school, it's extremely unlikely that another school will give him or her a funded MD/PhD slot. They will first question whether he has the tenacity to complete a PhD. The only exception is if he is doing a PhD in Medical Engineering/Medical Physics in the Harvard-MIT HST Division, in which case he may sometimes be allowed to get into the Harvard M.D. program through the back door, but this is by no means automatic.</p>
<p>"The stats he refers to are way off (90%+ of premeds at HYPS accepted to med school)"</p>
<p>Ummm, that's the same number they gave me when I sat at the premed orientation at Harvard. What number do you have in mind?</p>
<p>I also have a problem with this supposed "grade inflation" at Harvard. It exists mainly in the humanities and social sciences. Let's say you are a TA grading a bunch of papers. Some are of truly exceptional quality, so those get A's. Most are very well-written and it's obvious that they put in a lot of effort into the assignment. What grade are you going to give them? A B+ of course. This does not happen in science classes, so I don't think Harvard premeds have an advantage in that regard. They do have an advantage in that they have extremely good premed advising system set up. They have Harvard Medical students living in undergraduate dorms and each premed is assigned to an HMS student, who can serve as a very useful resource.</p>
<p>I personally think it's foolish to confuse intelligence with grade point average, as medical school admissions committees appear to do freely, but I'm sure that's a discussion for another day.</p>
<p>Although I haven't had any luck getting major-specific statistics out of the MIT Careers Office, I strongly suspect that MIT's lower medical school acceptance rate is tied with its higher percentage of engineering major premeds. A large number of MIT premeds are course 10 (chemical engineering), which is not a department known for easy classes or lenient grading policies. Premeds at MIT who are biology majors seem to have higher GPAs and accordingly, higher acceptance rates into medical school. (Let me tell you, my 4.4 was not the highest GPA in the biology department, okay.)</p>
<p>In my opinion, the most important attribute of a great physician is not sheer intellectual brilliance but being dedicated, being thorough and not overlooking details. A lot of things in medicine require tremendous discipline, e.g. being able to drag yourself out of the hospital call room at 4:30 am when the nurse calls you yet again, being courteous and not losing temper with patients who are uncooperative, stupid, or have poor hygiene. </p>
<p>Having a high G.P.A. may not guarantee brilliance but it does usually reflect dedication and discipline, especially if the undergraduate program is known to be challenging. So I think their reasoning is not far off the mark.</p>
<p>
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Premeds at MIT who are biology majors seem to have higher GPAs and accordingly, higher acceptance rates into medical school.
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</p>
<p>Could this also be because the ChemE people have an obvious backup career in industry if they don't get into med school, so they are less pressured to get good grades? Because honestly, despite what some stuck-up jackasses think, I don't believe that bio is some sort of "easy" major relative to everything else. And I've taken classes in a lot of majors. An alum friend who was 7/18 agrees - she said that frequently her course 7 classes were more difficult than her course 18 and 6 classes...they just had a lot less required work.</p>
<p>Now, I don't know much about ChemE specifically, and personally would probably die in course 10 because I'm horrible at chemistry, but I dispute the idea that 7 or 9 = easy street.</p>
Having a high G.P.A. may not guarantee brilliance but it does usually reflect dedication and discipline, especially if the undergraduate program is known to be challenging.
[/quote]
But that's the thing -- med schools don't seem to care if the program is challenging or not, or else we wouldn't even be having this discussion.</p>
<p>I would much rather have a physician who got a 3.5.(/4.0) at MIT than one who grade-grubbed his/her way to a 4.0 at an easy school in an easy program. But medical schools don't seem to see it that way.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don't think MIT biology is easy (that would, after all, be a decidedly odd thing for me to think), just that it's more of a sure thing than any of the engineering departments, at least on the whole, if you want to get a high GPA. After all, somebody is getting all those A's in biology classes, and I think the somebody is premeds.</p>
<p>
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After all, somebody is getting all those A's in biology classes, and I think the somebody is premeds.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If more premeds were into, say, EECS, I bet the curves in course 6 would suddenly get rougher. :) But premeds tend to be life sciences-oriented. And the trait that the annoying faction of the premeds share, in my experience, is that they consider grades to be The Most Important Thing In The World - more important than, say, doing extra reading on the sections of material that really interest them (perhaps somewhat to the detriment of the sections that don't), or working on their own related projects, or experiencing life and interests outside of studying for tests. You know all this already...I saw your "Are you a premed?" quizilla quiz. :p I actually think it makes the curve rougher for the non-premeds who are in premed-heavy majors.</p>
<p>Another consideration is that in some ways comparing the grading schemes of, say, course 6 and course 9 is useless. In course 6 a lot more of your grade tends to be based on psets and projects, and spread out more over the course of the term. In course 9, a lot of classes are first test = 25%, second test = 25%, and final = 50%. Which is great if you're good at studying for and taking tests (and it would appear that many premeds, and also many non-premeds, are), but I personally have often wished that course 9 graded more like course 6.</p>
<p>Another reason why it's easier to get into Ph.D. programs than M.D. programs:</p>
<p>There are many, many more graduate students than there are jobs in the academia. I read an article in Science which stated that something like 15% of graduate students can ultimately expect to land a faculty job, at which point they will still have to compete for tenure. The rest get jobs in pharmaceutical industry, consulting, patent law, science journalism, secondary school teaching, etc. Even at a top program like Harvard, less than half of those graduating will go for postdoctoral fellowships, ie. the rest are not even considering academia at that stage. "Senior scientist" positions at pharmaceutical companies typically pay close to 100K but rarely over that.</p>
<p>In contrast, nearly everyone who gets an M.D. goes for residency training, and whether they choose to practice or not, they typically make well over 100K. People who practice in some of the more lucrative specialties, e.g. cardiology, cardiac surgery, plastic surgery, etc. often make 300-500K.</p>
<p>I've occasionally read about accomplished scientists saying they went to graduate school because they couldn't get into medical school, but I have never heard a doctor say he went to medical school because he couldn't get into a graduate school.</p>