premed schedulings

[tuangpi]

<p>i started a thread on premed scheduling @ MIT on the MIT 2014 section.
feel free to contribute!</p>

[Torcher]

<p>MIT is the worst place to go for Pre-med. You work your ass off for 4 years and then get a lousy GPA because of the annoying grade deflation. Harvard>MIT.</p>

[orkinman]

<p>Is it true that MIT is not good for premed students?</p>

<p>What are the best premed schools? Really appreciate any info.</p>

[juheee]

<p>That is absolutely not true.</p>

<p>We do not have grade deflation. At the same time, you are going to have to work harder than you would at some other schools to get a good GPA, but many many many people have done it. Don’t be discouraged from going to MIT purely because the premed track is comparatively a little bit more difficult. If worse comes to worse, you can always take orgo at Harvard hahaha</p>

<p>Here are some numbers to convince you that it’s possible
[Preprofessional</a> Stats - MIT Careers Office](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html]Preprofessional”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html)</p>

<p>–</p>

<h2>EDIT</h2>

<p>I should also point out that MIT does not “weed out” its medical school applicants like some other schools do to boost their numbers.</p>

<p>–</p>

<h2>EDIT</h2>

<p>Can I also point out that many of the medical school students that I’ve talked to have told me that having had an MIT background helped them in their classes?</p>

[selter01]

<p>possible, but not plausible? </p>

<p>I mean, do MIT students have an actual advantage over other students?</p>

[tuangpi]

<p>i hope this helps.</p>

<p>

@oasis

I’m premed here at MIT, taking my MCAT a month from today. So far, I would say that the biggest pluses of MIT for me as premeds are:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>If you are also strong in the humanities, coming here you can totally distinguish yourself through that angle from your one-dimensional science-y and engineer-y classmates, whereas it’s far more difficult to do so at a school like Yale (where more people are good in the liberal arts). I thought I was a one-sided science/math student in high school, but I explored my humanities side at MIT and I thought I was able to stand out a bit from my peers because of my heavy co-focus on the humanities (MIT humanities doesn’t suck, by the way).</p></li>
<li><p>MIT’s GIRs will prepare you for the MCATs without really requiring you to do extra prep. 8.01, 8.02, 7.01x, 5.11x will take you through the stuff on the MCAT and you’re required to take those classes anyway. Add on 5.12 and/or 5.13 and you’re totally set to take the MCAT. Physical Sciences will feel really easy after 8.01 and 8.02.</p></li>
<li><p>There are far less premeds here than HYPS or Johns Hopkins. In my year, there’s ~70 premeds, which is like 7% of the class. Premed-intensive schools can get to be as much as 20% premed. The number of premeds at MIT greatly reduces the intramural premed competition (to me, this is the biggest reason why you SHOULDN’T go to JHU for premed. one of my high school classmates is there and she stopped being premed because of the cutthroat competition there).</p></li>
<li><p>UROPs. I haven’t found a school yet that can compare to the accessibility to research that undergraduates have here. Something like ~85% of undergrads here do cutting-edge research with professors, and you can get involved simply by writing an email to professors who are looking for UROPs (and they’re looking for UROPs all the time). This is a HUGE plus on your med school application, since my premed friends at other colleges are fighting tooth and nail to get into labs to do research.</p></li>
<li><p>If you look at our rates, the undergrad admission rate to med schools is 95% if you have a 3.3/4.0 GPA here (which is not very difficult) and use the advising service (which everyone uses anyway). This is comparable if not higher than many highly-selective colleges.
([Preprofessional</a> Stats - MIT Careers Office](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html#med]Preprofessional”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html#med))</p></li>
</ul>

<p>The only real negative that I’ve found is the GPA problem, since if a school is more grade-inflated than MIT (i.e. stanford), you might have a higher GPA there to apply to med school with. MIT classes are usually B centered and graded on a curve (unlike Harvard, which many are A minus centered), and it is a challenge at times to maintain a competitive premed GPA (average premed GPA here is 4.7/5.0). I still know 5.0s here though, and it is doable, but just know that MIT is going to make you work for your grades, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to breeze through the premed curriculum here, since our premed courses are every bit as difficult as other MIT courses.</p>

<p>-MIT '11, course 7 and 21h (bio and history)

</p>

<p>In addition, you can look at this thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/mit-2014/870983-premed-schedulings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/mit-2014/870983-premed-schedulings.html&lt;/a&gt; and can figure out that premed @ MIT isn’t that bad like most people say.</p>