<p>I have no horse in this race, but have always enjoyed Curm's posts and knew this would be the year his D would be applying to med school...so....have followed what's going on with his D and the other regulars on this thread (Yes...I'm a virtual stalker...but relatively harmless.)</p>
<p>I have remained intrigued by the repeated threads on multiple forumsabout merit/lack of loans vs HYPSM for undergrad.</p>
<p>In a recent post Curm refered to his D's "relatively unknown" undergrad school.</p>
<p>So...because hindsight is 20-20. Looking at achievements and Med school admission (vs all of the other factors involved with choosing an undergrad)...</p>
<p>1) Do you think if she had gone to Yale, she still would have received a national undergrad award?</p>
<p>2) If she had gone to Yale and received that award....and had the same GPA, MCAT and research experiences...do you think there would have been earlier interest from some of her reach med schools?</p>
<p>And...to not make this just about Curm's D.....any input from others who made the same undergrad decision...or the opposite one? What has your med school application experience been (based on undergrad school -- with the unlikely hypothetical assumption that all other application elements would have been the same.) Any regrets about the undergrad choices?</p>
<p>1) If it was national, yes. I know nothing about internal Yale awards. Merit is merit is merit is merit.</p>
<p>2) Sounds like she got pretty instant interest at most of her schools followed by a long pause. I don’t see how it could have been much faster. Are you asking if we think the silent schools would have shown more love? I mean no disrespect to Curm’s D (there’s just no way to say this without sounding condescending), but I don’t think D’s school would have made much of a difference if they choose not to interview her. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for the equation to be Good applicant + Unknown School = No invite and Good applicant + academically prestigious school = Invite + Acceptance</p>
<p>I think Curms D will probably get at least a few post-hold interviews. I guess its possible that they might not have been post hold invites otherwise, but I am not a believer. I went to ASU and probably had to outcompete 3000+ kids from prestigious/Ivy undergrads to get my spot. Merit is merit is merit is merit. Its not even like I am smarter than my classmates and that’s why I got in (though boy that would have been nice with four exams last week!)</p>
<p>My $0.02: No matter which college you go to, you have to stand out there. Like mmmcdowe said: “Merit is merit is merit is merit” – no matter where you go.</p>
<p>I also notice this: When a student could stand out at his/her school, s/he is happy about his/her school choice. If not, he or she is not happy about the decision. A million dollar question is: If a “successful” or “not-so-successful” student at school A went to another school instead, will the outcome be any different? My opinion is that it is only you who can answer this question for yourself, as you know yourself the best.</p>
<p>I guess what I write above may be just common sense. But I do know several successful and no-so-successful students from various schools and this is what I have observed.</p>
<p>My DD is in the opposite situation of Mudgette, she attended a world famous public with many huge classes and it is more difficult to get to know one’s prof’s well to obtain the LOR. My DD did stand out in that she connected with profs who offered strong letters on her behalf, but it was not an easy feat to connect there.</p>
<p>I know DDs undergrad experience would have been different, she had a HS graduating class of around 100-120 kids and received a great deal of inidividualised attention and flourished. I am certain she would have done extremely well at a small private, especially having watched one of my other kids enjoy those benefits.</p>
<p>Her application stats were pretty average and I do think the well known school gave her some basic modicum of respect from the adcoms. It was the overall package and the LORs/ECs/etc were outstanding. 9 interview invites so far, yeah, I think the famous school overcame the seed of doubt planted by the average stats.</p>
<p>Had she attended the small private, she would have presented a different package, but it still would have had various strengths and weaknesses and probably still would have gotten in. Even if her GPA were closer to 4.0 at a small private (because she does really well with small courses and knowing her profs) than it is now, her MCAT would still have led to a similar list of schools to which she would apply.</p>
<p>I feel that D has better opportunities at state school. She has a lot of small classes being in Honors, she has been recognized and offerred job without application because of her abilities and hard work and nothing else. Her pre-med advisory is exceptional, even includes mock interview. She is being monitored closely and given all kind of guidelines including deadlines for certain steps. Very close relationship with profs, none of classes are taught by grad. students. Getting Med. reserch lab. internship was easy. I believe that at elite college she would not have the same chances. This is in addition to not paying tuition and saving $$ for Med. School because of Merit Scholarships.</p>
<p>Who knows what would have happened? If I had a crystal ball…hmmmmm…well, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be having my grapes peeled for me , probably on my Southern Hemisphere yacht (as opposed to my Northern Hemisphere yacht ;)). </p>
<p>But, since we are speculating…I suspect her work-ethic and personality would have made her “national award” possible , even at Yale. Her GPA? Again, maybe so but how would I know? </p>
<p>As to second-quessing her decision…nah. She’s pretty happy with her lot in life. She does know that her lack of preparation for the MCAT hurts her way worse at HMS than her TOP 50 LAC does. And that had absolutely nothing to do with her UG. </p>
<p>Just like the ACT did for her unknown high school, an eye-popping MCAT would have validated her UG career. Simple as that. So take the money…and, if you do (and heck, even if you don’t) you’d be well-advised to take the MCAT preparation seriously. </p>
<p>Edit: And don’t let prior excellence in standardized testing convince you that you are invincible/indestructible/all that and a bag a chips. ;)</p>
<p>I re-read the OP. The answer to Q2 as phrased is …Yes. And I have been told exactly that from folks in the know (or at least a heck of lot more in the know than I am, except the actual quote was about Amherst and HMS). It appears there is not as much MCAT leeway given to kids from my D’s school. YMMV. </p>
<p>As I have posted before , my D’s MCAT is below the median matriculant MCAT at her reach schools. That would have been less important had she gone to Amherst or Yale. </p>
<p>OTOH, a classmate last year is attending Duke. She was accepted at several Top Ten schools. She had a 39. ;)</p>
<p>BTW, everything I’m saying has only applied to schools whose MCAT medians are 2 points higher than hers. She seems to be able to compensate for a point or a point and a half. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing your experiences, curmudgeon.</p>
<p>I happen to (sort of) know a kid from an Ivy who is applying this cycle. With 3.94 (+/-0.1) and 38 (+/-1) (Disclaimer: I only have second-hand knowledge so I am not 100% sure of her numbers), she has received many many invites from NE medical schools but no confirmed acceptance yet like your D. She has received a rejection from one of her top choices. I think she is still hoping for an invite from HMS. Her research credential is definitely not as astonishing as your D (not one of those few Rhode Scholars from her school). Also, one B+ in one of her premed classes in freshman year may hurt her chance a little bit, as there is another kid applying with 4.0 (Do not know his MCAT though.) I think a weakness for many of these high-stat kids is that they dedicate almost all of their time to maintain their grades, and are therefore not capable of dedicating enough time to building up astonishing ECs (like your D did) that may be needed for these top/academic medical schools.</p>
<p>I also heard that for some classes taught by some high power professors, the “good” undergraduate students consistently get higher grades than the graduate students, even though most graduate students take much fewer classes. (My guess is that the research project is more important for graduate students. So the graduate students only need to learn enough for their research, rather than have to get the top grades.) Therefore, most competitions for grades are actually among the undergraduate premed students, even though 1/2 or 1/3 of the class are graduate students.</p>
<p>For fun I went to mdapplicants and did some re-checking and verifying. May I suggest anyone with a spare minute just fiddle around with the search function on that site. Try plugging in the name of a top 10 med school, 2008, Caucasian and an MCAT a couple of points below their matriculant median (or just use 33 or 34 ;)). Or heck, even at their matriculant median . Then look at the UG schools represented. You might just see a trend. ;)</p>
<p>For example, Columbia had 3 identifiable. 1 each from Penn, Duke, and Cornell.</p>
<p>Then do it again for all MCAT scores , caucasian, 2008 and you’ll see U of Utah, U of Washington, Case, BYU all with MCAT’s at or above the median. Hey, it’s just an observation. What do I know?</p>
<p>I’m not saying she doesn’t have any weaknesses in her app but a lot of the top northeast med schools give their decisions in March (Harvard, Penn, Cornell, Columbia, NYU, Yale, etc.). So, that could be why she doesn’t have an acceptance to a top med school yet, especially if most of the top schools she applied to are situated in that region.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation. Only a person (like you) who has gone through this process would know this.</p>
<p>Most of her classmates think that she will get into one of her choices. She has very good stats so she does not mind letting others know about it.</p>
<p>She was not from the northeast region but I heard that she has a strong motivation to stay on the east coast. She is most concerned about the location of her medical school. But I heard she is also aspired to get into one of the top-10 or top-20 medical schools. (I do not know her odds though.)</p>
<p>Applicants in Texas are lucky because some of them are notified even before thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Curm: I see your point, but n=3 for such a large group is not statistically significant Remember, those schools have much larger pre-med applicant pools quite often.</p>
<p>mmmcdowe, if I have a point, I sure do hope it’s covered by my cowboy hat. ;)</p>
<p>I’m just having fun. The skewed data available from sdn and mdapps is …legendarily skewed. I just found my little exercise interesting and maybe, at best, thought-provoking. I don’t expect to prove anything by my dissections of mdapps data. </p>
<p>BTW . Do the same search at HMS and you find …nobody. At all. Zippo. A big goose-egg.</p>
<p>Many thanks to all for responding. I like to see the real “results” data (jobs, grad school…or just self-sufficiency!) in this on-going debate of full ride LAC vs full pay HYPMS/SWA etc.</p>
<p>I am a big proponent of LAC’s…although my kids won’t/didn’t consider them (sports junkies who don’t consider the strong regional rivalries of many D3 schools to be worth their gaze.)</p>
<p>In doing these comparisons remember that the big elite universities are larger than the LAC’s and produce many more premed applicants. Searching SDN is likely to turn up many more graduates of these universities simply because many more people graduate from them.</p>
<p>
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<p>I am not so sure about that. I suspect the biggest difference between a “name” place like those, and most other colleges is the academic abilities of the students. At Amherst and Yale the average undergrad has the academic skills and focus to be a successful premed. Now plenty of them go into other careers, but essentially all are at the required level. Doctors come from the top of the academic talent pool, and not many colleges can fill their classes with people at that level. For those colleges consisting almost entirely of doctor level academic ability one will see very high premed success rates. That tells us nothing about how medical schools view individual graduates or how much the students may learn.</p>
<p>The students admitted to top med schools with MCATs below the medians tend to have something else in their portfolios. I gather that “great research” is unlikely to be the factor simply because the kids who do great research, on the whole, also have top grades. The other factors appear to be serious commitment to activities that the committees find have promise for a medical career, demographic requirements (can be race or gender, but can also be state residence), etc.</p>
<p>High MCATs really do predict success in medical school. It is not clear whether that continues all the way up to the highest scores, or whether this effect saturates at some level. The top schools tend to get lots of applicants with extremely high MCATs, so they need not take chances. But it is hard to believe that someone with a 37 is really less likely to finish in good standing than is someone with a 39.</p>
<p>Most med schools want students from a variety of undergraduate colleges, and will be unlikely to fill their classes from the Ivies and a handful of similar elite universities.</p>
<p>I have a feeling that top grades have little to do with MCAT score. D. is taking MCAT prep class. In her opinion, MCAT is exceptionally challenging.</p>
<p>I do agree with afan’s post that MCAT scores of 37 and 39 are treated the same. And both are above the median. The speculation is for student below the median from a non-elite school. At least, that’s how I read the OP’s question and I know that’s how I wrote my responses.</p>
<p>I certainly agree that a student from a non-elite school with stats above the median can be accepted to a Top Ten med school and posted as much. That happens a lot. </p>
<p>Maybe one of our regulars ( a student who wouldn’t get killed for asking ;)) could do a post on sdn asking : who got an invite from a top ten school, non-urm, with an MCAT below their matriculated median, and , if so, their UG school. My scouring of sdn hasn’t yielded any at the schools I follow. (There could be some and I just missed them or they don’t share their stats and/or UG.)</p>
<p>What I meant was , I was responding to the OP’s specific inquiry about the data point I know the most about . For her , the MCAT is the outlier stat.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that is not necessarily true. MIT, for example, is comprised “almost entirely of doctor level academic ability” types (IMO). But yet the average gpa of a MIT student accepted into med school is HIGHER than the national average. In a school not known for grade inflation, their students have to do BETTER than average? Looked at another way, they have LESS premed success rates.</p>
<p>I am of the opinion that MIT actually tends to attract many students of the kind of academic ability which is not very relevant to the study of medicine. There may be no lack of MIT students who are quite talented in engineering or physical sciences but not all of them may do very well (or at least not very interested) in many premed classes (with the exception of physics).</p>
<p>On the other hand, I know several 3.9+/36-38 kids who would do terribly in hardcore physical science classes (e.g. high level physics or p-chem) if they are asked to compete against the engineering or physical science type students. In other words, there are many varieties of academic abilities.</p>
<p>Also, MIT premeds have to fight against the stereotype of being a hard core science nerd.</p>
<p>I am speculating here: Is it possible that if your goal is to get into a top-10 or top-20 medical school, there is indeed some advantage of going to a prestigious college, but if your goal is to get into any medical school, the advantage of going to a prestigious college is not very significant? I remember somebody here once said that in order to get into a top medical school from a non-top college, you need to do extremely well in ECs, MCAT, etc., in addition to your near 4.0 grades. (For example, each year, Texas A&M produces like a dozen of 4.0 kids. I would think not all of them can get into a top-10 medical school.)</p>
I’d be having my grapes peeled for me , probably on my Southern Hemisphere yacht (as opposed to my Northern Hemisphere yacht ;)). </p>