<p>I was recently accepted to both Princeton and Yale and I was wondering if anyone had any opinion on why one is better than the other for a future pre-med <em>please support your choice with facts or personal experiences</em> I also was accepted to Dartmouth as a premed, is it still a competitive option?</p>
<p>p.s any advice for first year courses would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Since Yale has the highest grade inflation of the three, that is the school to boost your gpa. OTOH, all are phenomenal. It depends on what kind of experience you are seeking. For example, Dartmouth is the most undergrad-focused, and it’s D-Plan offers wonderful internship/research opportunities.</p>
<p>I know the Ivy’s provide top notch education, I just want to know which will best prepare me to become a competitive applicant to a great medical school.</p>
<p>I would not pick Yale over Princeton because of some hoped for GPA boost. All three will give you access to everything you need. Pick the one that feels right to you.</p>
<p>100% Yale. Obviously the best because Princeton is known for having a tough grading system (you definitely will make better grades at Yale), you will gain preference of admittance to Yale medical school, and also because IT’S YALE! I would pick Yale over any other school in existence, including Harvard.</p>
<p>^sry, but I disagree on the gross, aggregate level. If college X has a 3.5 gpa and college y has a 3.3 gpa, both of which have prestige/selectivity (such as UC-Berkeley and UCLA), the graduates of college X will have an easier time with professional school admissions, on average. Obviously, the impact on every individual can be different.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters at all. All of these are great schools. Its going to be much more about you at this point. I’d probably pick Princeton or Dartmouth just for the more campusey environments.</p>
<p>That’s fine bluebayou, but you assume that prestige or selectivity is the only factor that alters a medical school’s perception of a university’s applicants. It is academic rigor, not prestige, that is most likely to give a boost. Medical schools know Princeton and know what GPA is indicative of a good applicant from that school. A few extra kids from Princeton aren’t going to drop a medical’s average GPA enough to be of concern, and at the very most all they have to do is accept a few more high GPA students.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, despite Berkeley’s lower GPA, there are still more UCB kids at Columbia’s four classes right now than UCLA by a large margin, despite the fact that UCLA also has a ridiculously large applicant pool. Conclusive? No, but suggestive that you are overestimating the effect of the average difference of .1-.2 GPA. (Also, in 2006 the average GPA of UCLA and Berkeley was .08 apart with UCLA being the lower of the two)</p>
<p>I purposely chose Cal and UCLA because they are extremely similar in every way, including strong physical science departments (and Engineering). </p>
<p>But your point about Engineering is probably not a good one: MIT, arguably numero uno in Engineering, has a higher than average mean gpa for med school admissions. In other words, kids at one of the most competitive science schools in the world are “devalued” gpa-wise for med admissions. Obviously, most of us woulda thunk just the opposite.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps you have some statistics which disprove the MIT numbers?</p>
<p>btw: thanks for the catch; my post was unclear in that I did not mean to imply that the UC campuses had that kinda grade inflation (3.5). It was meant to suggest two equally rigorous colleges, such as one might find in the Ancient Eight, where gpa variances are close to .3 (Brown vs…xx).</p>
<p>It’s neither rigor nor prestige that is most likely to give a boost. Take Duke, for example – MIT is both more rigorous and more prestigious, and yet Duke kids get into medical school with GPAs that are 0.33 points lower. AND with lower MCAT scores.</p>
<p>Why are MIT kids getting penalized on the GPA? I’ve never been able to explain this with concrete data, although obviously I have my guesses.</p>
<p>MIT =/= Princeton. We are arguing Princeton vs Yale and I’m not willing to concede that Princeton is a worse choice over the fact that MIT has its own issues. Show me data on Princeton and Yale for me to disprove, don’t point at MIT. MIT is an entirely different ball game. Why does MIT have less success? According to my Admissions Dean its because they, on average, tend to be a lot weaker in the EC department for a given GPA. Unidimensional.</p>
<p>Happiness, period. Where do you want to live for four years, where do you want to be an alum of? Choosing Y vs P based on pre-med is not the way to do it.</p>