I was wonder which of these schools would look good on a application for medical school
Fordham University
New York University
University of Michigan
Case Western Reserve
Ohio State University
Miami University-Oxford
The name on your undergrad diploma will make very little difference in your ability to get admitted to a medical school. Med school admission offices look at your GPA, MCAT score and ECs, not the name of your college.
Choose the undergrad that offers you the best combination of fit, opportunity and affordability.
ok thanks
What way out west mom said is 100% correct. But Nyu and u mich definitely stand out to me, but I’m not a Med school admissions person.
I would think with everything equal (GPA, MCAT, research experience, etc.), the higher the rank of your undergraduate school or the higher the perceived school (compared to a low profile/ranked school), the better your chances of being admitted to medical schools (especially the high ranks ones like Stanford, UCSF, Michigan, UCLA or even the next tier like USC, UC Davis, Wisconsin, etc.).
I am not sure where people get the idea that one’s undergraduate institution makes little difference when applying to medical school. The truth is much more complicated. Most public medical schools are fed from instate applicants who go to College in their own state. Selectivity of undergraduate institution therefore is not much of a factor for most public medical schools. Top public medical schools such as UCSF, UCLA, however do take undergraduate schools into account. Last year over 60% of matriculants of the UCLA Medical school were graduates of Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and the Ivy’s. UCSF has similar numbers. Looking at the students of top private medical schools such as Penn, Yale, Harvard, Stanford etc clearly show a preference for students from selective undergraduate institutions. I understand that students from more selective Colleges tend to do better on the MCAT but I do not think that this accounts for the disparity. Indeed the AAMC flat out states that selectivity of undergraduate institution is of highest importance along with GPS/MCAT etc.for admission to private medical schools.
I do think agree that one should pick a College for fit and cost and I would not use a possible career in medicine as the main reason to pick a College. Most who enter College as a pre med never become a physician. None of the undergraduate Colleges listed above are bad choices. They are not that far apart in selectivity that a choice of one over the other would make a large difference in one’s chances at medical school admission. If pressed I would rank them as Michigan>NYU>Case/Ohio State>Fordham/Miami.
I should say none of the Colleges above are bad choices. Late here.
Source? Because this AAMC report never once mentions selectivity of undergrad as a factor at all, let alone on par with GPA/MCAT: https://www.aamc.org/download/261106/data
Medical schools do consider where you go for undergraduate as well as the other elements discussed above. The only school on our list that I am not certain about is Fordham (the others are fine).
^I agree, but mjscal said it was as important as GPA/MCAT which unless he has access to info I do not (which in my case includes sitting in on my school’s admissions committee meetings) is simply not true. I also think he underestimates the effect of how much stronger the student bodies at top schools are. If kids were being randomly assigned to undergrads and the top 20 schools were still overrepresented, then I’d say there’s something about them the medical schools prefer. The fact that schools which reject over 90% of the people who apply and heavily enrich themselves with the top 5% of test takers in the country are able to get large numbers of kids into medical schools is frankly not that impressive. Look at the AAMC MCAT/GPA grids for nationwide stats and look at the average GPA/MCAT and acceptance rates for the top schools, you’ll see they’re actually not that different - at least certainly not as different as you’d expect if the name on the diploma was as important as MCAT/GPA.
I think the problem you are all having is that you are equating all factors equally. The range for GPA for example goes from somewhere between 0-4.0 and obviously under a certain level admission is unlikely. This in effect compresses the numbers considered for a vast majority of applicants for possible admission to a much smaller range and within that range selectivity of undergraduate school becomes an important factor. Clearly there is no cut off for undergraduate schools and applicants from all undergraduate schools would be considered for possible admission so we are not all talking about apples. What I am saying is that the undergraduate record is probably the most important part of one’s medical school application and that at least for private medical schools and top medical schools that undergraduate selectivity along with MCAT, total GPA, SGPA and grade trends are very important factors. Search for “Using MCAT data in Medical Student Selection”
Yes, I had just seen the data that mjscal referenced (link here: https://www.aamc.org/download/434596/data/usingmcatdata2016.pdf). I was more than a little surprised. However, it’s disingenuous to say that selectivity of undergrad institution is equal to MCAT/GPA, because look at all the other things on the list that are rated with similar importance:
Science GPA
MCAT
Upward trend
Cumulative GPA
Healthcare experience
Community Service/Volunteer Experience
Experience with underserved populations
Navigation of cultural barriers or challenges
Leadership experience
Interviews
LORs
Personal Statement
That’s a total of 13 things all ranked as “highest importance”. The report doesn’t further delineate how important these things are, except that their mean score was >3.0 on a 4 point scale. The picture would be a lot clearer if we were told undergrad selectivity had a mean score of 3.7 or 3.1. Further, there’s no definition of what undergrad selectivity actually means. Does that mean Ivy League or bust? Or that you went to University of Michigan or Michigan State instead of a Directional Michigan? Or is flagship StateU sufficient over Brown Mackie College? It’s easy to make assumptions but the subjective nature makes it extremely difficult to put into practice.
With this new data, it’s definitely not enough to say “go to the highest ranked school you can get into”. It’s impossible to tell in this data that school name is enough to sway the adcom in the classic “two identical applicants for the last spot…” scenario either.
Real life being what it is, fit is still king, and no one should ever make a college decision based on what some hypothetical med school admissions committee claims to value.
Lastly, I disagree with the analysis of med school acceptance lists as being anything more than anecdotal evidence. I’m willing to bet large amounts of money that there is a significant self selection bias in the applicant pools for any and all medical schools. If you’re an excellent HS student that sought out prestige in UG admissions, you’re likely to continue valuing that. If you had great HS scores but never considered top tier schools, the search for pedigree isn’t likely to start when you apply to med school.
OP,
As pointed above, the name of your UG is not important when applying to medical school.
Specifically referring to my D’s experience, she was accepted to 3 out of your list:
Case Western Reserve
Ohio State University
Miami University-Oxford
She ended up attending Miami University-Oxford after which she was accepted to 4 medical schools, 2 were in top 20. Her experience at Miami was incredible. She did all of her medical ECs during school year at Miami, most of them were long term (3 years) engagements.