<p>@ Silence - I like your viewpoint on things.</p>
<p>I think I’ll keep that in mid when I apply next year.</p>
<p>This is some good eye-opening stuff here.</p>
<p>“According to stats, that I read before very few of Cornell undergrads for example end up getting accepted to Med School.”</p>
<p>You read something very strange.</p>
<p>Not really. It was somewhere in the Med forum here at CC. I read it last year though, so Im not going to bother finding it. It had links and stats and everything though. SO if you have the time, look it up.</p>
<p>I don’t think being in the 14th % of your class is an auto rejection. My friend was accepted and he was in the 35% tile or something like that and he’s white by the way.</p>
<p>“It had links and stats and everything though. SO if you have the time, look it up.”
ok
[Accepted/Applied</a> Charts for Health Careers](<a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University)</p>
<p>that was an easy zinger, great website at cornell, i wish columbia would publish the same at times. </p>
<p>this is as good as it gets: [About</a> Applying | Student Affairs](<a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/preprofessional/health/about_applying]About”>About Applying | Columbia College and Columbia Engineering) “Columbia regularly sees a very high percentage of its applicants accepted to medical school. Broadly educated students, who have been involved in life as well as books, do extremely well in the competition. The key seems to be to see yourself first as a Columbia student, and second, as a premed.”</p>
<p>EDIT: this was pretty interesting for folks to note - <a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University. if columbia or cornell are 30+ points above the national average then it says something about ‘where’ you go undergrad.</p>
<p>@monydad: Must have mixed it up with engineering then. Nonetheless, great news considering that I’m applying to Cornell :D</p>
<p>@admissiongeek: I said this before:</p>
<p>“Most of the people who do well coming from prestigious undergrad programs succeed because they are the type of driven, determined, talented people who could get into those programs. The program didn’t make them great; they were that way when they got there.”</p>
<p>Accepted!!!OMG OMG OMG</p>
<p>Why would you post that in a thread titled “rejection after rejection”? There are plenty of other threads about acceptances or all ed results in general</p>
<p>The top schools have high admissions rates to medical schools because they have good students who get high MCAT scores. If those same students had gone to SUNY Binghampton, they still would have gotten good MCAT scores and gone to a good med school. Maybe for two equal candidates at the exact admissions borderline, school will be the decisive factor, but that situation is exceptionally rare. </p>
<p>Now, investment banking and consulting are a different story. There, going to a top school is a huge boost. Even Yale English majors with mediocre grades will do better than finance majors with high GPAs from random schools.</p>
<p>true cherokee - there is the argument that it is the student.</p>
<p>i threw out two counter arguments. in the end i think there is merit to the fact that the bigger pond is more like a tidal wave and pushes students to do research and study harder thus leading to them to do better on the MCAT and be better candidates. the only way to prove what you suggest is to actually take a sample of students who were admitted to ivy-like schools, but for whatever reason chose a different school and track them against ivy-like students to see who is most likely to go to better ranked med schools. then you have a similar enough population that it reduces the disparities between the students and makes the school experience the independent variable. i’d presume, and just a hypothesis, is that there is something in school experience that matters. </p>
<p>if there is anything i’ve learned about college students over the years, even those at columbia, kids are lazy. that without some kind of inertia pushing you to do something, it is harder to be an autodidact or lone wolf. sure there are anecdotes, but i think anecdotes are only useful in terms of explaining the possible and not the probable.</p>
<p>What you describe - folks with sterling qualifications getting rejected - is common and normal for the most selective schools.</p>
<p>Example: Brown rejects 3/4 of the Valedictorians who apply and 80% of applicants who had an 800 on SAT Math.</p>
<p>There are so many “qualified” applicants that excellent qualifications are not determinative of admissions.</p>
<p>Just the way it has been for the past few years. </p>
<p>So . . . love thy safeties, and rejoice where you are accepted.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>Hi, I thought you were retiring from this Board.</p>
<p>Columbia looks for variety. Obviously, you need good SAT scores and a good GPA, but it’s really about personality and the experiences that you’ve had that set you apart at the admissions table. We have kids who’ve been through wartime Afghanistan, for example. Being on the track team and being in every school play and getting a perfect score on the SAT is not what Columbia looks for when they admit people. They look for something special, a kind of strength of character, I believe. And yes, it’s difficult to make that come across in the application, which is why the essay is so important.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that having extraordinary lifetime experiences necessarily makes one person more capable than another. I’ve lived in suburbia all my life, with a relatively stable household and no terribly adverse situations. I’ve never been threatened with fears of starvation or lived in a warring country. However, I can say that I’ve worked hard for my classes, I have a demanding job, and although my musical achievements are not world-renowned, I work hard for those too. I can honestly say I have passions for the few concentrated areas of my life, despite my lack of diverse experiences.</p>
<p>Yes, I consider myself lucky to have grown up with relatively few obstacles, but does that mean that I’m incapable of attending an Ivy league school like Columbia? If so, I guess I was rightfully rejected.</p>
<p>Applying to Ivies is a competition to see which person had the worst life. “Yes! I’m a cripple, I’m getting into Columbia!” “Not so fast, my parents were killed in Sarajevo! HA!”</p>
<p>^I didn’t speak of anything negative I went through, and I had an average accepted stat profile with interesting involvements and initiatives, they took me and I did fine all round. There’s no reason to belittle the accomplishments of those who make it.</p>
<p>I’m not belittling the accomplishments of those that make it, I just think that application to ivies is based equal parts on grades, extracurriculurs, how messed up your life was and sometimes race.</p>
<p>daniil - </p>
<p>how is that possible? if about 40% of students who attend harvard’s families make over 200,000$ how does that work with your equal parts. i mean it is horrible to be in the top 5% of families in the country. and same goes for most ivies.</p>
<p>anecdotes tend to obfuscate realities. it isn’t about how bad your life is, but how much do you stand out in context. and surviving conflict is a great proof of that, but so few students actually face such severe tragedies.</p>
<p>@admissionsgeek: Can you please read my “Why Columbia” essay?, for some reason I can’t reach you via private message. Is it possible that I can email it to you?</p>