School Choices: Undergrad Reputation vs. Big Fish, Small Pond as a Premed

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I'm relatively new to these forums as a member though I've been lurking for some time trying to discern an answer to my troubles. While I've gathered a good bit of info from perusing, I figure I may as well posit my question to others directly. </p>

<p>I am currently a student at DePaul University with a major in Biology. After an initial struggle to get acclimated to collegiate life, I've flourished academically, obtaining a 3.9 GPA over the last year, taking primarily science & math courses. </p>

<p>I was accepted to University of Illinois: Urbana Champaign as a transfer for spring semester. I decided to apply figuring if I was doing this well at DePaul, I might as well take a chance and challenge myself more. </p>

<p>However, now I'm not quite so sure what the right decision is. From looking through the forums I've discerned that medical school admissions is largely a numbers game and the prestige of your university is not very significant. </p>

<p>This, coupled with the facts that I'll be losing some credits and take a hit to my GPA in the quarter to semester transition and that I'll need to find a new research lab to get involved in/make new connections has me second guessing my decision.</p>

<p>Conversely, I have a gut feeling that I can do well at UIUC and that the reputation it has for the sciences compared to DePaul's relative lack thereof will serve me well in medical school application / future scientific pursuits. </p>

<p>Not sure how I should go about attributing importance to these relative factors. Any insight CCers could toss my way would be greatly appreciated!
(P.S. Apologies for the breadth of the post).</p>

<p>Being comfy at your UG, feeling good about the place is the most important IMO. If you do so at your current place, why change? And yes, Med. School application is a number game more than anything else. ANY UG will be fine. Sometime state of residence have higher importance (even for privates, but more so for publics) than name of your UG, again IMO.</p>

<p>Is UIUC an “audo-invite” undergraduate school? By that, I mean if a student from there applies to a certain medical school with a certain GPA AND a certain MCAT score, he will be guaranteed to get an interview invite from this particular medical school. There are not many of these kinds of medical schools though.</p>

<p>Somehow I guess UIUC is not. I know UT-Austin is not. Maybe UC Berkeley is. I think UIUC is mostly famous for its engineering programs, not so much in other areas. But I could be wrong.</p>

<p>I tend to agree with MiamiDAP that there is no need to change the school.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I partially disagree with this statement and I know that some of my fellow posters have a different opinion as well. But from my own experience, I can tell you that at the top 20 med schools, most of the premeds that get interviews come from top 20 undergrad schools. I am seeing way too many students with 3.9-4.0s GPAs and 40+ MCATs that are not getting ANY interviews at Ivies, Hopkins, Stanford and other top notch med schools. The research and ECs are there, but they all share coming from lower ranked third tier private or state schools. I do not think it is a coincidence.</p>

<p>Schools like Wash U, Duke, Mayo and even UCSF (if you are from California) seem not to have a problem with your undergrad as long as you have those “great” numbers. However the east coast top schools seem to be more reluctant to grant them interviews.</p>

<p>You will always find some exceptions, but after having surprising amount of interviews and talking to a lot of applicants/interviewees I do believe it is true.</p>

<p>Having gone to ASU and having gotten into top schools and offered about 20 interviews with stats that were essentially average for matriculants at top schools, my opinion is that worrying about it or changing schools isn’t worth the effort. Continue on, work hard, and you’ll be fine if you have the merit.</p>

<p>Keep in mind, when we say undergrad matters, we’re talking about undergrads like Harvard or Yale or Duke. While UIUC is a fine school and certainly one with a lot of local prestige, to a top east coast med school, it’s probably not going to carry much weight.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>^^^ I am sure that other aspects of your application must have really stood out if your stats were average when compared to the average marticulant for top medical school. If you think about there are A LOT of kids with 3.8’s/35s , but they don’t all get into top medical schools, the ones that do have something that really sets them apart.</p>

<p>

This is purely anecdotal. When DS was interviewing at a top private medical school (ranked between 10 and 20 in the USN research rank) recently, it is true that a very very high percentage of interviewees are from top schools which are comparable to an ivy school.</p>

<p>I do not know whether this is caused by the “sample bias” which BRM mentioned not long ago on another thread. I forgot who posted this (likely NCG): To get into a top medical school, most (but not all) successful applicants get very good grades from a competitive college (and also the all important ECS, of course.)</p>

<p>On the other hand, to get into ANY medical school (esp. the public medical schools in your state which produce most of our future primary care doctors), I think there is really no need to go that route (i.e., go to a prestigious college). Doing well at any above average college will be good enough.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>^^ Which sucks for kids who go to top undergraduate schools (like harvard, yale, duke, princeton, stanford) and then end up going to lower tier medical schools (because they can’t get into any top medical school). These students could have gone to lower ranked undergraduate schools, which are A LOT cheaper, saved a lot of money and most likely have gotten into the same lower-tier medical school. As a result, there was no need for them to spend 200k on a top undergraduate school, when they could have spent 80k to go to an average state school, and still have done just as well. </p>

<p>My biggest fear is spending 200k at my ug school, and then ending up at a lower tier medical school (not getting into a single top medical school). Because then what is the point of spending 200k for undergrad when I could have gone to a state school (much cheaper) for undergrad and still have gotten into the same lower-tier medical school? All that money would have been spent in vain…but if by some miracle, I somehow manage to get my toe through the door at a top medical school, then IMO that 200k would have been worth it. I GUESS IT VARIES FROM PERSON TO PERSON, BUT FOR ME, 200K for undergrad is worth it, if I manage to get into a top medical school, IT IS NOT WORTH IT if I don’t…For most other parents, 200k is never worth it for undergrad, especially if they think that their kid could go to a state school and still manage to make it to a top medical school. My parents doubted the fact that I (this is personally for me, not all state school kids) would not be able to make it to a top medical school from my state school , so they sent me to the best undergrad school that I could manage to get into (WHICH, BY THE WAY IS NO WHERE NEAR A “TOP UNDERGRAD SCHOOL”)</p>

<p>You’re paying full freight for undegrad?
Ouch.</p>

<p>Emory is a top school. Tippy top? HYPSD? Obviously not …but a dang good school. I believe that 4 of my D’s MS1 classmates went there.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>^^^ Yes, which really sucks, and I should have gone to a place in-state, and save myself the $$$. </p>

<p>

^^^ that’s surprising considering how half of us won’t even make it to any medical school.</p>

<p>I think HYPSD and cornell, brown, darthmouth, columbia, Upenn, MIT, are worth 50k a year, but schools like Emory should are worth around 30-35k a year. Its def. no where near HYPSD quality, so why spend the same amount of money as HYPSD? And why spend all that money on HYPSD if you can’t make it to a top medical school (top as in top 20) from HYPSD?</p>

<p>I decided not to go to Upenn because I didn’t think it was worth it to take out 25k a year loans for undergrad. Id rather go to a school where I have a completely full ride for undergrad. if i end up getting into the same med schools (texas med schools) as i would have if i went to penn, i didn’t think it was worth it to spend 100k on the whole college experience.</p>

<p>

I, as a parent, think that it is good enough for my kid to get into any medical school (assuming that this is the career he is interested in going into.) Please remember that it is much harder to get into any medical school than to get into a top college, because the class size of a medical school is much smaller (in the order of a hundred only.)</p>

<p>Even from a top college, I heard over 70 percents of those students who successfully get into a medical school end up in a public medical school back in their home state, which is often not a highly ranked medical school according to USN. Should these students be unhappy just because of this? I really think they should NOT. Getting into any medical school is quite a great achievement in itself.</p>

<p>(BTW, I know at least one student from HYPSD who got into a medical school ranked around 60-80 a few years back. And he worked VERY VERY HARD as a college student, and used to be a rank-one student from his public high school – not a tippy top high school or a “magnet” high school.)</p>

<p>Sorry if my posts seem incoherent and have lots of grammatical mistakes, I am typing them up at 2 A.M. and I currently have the flu… =(</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>^^^ I am not worried about the time/energy investment that I’d have to put in to get into a state medical school because if I do go to a state medical school, my classmates, who went to state schools for undergrad, will have worked just as hard as me to go to that medical school. I am MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE FINANCIAL INVESTMENT that I had to put in to get into a state medical school that my classmates who went to state undergraduate schools didn’t have to make. I know that top medical schools will have a significant amount of kids who went to state schools and paid state school tution, but they will be in the minority. If I do make it to a top medical school, MOST of my classmates will have had to make significant financial investments as undergrads (because most kids at top medical schools come from top ug schools which are REALLY expensive) so I won’t be in the minority…</p>

<p>Sorry OP for hijacking your thread. As far as your question is concerned, I don’t think it matters much where you go. I’d go to the place that is CHEAPER and that you like more. good luck deciding.</p>

<p>I think you are taking a risk in changing undergraduate schools. If you maintain a 3.9 at your current school you will be competitive at many medical schools if your MCAT, essays etc are good. Changing undergraduate schools will not likely change your MCAT score, essays, EC’s etc. It is true that you might get a little boost if you transfer to Urbana and do well but if your gpa falls it will not help you and will probably hurt you.
There is also little advantage to going to one of the top medical schools unless you will be trying to get into a competitive specialty or residency. Best go to your state medical school and try to keep your education costs down. You might also enjoy medical school more if you do not attend one of the “top” medical schools. I have experience at 4 out of the top ten or so medical schools and they were stressful, competitive places.
Now I am not saying that it does not matter where you go to undergraduate school when it comes to applying to medical school. Most of the students at the schools I trained at were from Ivy league schools, large private schools like MIT, Stanford, Duke, Tufts, Chicago, top LAC’s such as Amherst, Haverford, Pomona, Smith and the top large public schools like UCB, UCLA, UCSD, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, UNC etc. I think that part of this phenomena is due to your academic record being evaluated in the context of your undergraduate school. I do think there is a bit of East coast bias as well. Much of this phenomena is also due to self selection. Students at top undergraduate schools with good records tend to apply to top medical schools. Students also tend to want to stay local so will apply mostly to medical schools near their home or undergraduate school. There are a lot “top” undergraduate schools in the east so medical schools such as Yale, Penn and Hopkins will get most of their students from those schools. Top medical schools in other parts of the country like UCSF, Michigan, Washington U etc tend to draw from a different group of “top” undergraduate schools.
In general attending the " best" undergraduate school for medical school is the one which allows you to excel. If this college is also one with prestige it will further your possibilities for medical school admission. I do not however believe that most who work in medical school admissions care if your college ranks 2 on the USNWR National list or 18th. It might be different now but we rather knew which colleges were “good’”,“average” etc in evaluating an undergraduate record. IMHO there are so many aspects of a file to consider that going to say Emory vs Yale would not come up in discussion as a factor in admission.
Undergraduate school debt should be kept moderate and thankfully many of the top undergraduate schools are very generous with grant aid. Few like Princeton and Haverford do not use loans, others will keep max loans to no more than about $20,000 to $25,000 total for an undergraduate education. I would not go heavily into debt to attend a undergraduate school with more prestige when you want to go to medical school.</p>

<p>^^^ I agree.</p>

<p>Personally, I would gladly get into some debt if I am looking for a specific “undergraduate” experience, rather than just the prestige. In my state, U Miami and U Florida are always an issue. Some of my friends would be caught dead in Gainesville with the frat atmosphere and stuck in cow land for 4 years. They have taken loans to go U Miami. Others consider them crazy for doing that and leave U Miami (even if money is not the issue) for U Florida. You need to balance it all somehow. </p>

<p>But you should be able to thrive as a student in whichever place you choose.</p>