<p>Umm... I think I have the most ridiculous feeling right now, it's about 50% irrational and 50% uneasiness. </p>
<p>I wanted to ask you on your opinions about second-guessing your choice of going to MIT. Has anyone felt like that before? How did you cope with it? </p>
<p>I am in the category of persons who had a great variety of choices of school of similar caliber to MIT, but instead went to MIT instead. I know it's too late to change anything right now, but I just have this awful feeling that I made the wrong choice, and I'm not even at MIT yet. One of the reasons is I might decide to do premed, and if so, MIT is probably the worst choice I could have made. Grading wise, MIT is probably the most grade deflated of all the choices I had, and I could easily have chosen HYS, where grade inflation is more rampant (and would have had an easier time to get into med school..).</p>
<p>Argh... It's just an awful feeling. I guess I needed to vent.</p>
<p>Thanks for your opinion, and input.</p>
<p>PS: I would appreciate if you could stay civil though. I know my kind of mentality is neither mature, nor advantageous, but I can't help but feel uneasy.</p>
<p>I’m also an incoming freshman, so i might not really be of help here but I’m allowed to try: </p>
<p>quote:
“I am in the category of persons who had a great variety of choices of school of similar caliber to MIT” </p>
<p>I think most of us are in this category, and I think most of us had to turn down multiple spectacular opportunities to accept MIT’s equally spectacular offer. As a result, probably a significant number of students are second guessing their decision. I see it as a (tiny) silver lining to being accepted to so many prestigious universities. </p>
<p>As you point out, (sorry if this is harsh) you already made a decision, and you can’t take it back, so you might as well forget about the other schools and just relax. There’s no sense worrying over something you can’t do anything about right??</p>
<p>I, too, have a lot of uneasiness going into MIT, and I want to be premed too. </p>
<p>But the beautiful thing about freshman year is everyone’s uneasy! Every single person has at least a little smidgen of uncertainty about how they’re going to fit in, if they’ll ever feel at home in their dorm, if they’ll accidentally overload their schedule, how they will survive classes, if they’ll ever get from orientation to graduation and still feel like they’ve accomplished something. </p>
<p>I’m tremendously scared that I’ll be very homesick, because I am traveling over 3000 miles to get to Boston entirely on my own. But I know it will be okay, since there will be tons of people traveling similar distances, but it’s hard to see that right now in my limited view of things.</p>
<p>It will be okay! You will be okay! You don’t have to be excited right at this very moment, because it’s only summer. The real fun hasn’t even begun yet.</p>
<p>I’m currently a premed student at MIT and while it definitely is hard and I could probably have an easier time at another school, I do not regret my decision to attend MIT. In fact, I would have probably regretted it if I DID NOT attend MIT. The people you meet here are simply amazing and I’ve had the best year of my life in the past year. You only get to go through undergraduate education once and I feel that MIT definitely provides you with a very unique 4 years. It teaches you to think analytically and critically, something that is needed in a doctor as opposed to just being able to blurt out memorized facts. The thing about med school is that AS LONG AS YOU GO TO MED SCHOOL, you will receive basically the same caliber of education. This is because there are very stringent requirements in becoming a doctor. Thus, unless you want to go into academic medicine (become a professor that does research, etc), the prestige of the medical school you go to does not really matter. (Of course, it helps but definitely no where near the weight given to law and business schools) </p>
<p>With that said, there are a lot of resources for premed students at MIT. We have an AMSA club, which constantly provides students with premed information. I have also been able to go on two doctor shadowings last year through this club and CAC (colleges against cancer). We are also the only school in MA with a EMS where students are able to become EMTs and volunteer their time to help with emergency medical situations. Of course, MGH, one of the best hospitals in the US, is also just one T ride away. </p>
<p>Also remember that first semester freshman year is pass/no record and second semester is ABC/no record so there is definitely time for you to adjust to the caliber of work expected here. Med schools (with the exception of one, maybe two) do not request your hidden first semester grades. I know that I didn’t do so well first semester (at least not at the level expected of premeds) but with the time adjustment, I definitely improved my grades significantly second semester (albeit not straight As, but definitely on the premed track).</p>
<p>I hope that lessened some of your worries about being premed at MIT. Feel free to ask me more questions!</p>
Might. Might have had an easier time getting into med school. The vast majority of people applying to med school from MIT get in. My feeling is that the people who don’t get in wouldn’t have gotten in from somewhere else – it’s not that they went to MIT and magically did poorly, whereas somewhere else they would have automatically been a stellar student.</p>
<p>At any rate, there are lots of things you can do at MIT to raise your GPA – for example, UROP for credit is an automatic A in most labs, and you can do UROP for credit as much as you want. </p>
<p>I strongly suspect you’ll be fine after you’re at MIT for a few weeks. Everybody gets worried the summer before college – it’s a very different thing, and you don’t really know what to expect. But those worries will get better once you’re actually at MIT, meeting people and choosing your dorm and starting classes.</p>
<p>Mollie, I’d like to point out sth though. I’ll take you as an example. I wouldn’t put you in the lazy/dull kind of student (knowing you somehow managed to be doing a PhD at Harvard in neuroscience :D). And yet, you yourself are conscious you graduated with a less than stellar GPA from MIT, one that would make you unlikely to score any med school admissions. ON the other side, you ended up with one of the top grad programs in your field, showing you’re not a bad student.</p>
<p>I’d like to speculate that if you went to your state school, you probably could have had a med-school admission worthy GPA (I also know you are probably not aiming for a career in medecine, but let’s suppose you did).</p>
<p>“My feeling is that the people who don’t get in wouldn’t have gotten in from somewhere else”</p>
<p>That’s a bit why I kind of take issue with this. It makes me feel better, knowing if I’m rejected from every med school, I shouldn’t regret my choice of MIT 4 yrs back. On the other hand, I think it’s still a little bit of self-delusion. After all, we’re talking of MIT caliber students.</p>
<p>So, two things: I didn’t try to get a med school worthy GPA, and I disagree that a 3.4 from MIT isn’t enough to get into med school. The average GPA for premeds accepted to med school from MIT is a 3.6 – with a 3.4, I would have been below average, but the acceptance rate for MIT applicants with a GPA above 3.3 is 95%, per the premed data.</p>
<p>I also don’t think I would have gotten a significantly higher GPA if I had gone to Ohio State (which was my other college choice). I’m not a hoop-jumper by nature, and memorizing facts for multiple choice tests would probably have made me stop trying at all. As it was, I did pretty well on tests at MIT because I loved the conceptual, problem-solving-based test questions.</p>
<p>Anyway, getting into med school has very little to do with how smart you are. It has to do with how good you are at jumping through hoops. And it’s abundantly possible to jump through hoops while at MIT; it’s just that most MIT students aren’t the hoop-jumping kind.</p>
<p>As much as I respect MIT, I do have to say that one thing does need to change regarding premed resources, with that change needing to be made yesterday - MIT ought to have enough premed advisors for every student who wants one. For a school with the resources of MIT to not provide that is simply embarrassing.</p>
<p>This is from the careers website: "Students and alums must request a prehealth advisor between September 1st - November 30th two years prior to their desired matriculation year to a health profession school. (Ex. If seeking fall 2011 admission to a health profession school, request a prehealth advisor between September and November 2009.)</p>
<p>Advisors are only guaranteed to individuals who fulfill the prerequisite prehealth registration meeting and submit their prehealth advisor request form by the November 30th deadline."</p>
<p>To me, that means that as long as the student applies for an adviser November 30th, two years before they plan to matriculate, they will be guaranteed an adviser. And since faraday is already premed (unlike the student in the Tech article who decided a while later), I’m sure that getting an adviser won’t be too much of a problem. </p>
<p>Of course, I have not been through the process myself and I don’t think you have either sakky, so I can’t say much more about it.</p>
<p>I’m well aware of what the stipulations are to obtain an advisor, the question is: why are there any stipulations at all? Why can’t MIT provide advisors for everybody who wants one? To quote the author: "Are you saying that because I didn’t decide this during sophomore year that I can’t get an advisor?” MIT’s peer schools such as HYPS provides advisors to every premed. Why can’t MIT do the same? </p>
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<p>Sure, but the real question is, do they care? As a corollary issue, you would think that adcoms would know that certain schools and certain majors are simply harder than others. But they don’t seem to care about that, a notion that has been discussed at great length within the premed section of CC.</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that the admissions process is a beauty contest for which it is imperative to avoid bad grades which prevent you from surmounting the initial numerical screens that are in place. If you have a 2.5/4 overall GPA, you’re not going to get into med school no matter how difficult your coursework was. But somebody with a 3.9/4 from a creampuff major from an easy school will be admitted as long as the rest of his qualifications are adequate. Sad but true.</p>
<p>sakky, I totally agree with the fact that it’s strange that MIT does not guarantee a premed adviser for everyone and steps should be taken to change that. However, the point is that faraday, the OP of the thread, who is worried about being premed at MIT should have no problem getting an adviser as he/she is already set on being premed. As long as faraday meets the deadline, a premed adviser WILL be provided. Faraday has already decided on MIT and there is no way to change that (unless he/she decides to transfer). Therefore, he//she will have to make do with MIT premed resources (which are in no ways insufficient as long as the OP seeks them out) as opposed to HYPS premed resources.</p>
<p>It seems, however, that they are less concerned about how you got that GPA and more concerned about you having a higher one. So while they certainly know this, I doubt it matters (assuming med school admissions is what everyone says it is).</p>