<p>That is just my guess. I am not sure. Page’s father and Brin’s father were both professors. Why did they not send their kids to a better college if their kids had a chance? Money should not be an issue.</p>
<p>Well, as a counterpoint, one could just as easily make the argument that from a practical point of view, people in charge will choose selection criteria that they would *not *be selected by in order to shore up weaknesses. Zuckerberg is not very good at coding, but that certainly didn’t affect his hiring standards when Facebook was in its infancy (or, in a way, it did - he hired better coders). Either way, this is a rather trivial point, and I doubt we’ll ever find out their SAT scores. ;)</p>
<p>To datalook: Had to laugh about your post. I am a professor. Money is an issue for our family. In fact, professorial families are very likely to meet the threshold to be full pay at HYPSM+C; yet their incomes are not high enough to avoid the need for some noticeable sacrifices, in order to pay full freight. </p>
<p>Beyond that, someone who is a professor at the University of Michigan or the University of Maryland, College Park probably has a fairly good understanding of the level of the faculty at his/her university as compared to the faculty at HYPSM+C. He/she also knows how well a strong student can do, coming from one of the not quite so prestigious schools (especially if the student is not interested in finance).</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, neither Page nor Brin posts his SAT scores on the Internet, at least not in a way that a quick search turns up. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I did find that Brin is listed as one of the alumni of the program at the Center for Talented Youth, where initial qualification is based entirely on standardized test scores (with the SAT typically taken in 7th grade). The cut-off scores for CTY are not especially high now, but I think that back in 1986 or so, they did not have as much additional programming, and the cut-off scores were higher.</p>
<p>Also Brin won the Abramowitz Prize in mathematics at the University of Maryland–that would almost certainly be Abramowitz of Abramowitz and Stegun. I wouldn’t underestimate his skill in English, since he immigrated to the US at age 6, although he was apparently home-schooled part of the time, to maintain his fluency in Russian.</p>
<p>MIT and Stanford are not equal i nSTEM. MIT is better. stanford is a mre well rounded school , but MIT is a more well rounded STEM school. MIT has nuclear eng, transportation engineering, nano tech engineering majors, chem-bio eng, macro-electro-mechanical eng and other degrees (fully accredited majors) that stanford does not have.</p>
<p>Hello,
I am currently at Stanford (visiting) and really need to make a choice soon. I didn’t really feel at home at Stanford and think I may only feel at home at mit because of mites. I am interested in a premed track with a major in bio or biomedical engineering. Any advice? Any pros and cons that may make a major difference? I dislike the big campus of Stanford, but is that really a valid complaint? Is the lack of a med school at mit a big con, considering Stanford med really prefers its own undergrads?
Thanks! </p>
<p>Sent from my SPH-D710 using CC</p>
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<p>If you feel at home at MIT, then that is a major plus. It doesn’t matter why.
Grading is easier at Stanford, even in biology I think. I had smart friends say that the grading in the bio lab classes at MIT was very subjective, so I think they might have gotten some B’s there. </p>
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<p>It is a perfectly valid complaint. Campus feel is important. You want to feel comfortable there.</p>
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Never thought about that one. How strong is the preference? </p>
<p>If you are confident in yourself as a student, I would go to MIT based on what you said here. Think hard about whether you are really interested in biomedical engineering. There is no real advantage over pure biology as a major, and it often is a GPA-killer.</p>
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<p>FWIW, no statistics on grading by department have been released. Stanford also hasn’t released average GPA for 20 years.</p>
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<p>Stanford also has human biology, which is the most common premed major, and it’s known to be a bit easier (so presumably GPAs are higher, but I haven’t heard of any statistics on that either). Of course, humbio majors still have to take the same premed requirements that bio, BME, etc. majors have to.</p>
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Not really – there are plenty of hospitals in Boston for volunteering, and it’s possible to take classes at Harvard Med or to do research in labs there.</p>
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<p>I really doubt this. I taught at Stanford a couple of years ago as an invited professor, and although I’m a historian by profession, I can tell you that nearly a fourth of the students in the upper-division course I taught had entered Stanford as pre-med and dropped out because it was “just so hard.”</p>
<p>Instincts are important. If you feel that you belong at MIT, that’s probably where you should go.
:-)</p>
<p>Mollie, I’m talking about that con in terms of admission. It seems as if it would be easier to gain admittance to Stanford med from Stanford, but what benefit would mit have in that way? </p>
<p>Also, the Stanford med acceptance rate for Stanford undergrads is about 14 percent, I think. </p>
<p>Sent from my SPH-D710 using CC</p>
<p>Does MIT encourage its graduates to go to medical schools?</p>
<p>Well, I qualified it with “I think.” I didn’t even consider the premed courses like orgo; I was talking about courses in the bio department.
It’s just based on talking to friends; I have a lot who went to both places. MIT is notorious for grade deflation; the average GPA overall tends to be around 4.2/5.0, though grading policies do vary between engineering and science. (My experience is that grading is a bit harder in engineering than science at MIT.) I think about 15-20% of people got A’s in organic chemistry when I was there.</p>
<p>There was a whole thread devoted to this before and Phant and I argued at length about it, but I think Stanford admits some premeds who aren’t as strong academically but are stronger in other respects (leadership/service ECs, athletics,) moreso than MIT does. Obviously Phant (a Stanford student) contested this, and I’ll just say the point is arguable. I don’t want to derail the thread.</p>
<p>The people who said that the upper-level bio lab courses at MIT were subjective got A’s in organic chem, which is the typical weed-out course. This tells me that it just wasn’t tough because “premed is tough,” but that it was tough because of the (subjective) grading. </p>
<p>Admission rates to medical school may not tell you much, because people drop out of premed due to low grades. Some school (not MIT, but I don’t know about Stanford) only sponsor an applicant if they already have a good record, boosting a school’s statistics. </p>
<p>In most humanities classes I’ve been in at MIT,they give out A’s and B’s. I don’t know what the split is. This may be easier than at Stanford, but I wasn’t referring to the STEM classes, where the grading was harder. In EECS, 50% of the class got C’s or lower. Typically, the mean was the cut-off. In science, it was 40% that got C’s or lower. </p>
<p>I think Mollie was a recent bio graduate, so she can tell you about the grading in those classes. The only thing I’ve heard about was the bio labs and, of course, orgo since I took this. Also, I’ve seen orgo at other top 10 places, and MIT’s is harder. Cellardweller I believe said MIT’s has significantly more material than Harvard’s class, but I don’t know the basis for that. However, if you wished, you could take a summer class in orgo at another university.</p>
<p>Anyway, I agree with CalAlum that you should go with your gut feeling, which seems to be MIT.</p>
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It’s hard for me to say – I found the lab courses quite easy in terms of grades (though they were worth every single one of the 18 units in terms of work). But that’s why I went into research, eh? 
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I don’t know (unfortunately) how many MIT students have applied to Stanford Med in the last three years, but the prehealth data says 42 were accepted. (Data [here](<a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/'08-'11acceptancesbyschool.pdf]here[/url]”>http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/'08-'11acceptancesbyschool.pdf)</a>)</p>
<p>Of course, there are about 100 medical school applicants from MIT per year, so if three-quarters of them applied to Stanford over four years, 42/300 would be 14%. I doubt there were that many applicants to Stanford, so it’s reasonable to think that MIT’s acceptance rate to Stanford Med is actually higher than Stanford’s.</p>
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What do you mean by “encourage”? There’s no institutional pressure to attend medical school, but there is a lot of institutional support, through the Careers Office and through the departments. About 50 undergrads, 5% of each class, apply to medical school each year.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a direct answer to the question, but in my opinion, the student culture of MIT does a far better job of encouraging the typical math/science/engineering student to persist. At Stanford, it’s really easy to melt away into the humanities. When the Stanford students I met spoke about having dropped the sciences, they talked about how hard it was to study late into the night when roommates and dorm mates were humanities majors with – let’s face it – relatively light course loads.</p>
<p>The student culture of MIT is a two-edged sword. Somewhere on the admissions website someone compared the MIT experience to climbing Mount Everest in the company of friends. That kind of support can carry you over the finish line. On the other hand, if you give up the goal and choose to become an English major, you may feel somewhat isolated in a sea of STEM students.</p>
<p>Still – if on some level the idea of climbing a really difficult mountain in the company of friends appeals to you, then in my opinion, you really do belong at MIT.</p>
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<p>That is absolutely true. To my knowledge, MIT is the only school where the number of engineering majors INCREASES between sophomore and senior years. The Harvard Crimson had a recent article that the dropout rate among engineering majors at Harvard was over 75%. As a premed at MIT, whether your major is in engineering or science, you would never drop out because the work is too challenging: there are just no easy majors to fall back on. </p>
<p>My D was premed at MIT and according to her the school makes it easy quite for premeds: The GIRs cover all the prereqs except orgo so that could take the MCAT at the end of sophomore year. Getting a decent GPA (3.5+) is not easy by any means but is facilitated by factors such as exploratory options and the fact that UROPs can be graded and typically tend to boost your GPA. Even though classes are challenging, there is also no limit to how many As can be given in a class, so you never feel you are competing for grades. Quite a few premeds also cross register for Orgo at Harvard as opposed to taking the class at MIT which is more geared to chem majors. Advising was also excellent and it was very easy to volunteer at top hospitals such as Mass General. Everybody she knew who ever wanted to go to medical school was accepted.</p>
<p>I’m slightly surprised at the idea of dropping engineering to go to a discipline that is easier. It would seem that if engineering were really a strong interest of the individual, it wouldn’t happen unless the student were truly in danger of failing out. In a school with both easy majors and difficult ones, presumably a lot of those who pursue the difficult ones would be very passionate about it, and infect the others with some of that enthusiasm enough to get them through the tough times.</p>
<p>I’m an electrical engineer and the parent of a Junior who wants to be a physicist. </p>
<p>A lot of engineers, myself included, took up engineering because we were really good at math and science. We had no direction of our own. 17 years old is just too damn young for many to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Lacking any alternative ideas, we just went with the suggestions of our guidance counselors and our parents.</p>
<p>It turned out that I loved electrical engineering, but many of my friends from school went into other fields… financial analysts, lawyers, technical sales, one became a surgeon. The good news is an engineering education is a great preparation for many things… not just engineering.</p>
<p>Although my son seems drawn towards physics, I wonder if it isn’t just because he’s a math and science whiz. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of engineering students have started down that path because they were guided there, not drawn by a strong interest, much less “passion” for it.</p>
<p>Well, sure I understand that. I considered becoming an engineer at some point in my life, and switched paths, but I still remained in the general realm of STEM. </p>
<p>What I really meant was that I would think it wouldn’t even be a plus point necessarily to “stick to engineering” despite the challenge, as opposed to switching to a humanities field, if engineering weren’t a path in which one has a future. </p>
<p>If career path (as opposed to interest in the field being strong) is one’s motivation, well that should be sufficient to keep one in a field that has a future given one’s level and inclinations.</p>
<p>Hello. I just wanted to mention that the OP has chosen Stanford. Although I am a Stanford student, I also love MIT. I had the same decision to make as the OP a couple of years ago, and it can be a tough one. But I’m very satisfied with my choice for many reasons. Also, I would like to comment on CalAlum’s remark about “melting away into the humanities” at Stanford. I think the main reason some students switch from STEM to humanities at Stanford is that the humanities offerings are uniformly outstanding and very comprehensive. Many students who previously had focused almost exclusively on STEM topics discover a fascination with, and capability in, the humanities while at Stanford. Sometimes these students pick interdisciplinary majors that combine STEM and non-STEM fields, and sometimes they design their own majors. For those that leave STEM because they think others in their dorms have lighter workloads, STEM might not have been a genuine calling in the first place. Best wishes to everyone in this admissions cycle. Choosing between Stanford and MIT is a great “problem” to have! : )</p>