<p>from what ive heard, the acceptance rate into medical school for stanford undergrad students is about 70-75%...why is this percentage so low? especially in comparison to HYPM..which have acceptance rates upwards of 90%?</p>
<p>to be honest, i’ve always wondered the same thing. people who are qualified seem to get in.</p>
<p>my personal guess is that a lot of “pre-med” students aren’t actually sure they want to go to med school and therefore don’t put full effort into the application process.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about Stanford, but I have heard that at Yale that they weed people out for pre-med so that the group applying was already quite a strong self-selected group who really want to go into medicine.</p>
<p>That’s what I had heard (before I had even come to Stanford)–that Yale and Harvard ‘weed out’ students they think will lower their acceptance rates to med school. Also, consider that Stanford’s probably grade-deflated in the majors that pre-med students often take (at worst, it’s not as grade-inflated as those majors at Yale and Harvard), which will lower your GPA and make it harder to get into med school. Even those who are majoring in something like human biology still have to take the grade-deflated pre-med courses (like Chem 31), which might be Stanford’s de facto way of weeding out students. This is just anecdotal, but from what I’ve seen, Stanford tends to have a lot students who are applying for MD/PhD programs, which are much tougher to get into than MD programs.</p>
<p>also, one more reason that pre-med students do less well in pre-med classes is that they are also competing in pre-med classes against engineers. at harvard and yale, etc., there are fewew engineers, and many of their programs are not highly recognized, so there isn’t that added element of competition.</p>
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<p>What about Princeton? The students at P experience more grade deflation than their Stanford counterparts, and yet their medical school acceptance rate has been 90+% for at least the past 10 years. I don’t think the supposed “grade deflation” is the reason…</p>
<p>This is an interesting question. I’m not premed, but one thing I wonder is whether the premeds at Stanford typically apply to the same range/number of medical schools as the premeds at some peer schools do. If they tend to apply to fewer med schools per applicant and/or within a narrower range, that might have some bearing on the acceptance discrepancy (and on the validity of the % comparisons). Or might the advising for premeds at Stanford have some relevance? If I were contemplating premed I’d want to gain a better understanding of this, and from a source more reliable than CC.</p>
<p>^^ that was the point I was about to make–the % acceptance is for those who were accepted to at least one, could be Podunk State med school, doesn’t matter. It’s like how certain elite high schools say, “100% of our seniors get into college,” but that doesn’t tell you how many got into a school they prefer. Basically, it all depends on how ‘safe’ you are with your application choices.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so–there’s this weird rumor that Princeton is more grade-deflated (perhaps people see it as more rigorous because they require a senior thesis?), and it might be on the whole, but I seriously doubt it, especially when you consider average GPAs at each (they’re virtually the same). And again, it just depends on the major. It could be that some majors at Stanford are more grade-deflated than their Princeton equivalents, and vice versa.</p>
<p>There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this if you think about it and it is the following: the medical schools in the state of California in general (and in the University of California system in particular) are among the most competitive ones in the country with respect to admissions.</p>
<p>Many pre-meds at Stanford and its peers tend to apply to top 10 medical schools as reaches and top 20-30 medical schools as matches and the public medical schools in their home state as safeties. So for example, anecdotally, I know upperclasspersons at Stanford from Ohio who are applying to Ohio State as a fallback option or those from New York who are applying to one or more of the SUNY’s as fallback options and so on. The problem that a significant number of Stanford premeds (i.e. the California residents) face is that they need to treat UC affiliated medical schools as fallbacks. To many of them, the least acceptable medical school to which they will apply would be UC schools. From a ROI point of view, it makes a lot of sense. It may not be in their interest to go deeply into debt for an OOS state medical school or a much lower ranked or unranked medical school.</p>
<p>are you making the argument that stanford has more grade deflation than princeton? because princeton’s grade policy is called grade deflation, where no more than 35% of all grades can be A’s, which include A-'s. Our average GPA is a 3.2, while the average at HYS is more near 3.5 - 3.6. Princeton students find B and B+'s to be the norm, while A-'s seem to be more common at HYS. And isn’t it true that an A+ is a 4.3 at stanford? I thought stanford was more known for its grade INflation, not deflation.</p>
<p>@phatasmagoric
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<p>Exactly my point. Obviously I can’t attest to that since I haven’t taken classes at both Stanford and Princeton (or any college classes at all, yet), but I wouldn’t call Princeton’s grading policy a ‘rumor’.</p>
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<p>As I said multiple times, it depends on the major.</p>
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<p>Calling it grade deflation doesn’t make it so. An average 3.2 does not make it “deflated” but “less inflated on average than its peers.” And even them I’m wary of it–where are your sources that Princeton’s average GPA is 3.2, and the others are at 3.5-3.6? I know of a site that lists this, but it’s old data.</p>
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<p>Again, you really have no experience here, so you might want to limit yourself in what you say. Also, I could say the same about Stanford regarding the ‘norm’–more B’s and B+'s; other majors, though, are more grade-inflated and you’ll find more A’s and A-'s. Actually, because students have so much difficulty at Stanford and are often faced with grades that aren’t what they got in high school, Stanford has started “the Resilience Project” to keep up student morale (google it).</p>
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<p>The policy of it isn’t a rumor, but the judgment/perception of it seems exaggerated by students. I think this is because, even a few years after the “grade-deflated policies” were instituted, students are still upset with them. And it could be that Princeton was simply so grade-inflated before the policies, the decrease in average GPA seems more drastic than if they were to be as grade inflated as its peers. That would explain why Princeton has been the only one to institute such policies (see article linked below). I honestly don’t believe that *on the whole * Princeton is so much “deflated” on an absolute scale but simply not as grade-inflated as its peers. That’s supported by the fact that the average graduating GPA is a 3.4 at Princeton. Even if Stanford’s is 3.5 (which it was in 2005), that difference is pretty insignificant–at best, Princeton is “slightly less grade inflated,” but surely not “grade deflated” on an absolute scale.</p>
<p>But I’ll repeat my main point: some majors are going to be deflated, and some are going to be inflated. When I said that some pre-med majors are more grade-deflated than others, at the very least in comparison to those majors at its counterparts, you commented on Princeton, implying that Princeton has grade-deflation, in comparison to Stanford, in every major. I very seriously doubt that.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t let me edit it, but here’s the article I found that mentions Princeton’s average GPA is 3.4</p>
<p><a href=“At Princeton University, Grumbling About Grade Deflation - The New York Times”>At Princeton University, Grumbling About Grade Deflation - The New York Times;
<p>this is my one reason for not wanting to go stanford.</p>