The big question of undergraduate paths left unanswered?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>So all my life I have been told to work hard, ace the SAT's and aim to get into big brand name schools like NYU, Princeton, Harvard etc...</p>

<p>However, recently in a conversation with my parents, one of which who works at a medical school as a professor, I am being told that I should start considering going to a state school (I am a NY Resident) or an average school just because I am more likely to have a higher GPA than if lets say I am a average match for some private institution like BU or NYU and I get in just because I meet their criteria and because I apply ED. </p>

<p>So have my goals of getting into a prestigious school just a big lie and in the end I can't go to BU that I have always set my mind on and must start visiting SUNYs? (Not to say they are terrible schools...)</p>

<p>I just feel like I am selling myself short here and that all my work throughout the years was only so I could guarantee admission into an average school where I could shine amongst my peers instead of challenging myself at "better" or more prestigious school.</p>

<p>What motivation do I have now as rising senior to even take the SAT for the last time or maintain even a B average?</p>

2

<p>BU? NYU? I’d be thinking your folks might have other motivations, too. Check the sticker prices. With med school as the goal, I can’t imagine they are that eager to spend the (absolutely huge) $ on schools that won’t get you much further along the road than a SUNY.</p>

3

<p>

One of my kid’s classmates went through the same. He got into HYPS and his parents initially did not want him to go there because he has two younger brothers. He was very upset for a month or so and finally his parents change their mind. He probably needs to promise his parents that he will earn big bucks right after undergraduate, rather than spending more money (through loans of course) to go to a medical school. Poor kid! Last time I heard about him, he was indeed trying to break into that field, being an economics and math majors. Do not know how successful he is in landing a summer intern “job hunting” though. His school’s name helps, but he has zero connection – Some said the latter (connection) helps a lot (I read it somewhere) and I do not know whether it is true.</p>

<p>I really think your folks and curm have their valid points. It is just not easy for the parents to talk to their S/D in a very convincing way. Your hardwork still pays off if you can get your education funded at a school like NYU. – shadeschildren is a very good example in getting a good education and saving a bundle, so is curm’s D. But if you can not achieve that, it is OK too as the good opportunity is very rare and the competition for a free ride is fierce.</p>

<p>If your goal is medicine, the financial issue should not be overlooked. (Well, did we ourselves overlook this? Easier said than done! Not everyone is as level headed as curm :))</p>

4

<p>

Fixed it for ya. ;)</p>

<p>On my D’s school choices, I’m 0 and 1 with one abstention. ;)</p>

5

<p>If you’re evaluating this purely from a strategic standpoint, I’d suspect that there’s three classes of schools. My personal advice, based on nothing but intuition: Go to a top-10 school if you can get in, period. Otherwise, try to go to a school where you’re approximately at the 75th percentile for SATs. Lower, and you’re depriving yourself of opportunities (not to mention it’ll be lonely). Higher, and you might be setting yourself up for too much competition.</p>

<p>That should come secondary to the financial question, of course.</p>

6

<p>^^^
I have been thinking about that alot lately BDM. My parents were actually stunned at how little we have to pay for Penn. Though, I have seen some old exams from some classes I will have to take this school year, and they seem more like intelligence tests to me. As in, the questions all try to trick you and often could be read multiple different ways. So, I am a little worried I will do significantly worse at this school than I would at my local state school. So with that in mind, are top 10 schools still better to attend than state universities if you do notably worse at the top tier school?</p>

7

<p>1. It’s okay to do a little bit worse if you’re at Penn.</p>

<p>While it’s true that grades (after SAT scores are controlled for) tend to be lower at the Ivies, you’ll notice that medical schools do indeed seem to cut students some slack. The average GPA for a Penn student who gets into medical school, last I checked, was less than 3.4.</p>

<p>And that’s the AVERAGE. Since medians and means are often pretty close, that seems to suggest that half of Penn students who get into medical school do so with less than a B+ average.</p>

<p>Nationally, that number is closer to 3.6. A big difference.</p>

<hr>

<p>2. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at your academic performance.</p>

<p>More to the point, students at the upper Ivies tend to be so closely clustered together that it’s really impossible to predict how well they’re going to do going in – most of the academic pool* is about equally qualified. I think you’ll find that there is, indeed, a method to the madness on these exams. You’re an incoming freshman; you’ll be learning a great deal even during these first few months.</p>

<p>(Since you’re at Wharton, this is especially true. My guess is that a lot of these ambiguities are resulting from business-speak which you’re simply not familiar with yet.)</p>

<p>(*The WSJ estimated that about 55% of Duke’s class of 2006 was there for academic reasons – the rest were various “specialty” admissions who were underqualified.)</p>

<hr>

<p>3. Small, elite private schools take VERY good care of their students.</p>

<p>Let’s say, hypothetically, that you start failing. The good news is that you have brilliant classmates who can frequently serve as informal tutors anyway. You will often carry them; they will often carry you.</p>

<p>And if that fails, the Ivies have excellent academic counseling. They have great formal tutors available. They’ll actively keep tabs on you, advise you on what schedules are easy or hard, help you balance your workload.</p>

<p>And, finally, you’ll find that some of your professors will even be flexible. This might be less true at Wharton, but nonetheless I think you’ll find that they’ll walk you through rough drafts of your papers, help you talk through your errors on practice tests, and sometimes – just maybe – give you extensions if you’re proactive and if you really need them.</p>

8

<p>bdm: I am having a hard time understanding your SAT percentile thing…</p>

<p>Otherwise, try to go to a school where you’re approximately at the 75th percentile for SATs. Lower, and you’re depriving yourself of opportunities (not to mention it’ll be lonely). Higher, and you might be setting yourself up for too much competition.</p>

<p>So are you saying that its good to put yourself at around the 75th percentile of the class? And that if you are HIGHER than 75 than you have too little competition but LOWER than 75 than you are missing out on the opportunities in the school?</p>

9

<p>I meant: if the school is higher-ranked (such that your SAT score falls considerably below their 75th percentile), then you might be setting yourself up for too much competition.</p>

<p>If the school is lower-ranked (such that your SAT score is too much above their 75th percentile), you might find that it gets lonely and that you are missing out on opportunities.</p>

10

<p>

This may be true at other top colleges as well.
When we helped DS move into the college and ate our lunch at the Common cafeteria, one student sitting next to us said to one of his friends that “he is struggling.” It appears he had a lot of pressure while being there. There are sometimes easier classes. These underqualified students, and, yes, some qualified, highly grade efficient premeds as well (this is an unpleasant aspect of being a premed: not all classes are created equal but the medical school adcoms can not know it), would flock to these classes. The definition of grade efficiency: the highest grade with the least efforts. For such students, it may be too de-moralizing to sign up with some great but challenging classes. They may receive the short-end of the education just because other students are more well prepared (This is especially true in the foreign language classes: Some students are so much well prepared than others and they are almost guaranteed to get an A no matter how hard these “other” students try to “beat” them.) Some rank-1 students from some average high schools may suffer in some classes also if he is too lopsided toward one discipline only. These students often can barely get into a lower-ranked medical school if they stay on the premed track.</p>

<p>I think this is why BDM wrote every student should go to a school where he is challenged but not overwhelmed.</p>

11

<p>What do you have against state school? It is not clear, if Med. is in your plan, but if it is, it does not matter what UG you are going. Classes are extremely challenging everywhere, Med advosiry/committee/board is very helpful everywhere. In fact, I am discovering that my D. who is at state school is well ahead of many others in her Med. School application process. Her classes have been challenging and she was very well prepared for MCAT and got very decent score… She had awesome opportunities at her college and took great advantages of all of them, which also included that fact that her tution and good portion of R&B were covered by Merit scholarships. She has always worked very hard just like you have and continued to do the same at college. She had comletely different attitude about college though and strongly believes that the success is much more up to a student than the name of UG college. Be proud of your achievements and be thankful to your family for their support. You will be fine at any place if you continue working hard. Best wishes!</p>

12

<p>I’ve spoken with a former admissions officer at your son’s school, and he seems to think the proportion is much higher than 45% of underqualifieds. He gave a more precise estimate, but I don’t remember it offhand.</p>

13

<p>I was always under the impression that state schools were tougher than privates because of the grade deflation and huge weedout classes…people always make it seem as if privates (esp. Ivys) are so easy to get good grades at because of the rampant grade inflation.</p>

<p>So is this a myth to be debunked? Are top privates actually hard to get good grades at (if one’s SAT score is about 50th percentile or 60th)? </p>

<p>If one is probably 90 percentile at a state school SHOULD the student end up doing very well (should he or she worry about grade deflation, weedout, etc.)?</p>

14

<p>Grades are higher at top privates. Standardized test scores are also higher. I’ve never done the math with the SATs, but I have done it with outgoing LSAT scores. If you’ll pardon the English:</p>

<p>LSAT scores are more higher at elite schools than grades are higher. (That is, delta-S is larger than delta-G.)</p>

<p>That’s much more meaningful than the grades variable on its own, since it tells you what students are actually doing to earn those grades.</p>

<hr>

<p>With that said, see my #7 for reasons why I still recommend top privates (top 10 schools) if you can get into them.</p>

<p>Generally, if you’re dramatically above the 75th SAT percentile, you should be able to get pretty high grades. Exceptions for everything, of course.</p>

15

<p>DS once commented that a very high percentage of the premeds who still stay on the premed track after a few weeding classes are from public high schools, or a selected few competitive private high school. I do not know whether he exaggerates it or not. He also kind of hinted that, even if the grade is not so great, the kid from a public high school still tries to stay on the track, while kids from other background more likely switch to other career paths.</p>

<p>There are also a group of kids who do not care much about the grade, and they seem to have no problem in getting a decent job right after graduation.</p>

16

<p>Harvard and Princeton are one thing, BU and NYU an entirely different thing. I’d pay for the first 2, but if my kid were headed for med school I woudn’t spend the money on the last 2 over most SUNYs. They are not good enough schools to warrent the price difference.</p>

17

<p>BDM:</p>

<p>Thanks so much for making those three points. I hadn’t really considered advising at these top schools. Plus, its comforting to know that 50% of premeds with a 3.3 make it into med school.</p>

18

<p>Sorry, what I meant was: 50% of premeds who get in have less than a 3.4.</p>

19

<p>I gottcha BDM. Man, that is still stunning, though. Do you know if that statistic is the norm among top 10 schools?</p>

20

<p>"If one is probably 90 percentile at a state school SHOULD the student end up doing very well (should he or she worry about grade deflation, weedout, etc.)? "</p>

<p>-I can only speak from my D’s experience. I do not know her percentile, however, she had decent scores and graduated #1 from private college prep. HS (100% placement to 4 year colleges). She had to work extremely hard to continue to be successful at her state college. Some classes were much more challenging than she expected, some were easy (like Gen. Chem.). She knows good number of valedictorians from private schools in her Honors program that switched their career after first Bio class whcih has been known as weed out killer. It was taught by 3 profs. being in a classroom at the same time at every lecture, each teaching their specialty. Most (all?) of these top kids had AP Bio and I am sure that most had “5” (just like my D.). Do not kid yourself thinking that going to state school for pre-med is easy. It is not. D. ended up doing very well because of her exceptional work ethic. This also resulted in very many opportunities outside of classroom. Grade inflation/deflation is outside of your control. Just go to any UG that seems to be a good match to your personality, work hard, get very high GPA, decent MCAT, and you will be fine.</p>