<p>I am a Canadian High School student interested in going to a US medical school. I have a green card so I am okay in applying to all schools in the US, but will be seen as an out-of-state, right? I just have one question: Does the institution I received my undergraduate from's prestige matter? Because there are easy schools where getting a 3.7 isn' that difficult or hard schools where getting a 3.3 is difficult. Or are all schools seen the same in the US? I just wanted opinions on this especially if you have experience. Thanks.</p>
<p>You are a high school student from Canada which means you will be a non-resident unless you go to college in US and establish residency in one of the states.</p>
<p>^^Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy to establish state residency. Most public universities (and their med schools) specificly say that time spent in the state for “educational purposes” (i.e. attending college) does not count toward establishing state residency.</p>
<p>If the OP is a dependent student, his legal residence will be that of his parents. </p>
<p>Unless the OP’s parents move to the US and establish a permanent domicile, he will most likely be OOS for all public universities and state medical schools. Alternatively, he can take 1-2 gap years after college graduation to work and establish his own independent state residency.</p>
<p>Just to further clarify what others posted:</p>
<p>Having green card does not imply you are a resident of ANY state in US.</p>
<p>What is considered as a permanent resident by the fed gov. is not the same as being considered as a resident of a state.</p>
<p>As for the rest of the OP’s question----does prestige matter?</p>
<p>That’s what the search function is for! 
It’s topic that’s been discussed endlessly.</p>
<p>But basically unless you attend a handful of tippy top privates (at one end of the spectrum) or never-heard-of-it directional state U (at the other end of the spectrum), the brand name of your college doesn’t make all that much difference. The MCAT is the great equalizer.</p>
<p>But you’re probably fooling yourself to think that a 3.7 from state flagship U is going to be easier to earn than a 3.3 from prestigious but not tippy top U. </p>
<p>At most schools, the best students tend to cluster in a few STEM majors, including pre med. You’ll find stiff competition for those As no matter where you attend college.</p>
<p>A small correction to what WayOutWestMom said,</p>
<p>There will always be competition for A’s, no matter where you go, but THERE IS grade inflation at some institutions, like Stanford that gives close to 40% A’s in most of their undergraduate classes.</p>
<p>At the same time, there is grade deflation, at places like UC Berkeley, where most classes only give 10-15% A’s.</p>
<p>This is true, I have experienced it myself. Consider this before enrolling at a university of your choice.</p>
<p>This is CC. Don’t throw numbers around without posting some links to prove your point about which schools give how many As etc. It has no bearing on OPs question since he probably does not plan to attend either school but probably won’t get into Stanford anyway at 5.7% admit rate. I don’t think OOS admission to Berkeley has been that hard.</p>
<p>If you read this source, AAMC provides some information about how important different things on an application to med schools, relative to everything else on the application of course. See page 11:
<a href=“https://www.aamc.org/students/download/267622/data/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/students/download/267622/data/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf</a></p>
<p>To summarize:
If you go to a private school, selectivity matters (suggests going to a prestigious undergrad is beneficial to med school applications)
If you go to a public school, selectivity does not matter (suggests going to a prestigious undergrad does not benefit med school applicants)</p>
<p>There’s a bunch of other information on there too that I’m sure you could browse through, though it’s not really relevant to your position yet.</p>
<p>And you know, a school like Stanford would never do something like generally admit a higher caliber of student than most schools, have more difficult tests than most schools, or simply decide to award grades based on mastery of the material rather than based on relative performance of one group of students who happened to take the class that semester. </p>
<p>Any difference in the number of As awarded at one school vs. another is clearly inversely correlated with the difficulty of obtaining an A at one school vs. another.</p>
<p>coughcoughthatwassarcasmincaseitwasntclearcoughcough</p>
<p>To clarify on what I posted earlier, I’m was talking about selectivity of the undergraduate institution as important/unimportant to public or private MEDICAL SCHOOLS. So, if you plan on attending a private medical school, then the reputation of your UG institution will play a significant role in your application. For public medical school, not so much.</p>
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<p>I think this is bit of an overstatement, but YMMV.</p>
<p>Then there is the tricky question of what exact does “selective” mean. Are we talking HYPSM? Or are we talking about every U and LAC ranked as “highly selective” by USNews which encompasses approx 200 colleges?</p>
<p>(Somehow I doubt it’s the latter.)</p>
<p>Actually I think it would be better to say it is the latter. Going to one of the top 200 vs outside the top 200 probably has a much bigger impact on your application than HYPSM vs. Tufts/Ann Arbor/Skidmore (totally random selection of one private U, one public U and one LAC that I knew had to be in the top 200 most selective schools).</p>
<p>Also, when you say “in your application” do you mean “in reviewing your application” (in which I case I disagree with significant) or in “constructing your application” (in which case I do agree with significant). What a school does or doesn’t offer and how it fits can have a major impact on how you develop yourself, but I have a feeling that’s not what you meant…</p>
<p>and to be clear, my sarcastic post was not in response to you shirafune, but in response to jweinst</p>
<p>to post #9 -----s l o w c l a p :)</p>
<p>@WOWM I would think that selective is just sugar coated to mean prestige. Obviously, prestige can be offensive to some universities and it would just be better to say selective in its admitted students. And clearly prestige we associate with schools like HYPSM are in part a result of how selective their admissions process is. I was also very surprised when UG selectivity was mentioned as a top priority for private medical schools. But only for the fact that AAMC decided to lump that criteria with other very important academic metrics like GPA and MCAT score, it’s a little hard for me to not say that it’s an important factor for adcoms to consider, even if I don’t want to believe it. </p>
<p>I suppose the easiest way to clarify my thoughts is that given this information (I don’t know what would be a better source than what AAMC has provided here), adcoms may decide to use UG selectivity for knit-picking between who gets or doesn’t get acceptances for applicants of similar academic/extracurricular backgrounds. That being said, the prestige of your UG won’t save you from a poor GPA nor will it exclude you from interviews (given that the rest of your application is acceptable). Among the highest importance factors, UG selectivity is intuitively the least important. However, it can’t be overlooked as something with little impact. Seeing as how competitive the admissions process has become, this is probably one of the many things I would take as that slight slight edge you might get.</p>
<p>To conclude, if you can get into schools like HYPSM or other tippy-top schools, then you probably already have everything you need to succeed on the pre-med path, just don’t burn out in however many years it takes for you to feel confident for applying in a particular cycle. If you can get into a very selective university, consider going to a less competitive but still highly well-known institution. You’ll probably succeed at the top of your class and do some amazing things there anyways. Plus, there are so many things to consider about your UG campus. Does it have many research opportunities? Is it affiliated with a medical school/hospital where you might be able to volunteer? How are the pre med advising resources there? Will you even like the campus/city? I mean you’re going to be there for another tough but hopefully rewarding 4+ years. Prestige is probably one of the least of your worries when considering a UG institution for the pre-med track.</p>
<p>I’m always perplexed when this subject comes up as to why it’s so controversial. Several of the places where D has interviewed this year have actually given profiles as to undergraduate institutions the current first years attended. One that comes to mind, for instance, had boldfaced those where three+ attended. My point is that this info is of public record at many med schools; they’re not trying to hide anything so you can look for yourself and determine if you think prestige/rank matters at specific schools that interest you. D has said it’s been her experience that at some of her interviews, UG reputation, she felt, clearly mattered whereas at others, there was a much broader spectrum.</p>
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<p>But that doesn’t answer the question especially when the top schools attract top students. Do the top schools do so well because the students were already great to begin with or did they get in because they went to a top school? If students were randomly allocated to all the colleges and universities and the top schools still wound up graduating the bulk of med students (or didn’t) then you could say it’s clear.</p>
<p>it’s controversial because without sitting inside a bunch of admissions committee meetings and seeing how applicants are evaluated, you really can’t know.</p>
<p>I agree with the part: “you really can not know.”</p>
<p>During the past holiday, we brought up the topic of who in his high school graduating class is going to med school now. There are less than 10 students. It appears almost all of these students were top (say, roughly top 18 out of about 600) students in their high school. About a half of the students went to a top (not tippy top) college.</p>
<p>This is just one data point though.</p>
<p>If we talk about, say, top 10 research med schools (it does not imply that this is important), it appears there are higher percentage of students who were graduated from a top 10 (or top 15) college. An example is that 20+% of DS’s class came from 2 colleges alone.</p>
<p>Another phenomenon is that at many (not all) top (but not very tippy top) med schools (like UTSW or BCM), there seems to be a higher percentage of ORM, as compared to that in top colleges. (But it is not as skewed as, say, Cal, Caltech, or some very top magnet public school in NYC where the stats or test scores are everything in their admission. For that particular high school in NYC, as high as 69% in their incoming class were ORM. (Maybe this phenomenon is also because the families of these ORM students can not afford to send their offsprings to the high power prep schools, but the families of upper-middle class can afford to. So they do not compete against each other in the same high school. I heard of the same phenomenon in Bay Area in California, in a public school district like cupertino.)</p>
<p><a href=“Maybe%20this%20phenomenon%20is%20also%20because%20the%20families%20of%20these%20ORM%20students%20can%20not%20afford%20to%20send%20their%20offsprings%20to%20the%20high%20power%20prep%20schools,%20but%20the%20families%20of%20upper-middle%20class%20can%20afford%20to.%20So%20they%20do%20not%20compete%20against%20each%20other%20in%20the%20same%20high%20school.%20I%20heard%20of%20the%20same%20phenomenon%20in%20Bay%20Area%20in%20California,%20in%20a%20public%20school%20district%20like%20cupertino.”>QUOTE=mcat2</a>
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<p>Cupertino is an expensive area, so it is not like the students in the school district come from poor families (although most of the academically elite private schools in the region are expensive). The argument may be more relevant in districts which include lower and middle income areas as well as upper income areas.</p>
<p>The particular public high school in NYC referred to in post #117 is Stuyvesant (from wikipedia). Each class of this high school consists of 800 students. Wonder how many from this public high school end up going to med school? I think the percentage must be higher than that of DS’s high school ( which is about, say, 7 or 8 only.)</p>
<p>Since ivies’s distributions are not like this (like 15% to 18%, excluding those students applying from English-speaking/“Americanized” high schools for the elite families overseas) these ORMs apparently “lose out” in their achievement in the EC areas in their college admission.</p>
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<p>Orm? Orm? Orm? Orm?</p>