<p>Most of the science magnets are turning into single race hotbeds. </p>
<p>[FCPS</a> - School Profiles - Thomas Jefferson HS - Demographics](<a href=“FCPS - School Profiles - - Demographics”>FCPS - School Profiles - Thomas Jefferson HS - Demographics)</p>
<p>ORM = over-represented minority (in contrast to URM = under-represented minority). Typically in the discussions of college/med school admissions, ORM only includes asians.</p>
<p>Are the two top UCs (as UG) in California somewhat like this also?</p>
<p>One coworker once explained this phenomenon to me in this way: The recent wave of new immigrants tend to be from the families whose members are very competitive in the academics if they were staying in their home country. That is, only “top dogs”, rather than the average Asians, come here, recently with abundant financial resources as well. He said that if you take the same biased sample (of families) from US, you will get the same result.</p>
<p>It is said that in California, over 50% of investment in the residential housing market is from (many new) families coming from a single foreign country right now.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how this turned into a discussion about ORM’s and the California housing market, but to sum it all up what is your answer in short do they care where i went for my undergrad or not?</p>
<p>where you went to undergrad has a non zero effect on your chances</p>
<p>Thanks i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown question do they also care if there is grade deflation at certain schools. say your apply with a 3.5 from InsertSchoolNameHere, and there is grade deflation will the understand and cut you some slack if your MCAT is amazing or your still screwed?</p>
<p>I do not know any easy UG. Getting 3.7 is not easy at any UG as far as I know.<br>
Another point is that if you are fascinated by number of Med. Students from Ivy / Elite UGs, your fascination is connecting the wrong dots. Consider the caliber of kids accepted at Ivy / Elite UGs, then make conclusion. Yes, there are many Medical Students who were valedictorians in HS, many in private very rigorous HSs. Yes, many if these valedictorians has chosen to attend at Ivy / Elite UGs (but not my own kid, she said that she will do great anywhere and she did). the great advantage of having free UG because of Merit awards is that ability to obtain much greater family financial support while at Med. School will be much higher after family did not pay for UG. Full tuition Merit awards are not that common at Ivy’s / Elite UGs. My D. and her pre-med friends had no problem getting accepted to top 20s after graduating from state public UG. I am not even going into opportunities that top kids have at state publics that welcome them as a very cherished students. Yes, they are given more opportunities, it is extremely easy for them to get into anything their heart desire, anything that would not be so readily available to general student body, including great jobs on campus, internships of their choice, grant money for research (and great opportunity to personally apply to them), vairous nominations and awards at graduation, which are going to be listed in your application to Med. School. D. keep saying that what you do in UG is important, not your UG name. But the most important is that your UG fits your personality and wide range or current and potential interests. Another very important factor in my D’s experience was superior pre-med advising / committee. Applying early to Med. School makes a difference. Pre-med committee that is committed to student’s early application will have a very postitive impact.</p>
<p>
Ivy League schools are prohibited from awarding merit aid. You can use outside merit aid to pay for an Ivy, but no Ivy will give anyone merit money.</p>
<p>With regard to non ivy top UGs, your statement is correct.</p>
<p>mcat2,
I am a proud grandparent of the kid who is at Stuyvesant, class has 900 kids, number of applied was 30,000. No plans for Med. School though. Other than that, personality is scary the same as my D., including the constant search for less intense friends to have relaxing fun time. Talks about Ivy’s, but price tag is under huge consideration and in addition the glaring example of aunt (my D.) who has done well beyond expectations attending instate public and then moving on into Med. School with the significant number of graduates from Ivy’s and other very top UGs (prevailing number of students are from Berkeley). BTW, do not be misled with the 21% of Caucasions. These are NOT at all your average Caucasion population, these also have significant (about 20%) of kids who are from certain immigrant community well known for very high academic standards (and “push” demanding parents).
The acceptance to Stuyvesant is strictly by the test score and nothing else. But as you imagine, the kids have very wide range of interests / talents and have developed many skills outside of academics in everything, including sports / arts / music / performing. They are into school bands, sport teams, musicals, perofrmances right from the start.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Immigrants are generally among the more motivated people of those from the source country, since it takes motivation to move to a far away country.</p>
<p>The immigration system also includes visa categories for PhD students, skilled workers, etc… This further selects the immigrants relative to their source country populations.</p>
<p>So when highly motivated skilled workers, possibly with PhDs, have kids in the US, what kind of educational expectations are the kids likely to have? You can argue nature vs. nuture in the kids’ educational achievements, but those kids are likely to have both in their favor.</p>
<p>Med student here- just wanted to make it clear that by and large, prestige matters 0% to med school admissions. A 3.4 from a very tough school like Cornell will almost always be treated as worse than a 3.6 from a random state school. The only major exception is doing your Prereqs at a CC, which can hurt you. This has been shown time and time again by our admissions and all other admissions that I am familiar with. I went to a state school and am now at a top 10 medical school- many of my classmates also went to random state schools.</p>
<p>It is very very very very very small but it is certainly not genuinely 0, and I’m not even thinking about unconscious biases yet.</p>
<p>I watched my md/phd committee question the difficulty of obtaining a 4.0 at a state school and the dean of admissions of my med school was trying to figure out who to give the last wait list acceptance to last year and mentioned the schools when talking about the applicants. It’s clearly a factor, just (rightfully so) not as important as your actual accomplishments.</p>
<p>I watched my md/phd committee question the difficulty of obtaining a 4.0 at a state school a</p>
<p>That seems like an odd question w/o consideration of major. Certainly it is harder to get a 4.0 at UMich in eng’g than to get a 4.0 is some lighter major at Brown.</p>
<p>That said, who knows what goes on in the subconscious minds. It does seem natural to be more impressed with a 3.9 in eng’g rather than a 3.9 in Psychology or Sociology.</p>
<p>I can assure you it was not a state U with a reputation like michigan or Berkeley, but it was a major state university. I’m not looking to discuss what should or shouldn’t happen, only what does. If someone really thinks programs are literally ignoring what school someone graduates from (what 0 impact would mean) they are fooling themselves.</p>
<p>This concept is in no way contradictory to the idea that people from less prestigious universities routinely get into top med schools. Anyone who would take the opposite stance (that you have to go to a prestigious school or even that going to one has a significant impact because of rand name alone) is also fooling themselves.</p>
<p>I know the regulars here take the more nuanced approach but I really just don’t understand how people come on here and try to simplify it into either being 0 impact or major impact. Is it really that hard for people to grasp that there are a large array of factors of varying importance? Anything that appears anywhere on the application has some impact on their decision.</p>
<p>I think it is illogical to think that all colleges in the US have the same difficulty in getting a 4.0, because this implies that the students at top Undergraduate Universities, are of the same caliber of students at a random state school, which I highly doubt is true.</p>
<p>^
The same can be said about the difficulties of getting a 4.0 within different majors at various top schools.</p>
<p>Jweinst1, we will never know. The top schools weed out students during the initial application phase while the lower tier schools weed them out Freshman and Sophomore years. I can’t say for sure that a senior from a top school is better than a random senior at a state school. I really don’t know. Anecdotally, I could not predict the best medical students in my class strictly by their UG schools. The top students in my medical school class went to Wofford College, Princeton, and UNC respectively.</p>
<p>May I suggest UNC to you? You would be considered international. And generally the higher your GPA the better no matter what school.</p>
<p>
This is a very good point.
Presumably, the top schools may weed out fewer percentage of students than some lower tier schools do.</p>
<p>Then, the students from the mid/lower tier schools whine loudly that the top schools have grade inflation but their schools have grade deflation, while the students from the top schools whine loudly that a higher percentage of their peer students are more competitive.</p>
<p>But the truth is: None of us really know.</p>
<p>*The top schools weed out students during the initial application phase while the lower tier schools weed them out Freshman and Sophomore years. *</p>
<p>While I agree with the second part, I don’t agree with the first. There have been ivy students here who have posted that during their first year XXX kids were premed as incoming frosh. By the end of frosh year, about a third have moved onto something else. Then after Ochem another bunch move on. By the time the students are applying, about 25% remain. </p>
<p>About the same pattern occurs in the mid-tiers. </p>
<p>Either way, by the time you get to applying, it really is a “survival of the fittest” with the exception of some who still apply even tho their stats are very questionable.</p>