Vanderbilt Premed Weed Out

Colleges and Universities A-Z Vanderbilt University
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The only real weakness I see is kind of what the other poster mentioned (the transfer from Hamilton)…mainly I have issues with how most of the biology classes there seem to be taught. Basically in a way that does not help the grade (I haven’t seen many syllabi that suggest that anything beyond quizzes and exams contribute to the final grade…and I also don’t see many that obviously deviate from a pure lecture format. In fact many flat out said, “due to the size, it will be mostly lecture and slides will be distributed before hand” or something like that…Sorry, but size is not an excuse…large classes can be done differently as well, but it does take more resources, time, and support such as money and more active teaching assistants whether they be graduates or undergraduates) and maybe lowers learning outcome (like I think the MCAT average there is great but could actually be MUCH higher, like near WashU’s). I’m thinking Vandy should jump on the HHMI science education grant bandwagon soon (there is a 2017 cycle coming up) because it has worked wonders at many other privates. At my school , they used it to basically cheat and buy faculty members that were into teaching with more innovative methods (mainly biology and neuroscience department and some for lower division and intermediate chemistry classes). This made it such that, even if half of the life sciences teachers taught in a more traditional format that wasn’t as effective, you still had like 1/2 or more of the courses taught far more effectively and with different methods.

Students could ultimately choose if they wanted the traditional format (which may technically give “easier” exams-as in detailed oriented ones that may be frustrating in the amount of content tested but ultimately require less analysis and higher ordered skills…as in, if you know the material in and out, your brain will not hurt afterwards) or if they wanted instructors who do things differently. In addition, the grants basically paid for development of new courses and components to many highly enrolled upperlevel and intermediate courses, many of which now have discussion sections and they are not recitations, but actual sessions where students have to have read a primary literature, write a review, and eventually give a presentation. And the fortunate thing is, even if the lecture section has a traditional teacher (powerpoints, less projects, pbl and cbl and only exams and quizzes for the lecture component), if they are teaching that particular course, they must still run a set of discussion section meaning that students will have to do deeper learning in some component of the course. A couple of instructors have basically used that to change their examination formats from mostly algorithmic problem solving or detail memorization to way more experimental design/data analysis (they can basically do it because students should be used to seeing in the discussion sections). Needless to say…this will help people get through MCAT prompts better (the average is about 29-30 which is actually really strong considering a) incoming scores are much lower than peer schools and b) like 300+ people apply and many are actually applying knowing they are not in competitive ranges of than they would otherwise because now they are mainly based on findings from the primary lit instead of generic passages. There are also instructors who don’t really lecture and mostly do primary articles, problem sets (data analysis) or case-studies in class (these are mainly the ones we bought using the grants…some of the others, who are usually older or top researchers do it much less but some have integrated pbl modules into their classes because of departmental pressure and trends)…

Either way, point is…if you spend money on the STEM curriculum, you can get impressive trends or results (or disasterous ones, like our biol. depts new “flipped” biochem class…I advise students to just take it in the chem. dept. But at least that is an exception to the rule. There are maybe 3 classes in the biol dept. that are fully traditional and they are unfortunately highly populated). Chemistry is a different story…but a new grant is being abused to fix that too (this year gen. chem is flipped and it actually seems successful so far)…sometimes money can buy happiness…in this context at least. Places like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale clearly bought their way to success in terms of revamping things like intro. biology and chemistry courses. The only difference is that they didn’t necessarily have to seek outside sources…but I’ve seen their results too and it looks worth it (though their classes are hard as hell as a result). With the proper course design and support in place…one can make students at these schools reasonably successful on difficult exams and assignments and even if raw averages on them are super high, they can claim that, overall, even that level of performance demonstrates a solid command of the material and higher cognitive skills. If the students take a detail oriented exam and then do in the 60’s-70’s, nothing is really achieved because that suggests that they have not even remembered or understood the content at a surface level understanding. It basically says: “students are not even retaining information and cannot even regurgitate an answer for a specific scenario, and certainly cannot analyze it at very high levels”.

Certain issues in the life sciences UG curriculum there can be fixed though, and if they were, I am sure people’s grades would benefit…while exam averages wouldn’t necessarily go up, there would probably be other components to buffer the score and students would feel more comfortable about the learning outcome (basically, it won’t feel as much like a weedout process or competition…people will just be interested in the material because they are being asked to really engage it just because…and at a high level). That’s just what I see…and don’t get me wrong…peer schools have serious issues within their life sciences curriculum too, many have just gotten better in that particular arena b/c of the complaints from students and the subsequent amount of money they spent to rectify it. There is evidence to suggest that Vandy invested a decent amount at some point. The bio lab looks decent and y’all also have this “optional” or special section of it that seems really cool…but those ideas just need to spread more.

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The truth is the elite privates have more grade inflation than most top LAC’s and top public U’s except for the 5 weed out classes. The problem is you need to survive the 5 weed out classes. The only way the best test takers in the world can have an class average of 70 on an “intro” level class are A) they suddenly became average students and test takers, B) the faculty are terrible teachers because a monkey should be able to teach gifted students intro bio, chem, calc, physics, 3) the tests are not valid. Curves where intended when looking at the entire population but should not be used for the subset of students at Vanderbilt. Outside of the weed out classes grading is better and your GPA will go up. The average at Vandy is now 3.45, (25% have a 3.7+) which should be good enough to get you in with a solid MCAT score. If we know most state U’s are easier its a safe bet that med school adcoms know that as well. Another problem with nationwide grade inflation is now med schools have 5,000 applications (for 150 spots) with high grades so they revamped the MCAT to separate the kids from the adults. The new MCAT looks at problem solving & data interpretation and rewards students with rigorous UG training. Applications with high GPA’s from non-rigorous U’s and weak MCAT’s are used to clean up coffee spills by med school adcom’s. So its harder to have a super high GPA at Vandy but it is more difficult for high GPA students from non-rigorous U’s to separate themselves from each other…so pick your poison.

There are 3700+ colleges and universities but 90% of admitted med students come from 5% of those higher education facilities. Most state flagships are OK but be careful to stray from a top 200 university.
IMHO the worst thing we can do is put bright students in an environment where they learn they don’t have to work to be successful. Most Vandy students will tell you they have never been so challenged or so happy. Again, as noted above its one test for God’s sake and will likely be curved to a B…relax you will be fine. You will adjust to Vandy’s rigor.

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@bud123 : Actually that is a myth. Places like Swarthmore and Amherst have grades near say Yale. If they became research U’s, they would be in the Yale, Brown, Stanford suite of grading especially in sciences. One main reason why is because what I kind of hinted toward. Their science courses are NOT just tests and quizzes…there are often projects, take-homes, and other components to the grade. Overall though, I would say the size of their classes allows them to give more rigorous assignments and exams without working about the workload that stems from grading say…an all essay/free response exam…so often classes at top LAC’s probably “feel” harder than those at comparably selective research U’s, but students get to have higher grades because of how the points are distributed.

I also have a problem with your testing theory: It assumes that exams are all supposed to be made so that if someone knows everything, they make 100…I don’t buy this. If the exam only tested content, maybe this is the case, because students at Vandy’s level are likely masters at knowing and having a solid enough understanding of content (say level 1-2 on Bloom’s taxonomy), but the differentiation comes when instructors start asking for students to go beyond 2 and maybe into level 3 or even 4. Now I think you have a valid argument in that, if a teacher gives an exam with level 3 and 4 problem types and students fail or get 60-70 all the time in say…a biology class using that test format, then the teacher may have some blame because it suggests that they are not effective at getting students to achieve those skill levels. For instance, I can tell who is effective in say…our evol. biol classes because all sections have exams that are basically only data analysis. If one instructor consistently yields 80’s and maybe as low as high 70, you can probably say that they are effective at formatting their teaching such that students succeed with the format. If another section yields low 70 or 60 with a similar test, then they are not as effective or their format of course delivery is not congruent with the exam style (this is actually an effect and is why I am critical of those who test flipped classrooms and give both the flipped and lecture section the same test. One type is better at building certain skills and another other types…Like an exam with prompts that require just regurgitation and pure memorization will probably not go over well on a flipped classroom that focused on problem solving…the same study strategies they use for it may work counter to the exam format).

I’ll also give you another one: It is indeed suggested that a lot of STEM teachers do not apply the research on current trends and findings of student learning into their classroom. The only thing they have added was maybe “clicker” questions and that is as far as active learning goes in many STEM classrooms. Eliteness of the school makes no difference. Either a department and its faculty have a certain teacher culture or not. If they don’t like it, they can literally buy another (trying things beyond lecture is indeed very expensive…and risky).

But then there are the nuances of things like chemistry which are not that straightforward for everyone to learn how to do…there I would expect lower means than say…a biology class even if they do not put higher ordered prompts on assessments simply because background will hugely influence performance. If you only took a basic chemistry course as a sophomore or freshman in HS, then you may have a hard time if with a medium level course, whereas those with recent experience (especially AP) will have an obvious advantage to the point where there may be some bimodal like distributions on the first exam at least.

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@bud123 : Agreed on how the rigor of a place like Vandy can be very beneficial if one gets the hang of it…the fact is, they are more likely to offer the “right” type of courses in some department or by some instructor that will provide both a strong foundation and great problem solving skills AND it will simply get students used to being curveballed on high stakes exams (again, I guarantee you this will likely happen on the MCAT. My friends tell me about how it never fails to surprise and some of the practice passages are revealing in this aspect as well). Being able to improvise and think oneself outside of a box is a very valuable tool to develop.

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Two things:

1.) The curve in Vandy is not what you think it is. I thought the curve would be insane my freshman year, and I counted on it to do well in the class. I thought that a 75 would be a B. That’s not how it works. The only curve that exists is at the very end of the semester, where the professor will add 1-2% to your final grade. In other words, a C is C. Don’t count on the curve. Vandy doesn’t want you to do well.

2.) I never claimed that it wasn’t POSSIBLE to do well at Vandy premed. I agree that Daisy can pull through with a B+/A- if she puts in insane effort. My point was: is it worth it to put in that much work? What benefit is there when you compare it to a state school? The first question on one of the chem tests in my state school was “is a proton positive or negative?”. Like come on, anybody at Vandy could easily get an A in that class. So compare the two: you could either put in an insane amount of effort to get an A at Vandy, or you could put in no effort to get an A at a state school. And like I said before, the benefit of school name is minimal. Imagine if you were an adcom for a med school: would you prefer the 3.3 from Vandy or the 3.9 from a state school?

Also, to the poster who said that the average GPA at Vandy was a 3.45, that may be true, but that includes all Vandy students. About 200 Vandy students apply to med school every year. My class is about 1500 students I think. That means that there are about 1300 students who are NOT premed who increase the overall GPA. The average GPA for a Vandy premed is likely closer to about ~3.2, which is unacceptable for MD.

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There seems to be an overabundance of opinions on the subject already, but I thought I might contribute as well.

The grading standards for the intro classes can indeed be very tough, due to how grades are broken down. I have discussed this subject in detail with one of the Bio I professors, and the ultimate answer was that no matter how poorly or well the students understood the content and used reasoning skills, whether the average was a 55 or a 95, there would be a specific grade distribution. This distribution would include no more than 5% A, no more than 12% A-, and no more than 50% with a B- or greater. When the average student here had a 3.9 GPA and a 33 ACT in high school, and the average student receives a C+ in Bio anyway, it can make things very difficult for those trying to uphold a high GPA.

Whether Vanderbilt is worth it for pre-med is a complex and confusing issue. I am indeed jealous of my peers who have a higher GPA and more time for extra-curriculars than I do. On the other hand, I ended up scoring in the 99th percentile on my MCAT, and although I might have been able to get the same score coming out of my state school, I thought that the upper level courses here were quite excellent at engaging in the higher level critical thinking that is relevant for the 2015 test. I also greatly appreciate the opportunity to engage in high level medical research in the hospital. Where you should go for pre-med really depends on your interests. I am a bit of a unique case because my interest in medicine is as a physician scientist. I have seriously considered a PhD, and am still playing with the idea of MD/PhD, so it was very important to me to be near a center for academic medicine, which Vanderbilt certainly is. If you are more interested in primary care, this aspect is relatively unimportant.

I agree with @bud123 regarding which courses are difficult. The 5 weed out classes are horrible, but all others are doable. You simply can’t brute force these classes, but you can thrive with some finesse and intelligent scheduling. One of my friends has survived Vanderbilt pre-med with a ~3.95 GPA as a Neuro major. He is certainly smart and hard working, but his success is largely due to extremely conservative scheduling.

The ideal way to do this: Freshman year: gen chem. freshman summer: calc, or sub in physics here. sophomore year: bio+physics. junior year: orgo. senior year: major classes+axle. Choose one major, no minors. Freshman and sophomore years, take 14 or 15 hours only. Avoid doubling up on weed outs as much as possible, but if necessary do bio+physics with low hour schedules for both semesters. Fill in the rest of the schedule with axle and major related classes. Be any major except engineering or chemistry. Always take the easiest class possible, and always underestimate your abilities. Live on ratemyprof, the VOICE rating site, and always attend the meetings for the major you’re interested in and ask upperclassmen about which classes are hard. Make upperclassman friends through clubs and ask them as well.

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@Daisy246

What is your course schedule for the semester? I ask because freshman often bog themselves down with unnecessarily difficult classes. If I am understanding correctly, you seem to be taking bio+chem. This is your first mistake. The thing to understand with these lab weed outs is that they devour time; you have to respect them and not take multiple at once.

First, you need to clarify what your grade is. Is it numerically a C, or is it a C based on the average? The average for the course is at the B-/C+ border, so it will be an 80. So lets say you got a 65, but the average was a 60. Then, you really got a solid B.

If you still got less then a B- on that test, here’s what I would advise: the withdrawal deadline is October 23rd, and you should have taken and received the grade for your second test by then. If you do not get better than a B-, withdraw from bio, and retake it next year as a sophomore along with physics, in the schedule I highlighted above. A W doesn’t look awesome, but it really can’t hurt your GPA like a C can, and you can easily explain it away: “I was a freshman, I took a schedule that was eating up all my time and making me hate life, and I wanted to be able to pursue my extracurricular interests and give myself a chance to adjust to college better.” If you can get a B, just stay in the class.

Classes: for bio, ignore the book (unless you are told to read a section specifically) and pound those lecture slides into memory. You should be reviewing your notes daily, and also cramming in marathon sessions come test time. Try different things if your methods aren’t working. For me, I find that I learn best when I write things out, so I make these “cheat sheets” where I write everything I don’t instantly know in a very small font on a piece of paper. I study the paper, and if there are things I still don’t get, I make another sheet with just those items and study that chest sheet. It is different for everyone. For chem, just do as many practice problems as humanly possible.

More generally, I would say that you need to find a better routine or way to relax. Studying hard is one thing, but you need to sleep and eat. Cutting down on these things always seems like it will get you more study time but it doesn’t, as it makes you exponentially less efficient. Your posts, starting with this summer, make you seem very neurotic. I think that making an effort to chill out and have some fun with your life will make you more productive than you think.

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For more background, I scored a high C, and the class average was a C. Including homework points, I most likely have a B- in the class. But I have As in the rest of my classes. So as of right now, my GPA most likely is around 3.60. My science GPA however is a 3.0.

Also, how do medical schools view a W on the transcript?

Thanks all for the support and input.

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@Daisy246 what bio class are you in where you get points for homework?

Also do you know the C percentage? For bio the curve generally bumps the class average up to a C+/B-. In my bio class, an 82 or so was enough for an A- and an 83 for an A I think (they didn’t actually tell us how everything was curved)

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I don’t think bud mentioned those lol…I think I did lol. As for that grade distribution in weeder classes, sounds common for lower grading elites (those that still curve most sciences to B-/B). Like gen. chem at my school basically had only like 45% above B- in several sections and 25% is where the B+ started so sounds the same…and this is after lab was counted. Without lab, it would have been worse. As for scheduling…yes it is the key unless you are a super ambitious or talented person even for an elite (I have met these folks before, but they aren’t that common).

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Ok, maybe it was just for my year, but I have never heard of these crazy grading curves.

When I took gen chem, I got an 83 on my first test, 90 on my second, 87 on my third, and 85 on the final. This gives you an 86.25% in the class, and I got a B+. So honestly, all of these posts about how “an 83 is enough for an A” and how “So lets say you got a 65, but the average was a 60. Then, you really got a solid B” is just insane to me.

Maybe I’m in an unlucky year.

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@Daisy246

You’re completely fine then. If you got a C+ and the class average was a C, you are right at the B-/B border probably.

First tests are always a shock. Study hard for the next one and adjust based on your first, and you can definitely improve. You probably won’t be getting an A in the class, but you could probably pull a B+ or A-, which is fine. If you are really struggling though and feel like the wheels are about to fall off, it could be better to drop it anyway just for mental health reasons.

For med schools and the W on the transcript: a 4.0 with no W is better than a 4.0 with a W. However, a 4.0 with a W is better than a 3.95 with no W. Having a W is certainly not ideal, but it really becomes irrelevant because adcoms can’t dock you quantitatively for it. At worst, they may have some vague quantitative “that’s bad” judgement of the mark, which is nonthreatening. When they look at stats, they are looking at GPA+MCAT. They will however, dock you for a C, not just because it is a C, but because it is actually reflected in your quantitative GPA stats. The circumstances make it especially irrelevant. 1 W, first semester freshman year, retaken for an A, will cause no concerns. I would be surprised if you were ever asked to explain it, and the explanation I highlighted above would be perfectly valid if you did. If you have to take the W, just don’t make it a pattern, and try to do it just once and schedule better next time.

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@derp125

It depends on the instructor. I took it with graham and patton. They insisted that the average would come out to being a 70 and everyone would get a 10 point curve, because that is what happened for their entire time teaching the class. My year we apparently did too well, our average came out to being a 79, and we got a 1 point curve instead.

Other classes (Broadie/Zweibel I think?) were known for really difficult tests where the class average was lower, like a 65 my year. What is good enough for a given grade varies from professor to professor.

In the end, the curve and actual grade is irrelevant. The only thing worth looking at is your score against the average. 10 above the average is B+/A- border, and 15 above is a solid A, etc.

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Really, Singleton’s seemed the hardest to me…those exams by Broadie were “alright” but I thought they would be less likely to yield below 70 than Singleton. They were asking very specific things and seemed to expect really specific answers…maybe that is what made them hard? Singleton’s seemed to require much more “thinking” so to speak. He wasn’t trying to detail students to death…so much as weird them out with concepts or experiment oriented scenarios.

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@bernie12

Yes, you could be completely correct. I can’t quite recall which class it was, but I know that in fall 2012 there was a really rough class with test averages in the 50-70 range. It could also be someone who doesn’t teach it anymore.

Those thinking tests like singleton can be a really mixed bag, because they just rely on how harshly they are graded. If the professor is strict they can be horrible due to the weird concepts, but if they’re generous it won’t be bad because you can get full points for somewhat iffy answers.

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@derp125 I was talking about bio (where 82=A- etc)

There’s no curve for gen chem at vanderbilt, so your experience is what some people still experience today.

There is a clicker extra credit which acts like a curve, though (I think it’s about 3%). I got a 97 and 95 on my exams, blew off the final and got an 82 (and didn’t do too well in recitation). Had like a 90 average but got an A.

In my opinion gen chem was much more favorable than bio because there were other components to your grade (HW, recitation, clickers) that help offset a bad exam grade

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Oh, that basically means the gen. chem averages have traditionally been high/already close to B- so they don’t curve or scale…interesting…southern schools are mean! At Emory, if the mean approached a B- test average, they would be sure to give an exam in the 60’s or low 70’s to drop the mean and then curve the curve the class to the distribution they wanted. If they had a new instructor who tried to be easy, they would increase their cutoffs w/o telling students (so an A may move from 93 to 97 and the student doesn’t find out until they see their final grade). That is just so unnecessary and dumb. Biology would pull similar tricks…if they go “easy” on midterms they’ll just slaughter people with the final and yield the distribution they wanted. Fortunately most pre-med math courses are easy so people can get good grades there, but physics, chem, and biol can either be tough (instructor dependent) and pull bags of tricks like that. The grading scheme and exam difficulties often seemed calculated or deliberate as they were not consistent whatsoever

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Daisy, As long as you stay above the average in bio you will earn a B and a 3.6 for your first semester puts you in great position. You will have survived the freshman fall weed out. Typically GPA’s improve .1-.2 over the next 2 years. With a 3.6-3.8 GPA from Vandy you will have a 93% chance of acceptance into med school. As long as you put a check in the required boxes (research, service, medical exposure), stay out of jail, and can hold a 30 minute interview you are in. So, no need to hit the panic button, transfer, or withdraw.

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Yeah, that sounds about right. I have a friend currently applying and I’ll list the B grades he’s gotten:

B: Gen. chem 1 freshman year (A- in gen. chem 2)
B+ Ochem 1 sophomore year (A in ochem 2 with same instructor: Instructor became rec. letter writer…he’s very tough, the instructor I took)
B+: Epigenetics junior year (A in cell biology w/same instructor senior year…instructor is rec. letter writer…also really challenging biology instructor…only case and research primary literature and student chalk talks, no lecturing in his teaching. The epigenetics course required 1/2 of the students to make posters and the tests also border the random…experimental design and mechanistic model creation…like the biology version of the ochem instructor alluded to above. Anyone who can make over a B+ in their classes truly deserves a rec. letter because the level of thinking and amount of work is insane compared to most undergrad. classes)

And I think there were at least 2 more…and several A-'s (physics for example both semesters and A- in both gen. biol courses which he took with ochem).

However, his science GPA was over 3.7 and overall was over 3.85…why? He took courses that were sciences or contributed to the science GPA and made A’s in most of them. He also did an honors thesis in biology and thus had to take graduate level courses (at least 1) and he took graduate immunology and made an A or A-. In addition, he has great shadowing and volunteering (he basically ran and organized the school’s chapter of the Global medical brigades’ abroad trip) and great research both at Emory and Columbia (2 summers and now in his gap year…and btw, these summer research opps. are actually very accessible to anyone doing remotely solid and can muster a rec. letter or two). Idea is…there are ways to success after a rocky start and one science class does not equal the science GPA of your whole career. This person has already received interview offers from 5 schools already and I’m pretty sure he’ll get several more.

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@fdgjfg the what?