<p>the problem is for middle class/upper middle class families who have their FAFSA EFC exceeding $50,000 = no aid. Sooo it sort of depends of your financial situation as to whether or not the ivies are affordable. Because its veryy difficult for a family living in California with an EFC just over $50,000 to actually afford an Ivy when they have alternatives such as the UCs for $25,000 less per year</p>
<p>
[quote]
her mom privately admitted to mine that her GPA is too low to make it. I can't say which side is true
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This is extremely unlikely. Most likely what her mother means is that her GPA is too low to cut it for highly selective medical schools, and she doesn't want to bother. This is always possible.</p>
<p>Wayne State's GPA median is a 3.6/30. To completely take her out of the running, she'd need to be below a 3.0. (This is all the more true since she's likely to beat a 30 by quite a bit.) At Yale, this is extremely rare.</p>
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[quote]
Uchicago/Rush sounds like a pretty decent resume.
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Yes. According to my MSAR, Rush is significantly more selective than the University of Illinois-Chicago. Rush students have the higher GPA, equal MCATs, better extracurriculars, and they match into more selective fields. Not a horror story.</p>
<p>No offense, but if your EFC is over $50,000, you are not middle or upper middle class. My parents make a little over 100k and our EFC is around $10,000. Either your parents make a boat-load of money and/or your family has no liabilities in the way of additional college-age siblings or mortgages, etc.</p>
<p>I actually gave up Berkeley and in-state tuition to attend Cornell. Berkeley would've cost me around $25,000 to attend. Cornell minus grants cost us $30,000 per year. And that was four years ago, before the change in FA policy.</p>
<p>yeah srsly...my efc is 5k and my parents make 90k total</p>
<p>Besides which, this is moot. Nobody's saying go to an Ivy over a State. Most of these BS/MD's are at private schools anyway, and a lot of people's dream schools are state schools.</p>
<p>income is not much over 100k but assets make the EFC way higher.</p>
<p>^^This is a good point. We're not comparing Ivies to state schools. We're comparing Ivies to places like BU or GWU, private school tuition just as high as Ivies but without the generous FA.</p>
<p>I think for a lot of the cc students giving up their dreams schools to go to a combined program in a relatively low ranked undergrad program / medical school is an extremely difficult decision to make. Psychologically it is a very hard switch if your mindset was to attend a top ten or twenty ranked university in the country.After working so hard in HS, doing so many APs, getting good SAT/ACT scores and maintaining a near perfect GPA...its hard to accept for yourself or to explain to friends/family and teachers that you are opting to go to an unknown combined program. Has been for our S. A lot of people dont understand the nature of these programs especially how extremely competitive they can be.The other point, it is very hard to rank these accelerated/combined program based on the undergrad/medical school ranking.The most popular ones are HPME/PLME/Rice-Brown. The rest are lumped together...
But to the common person it is of little consequence that a doctor graduated from HPME / PLME or a state medical college.Infact the average person may have better knowledge of the local medical schools than the above mentioned ones. The point to keep in mind is that getting admission to any medical school is extremely hard and only intelligent, hardworking and dedicated students make it. Everybody knows that!!! Maybe that will help to make the switch of giving up the dream school for the CC hs students in this forum.</p>
<p>We have many friends whose kids have persued medical careers via different routes state schools, foreign medical schools and top tier teaching medical schools like Washu, and John Hopkins. One is at HPME...
All of them have matched into residencies of their choice. The one at John Hopkins is opting to go into an Academic / research career( doing his MD/PhD) but the rest are likely to go into part teaching /part clinical practice positions(Clinical tenure) in mid tier teaching hospitals or full time clinical private practice. For high profile academic positions a top tier medical school
is essential. Added degrees like a MBA from a good program is always better especially if one desires to get into the management aspect of health care. But for majority of physicians who want to go into private practice or a clinical tenure tract...the ranking of the medical school does not matter. Therefore from a practical viewpoint many Medical students opt to attend their state medical school.
Finally rather than ranking...the questions to ask about any medical school are
1. How are the clinical roatation structured.?
2.How supportive is the faculty and students?
3.What are the average boards scores of the students?
4. Is there availability of research opportunities, over seas clinical rotations build in the curriculum?
5. 3-5 years residency match data etc etc. How established is the medical school, and what areas and where their medical students go after finishing.</p>
<p>The final point-- many of the students that go to these combined programs are viewed very positively, do well in their board scores, and get into good residency programs. I am not sure how they will compare with medical students from John Hopkins, U Penn or Washu...but for most part I understand being motivated/ hardworking and smart these students do very well.
My two cents!</p>
<p>Its all about the konwing that you are gonna get into med school.</p>
<p>Question: would going to a state medical school (specifically, Michigan State's) hurt chances of being placed in a competitive residency program (such as ROAD), even if I manage to be at the top of my class?</p>
<p>State schools aren't a problem. UNC, UT-SW, UCSF, and Michigan (UM) are all excellent state schools that place extremely well. Michigan State specifically... hm. Maybe I'll let somebody else answer this.</p>
<p>I'm not going to lie, when I saw the residency placements for 2006 and 2007 at the interview day, I was very much so less than impressed.</p>
<p>really? I thought the match list was decent. Much better than Wayne's anyways.</p>
<p>MSU does turn out a high percentage of primary care doctors, so that's something to keep in mind.</p>
<p>True's, it's actually pretty decent for a state school now that I think about it...but that's something to consider when you're making your decision--could you go to a better medical school with a better placement?</p>
<p>getting a competitive residency means you need great usmle step1 and step 2 scores, research, LOR, rank, and im sure more stuff that people can add on.
anyways, it will depend a lot on how well you do. if you are an outstanding student, i doubt a state school should hurt your chances</p>
<p>
[quote]
pretty decent for a state school
[/quote]
Again, many state schools are supremely selective and place very well. And many privates are not. This distinction is not nearly as meaningful on the medical school level as it is at the undergrad level, where it's already a little overrated.</p>
<p>
[quote]
if you are an outstanding student
[/quote]
It is always more important to be an excellent student than to be from an excellent school. This is very true. As we discuss here, however:
[quote]
Bluedevilmike: The general consensus is this: they have a list of "good schools" and list of "other schools"...</p>
<p>If you are from a "good" school, and your application has no glaring flaws, then you get an interview. If you are from an "other" school, and your application does not have any glaring HIGH points, you do not get an interview. Once you get an interview, that becomes the most important component of their decision, although other things still matter.</p>
<p>Special features - either good or bad - might be board scores, class rank, a second degree, etc.</p>
<p>Bigredmed: That's a great way of putting it. What I have tried to say all along, whether it's undergrad, or medical school, or even residency, if you do well, then where you went is not likely to impact your chances. Doing well is a panacea for almost everything.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not all medical students that attend high academic/research medical schools will end up going to very competitive residency programs like ENT,ROAD.etc. Nor will all the medical students in such programs become involve in research or publish papers. In the same manner not all medical students that attend medical schools with a focus in primary care go to only primary care residency programs.And quite a few of them will be involved in doing some research in their medical school years.
The goal of most medical schools is to turn out a balanced class --with some students going straight into high powered residency programs like neurosurgery, many will opt for primary care specialities, while many who apply to internal medicine,transitional general surgery or pediatrics will later go on to specialize ..... choosing fellowships like gastroenterology, nephrology, plastic surgery, pediatric cardiology etc.The numbers do vary from year to year.... depends on the interest of the students in that particular class. Therefore it makes sense to look at data of match results for 3 years or so.
The high powered teaching hospitals may provide great many opportunities for research or to do electives in specialized units during the medical students 4th year( the 3rd year clerkships are usually the same in most programs). The primary focus hospitals on the otherhand will provide more opprotunities of doing electives in different primary care setting.
However one caveat is that research opportunities are available to all mediacl students in all medical schools. But the degree of ease of finding such opportunities and the interest of the student body may differ... high up academic institution will definately attract a bigger body of such motivated -for -research students.The MD/PhD programs is the way to go for those really interested in persuing an academic career.
In terms of residency placement and geographical areas...most residency programs technically attract local/regional students for practical reasons. (Want to be near the family, better to learn in an area you want to practice in etc.) Medical students form the midwest are therefore more likely to look for programs in the midwest and so on. But a subset of the students will look and get in elsewhere ....again dependent on many factors!!
Board scores, letter of recommendations and the INTERVIEW......are the three most important factors determining residency placement in mid-low tier academy or community programs. For the high powered academic programs...every thing that was covered by bluedevilmike's post
medical school name/ published research / additional degrees.. will matter because of competition .</p>
<p>I have been looking into the factors that influence residency placements a lot recently. So really, going into a combined program like MSU, which locks you into its medical school, would not hurt my chances of placing into a competitive residency or specialty?</p>
<p>No it will not.
Getting into competitive residencies like ROAD is possible coming from any medical school if you do well in terms of your boards, recommendations and the big one...interview.
There is seems to be some confusion in this forum about getting competitive residencies in any place versus getting any residencies in competitive academic programs.
In places like U penn, John Hopkins getting into residencies in even primary care specialities may be difficult given the competitive nature of these programs.On the other hand getting into neurosurgery residency in any program maybe difficult because unlike primary care specialities only one or two residents are taken each yaer so competition is high in all the programs in thsi country no matter where...some more than others!!.</p>
<p>However if you do well in medical school you are very likely to get into a residency program of your choice. In the end its what you will make of your medical school opportunities.</p>