<p>^^ Of course. Colleges do that to varying highschools, since they know not all highschoolers grade the same, regional admission officiers usually take note of this and make of note of that on the applicant's folder.</p>
<p>There is the matter of MCATs, which, like the SATs normalize everything across the board.</p>
<p>So regardless, you still have to score high on MCATs. Thats for sure.</p>
<p>
[quote]
but I just want to point out that using the look at who goes to top law schools argument is a poor one. These kids didn't get into a top law school because they went to a top undergrad. They did so because they were very well qualified for both a top law school and a top undergrad. Getting into Harvard undergrad is more of an indication than a contributing factor to your chances at at a T6 law school. Why aren't there more kids from lower ranked schools then? Think about it, who is likely to boast higher average LSAT scores? The Harvard student body or that of Arizona State's?
[/quote]
That's exactly my point -- it's not that attending a prestigious institution necessarily transforms a person into some kind of genius... it's that attending a prestigious institution, on average, acts to signal one's potential. That he/she made it through the initial difficult screening process for a Yale or Cal Tech serves as a decent initial proxy for employers. Of course, if follow-on information such as their GPA or interview turns out poorly, a recruiter can and does easily reevaluate. This process of weeding out is simply much more efficient than taking seemingly unqualified applicants to pick out the ones that eventually appear to be qualified.</p>
<p>Like I mentioned before, the wheat will always separate from the chaff, no matter if it's at ASU or Harvard. My claim (and I believe by any measure, most facts bear this out) that there's simply more wheat than chaff at the top schools. Just because student A chose to attend [insert lower ranked school] over [insert "elite" school] for whatever reasons doesn't mean that student B at the same institution had the same option or is of the same ability. More likely than not, student B is there because it was the best school he/she got into. Many times, student B is the most vocal proponent of "school selectivity/rigor/prestige is hogwash" claim.</p>
<p>^^ I agree wiith Calicartel absolutely.</p>
<p>I agree with much of that, but are students not influenced by their peers (along with other factors)? If you take one out of an intellectual setting and place him into a "different" setting, would the results be the same? There is something about the top schools, especially schools like Uchicago, Swarthmore -- where intellectual vitality holds sway over all else and someone who graduates from a school like that is significantly better off in many ways than a student of equal caliber who graduates from a different university.</p>
<p>You're equalizing education. Equalizing everything. You're not allowing for distinctions between the individual institutions. Maybe the kid at Harvard could go to ASU and still succeed. Maybe not. </p>
<p>Btw, I wrote this so as to not offend anyone.</p>
<p>I need some honest input. I am a high schooler, going to be a senior soon, and I cannot decide between three colleges: University of Michigan Ann Arbor for Undergrad, OR Michigan State University Lyman Briggs residential college with honors and proffesorial assistantship (nice environment, recourses, etc.), OR Wayne State's MedStart program (full ride, and a conditional guaranteed seat at Wayne State Medical School).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Should I go to a fairly prestigious university like U of M, and get less attention and be in a more competitive student body, bad dorms, and have a risk of lower GPA? Will attending such a university put me in a better position when applying to med schools? (In the future I want to apply to JHU, HYPMS, U of M med school, etc. only prestigious med schools)</p></li>
<li><p>Should I go to MSU and have "the college experience" while comfortably maintaining a GPA of 3.8+, getting a $2000 stipend yearly as a proffesorial assistantship, which also gives me really good access to research opportunities, and I'll be living in Lyman Briggs, a small residential college within a large university setting, and I can also enroll in the honors program where I can take challenging courses that should prepare me well for the MCATs; hoping to get like a 36 so I can apply for prestigious med schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Should I apply to Wayne State, get a full ride, and ease up on my budget, and get a reserved seat in their med school? I mean, I'll be settling for less, and I think I shouldnt do it, but idk.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Your input would be tremendously appreciated.</p>
<p>Btw here are my stats, not ivy material but hey I tried:</p>
<p>GPA: 4.0 unweighted, i dunno weighted
Rank: 1(out of 604)
ACT: 30 but shooting for a 33
SATI: - will take soon
PSAT: 192
SAT II: Math2-710 Bio-770
I've taken AP Bio(5) and AP Calc(5) as a junior, i'll be a senior soon and will take AP Chem, dual enroll in Calc II and III, AP History, AP American Govt, AP macroeconomics.</p>
<p>Health experience: Physician shadowing (100+)
Nursing home (100+)
Emergency Room (50+)
Medical Research (250 +)
Volunteering: Big Brother once a week(50+), Hindu Temple (50+)
Freshman tutor (plan to be next year)
EC's: NHS, Chess club, UNITE club, and Anime Club (of course lol)
Job Experience: Kumon; tutoring kids in math and reading. 12 hrs a week.</p>
<p>Your argument rings true with employers, but mine is specifically nuanced towards using the who's who of law school admits to advocate the value of a prestigious education. More specifically, I thought the "easier to get into from certain schools" with regards to law school is a misleading statement. Perhaps this is so with other graduate schools, with which I am admittedly unfamiliar, but from a law school admissions perspective, a more accurate statement would be to say that it is equally difficult to get into law school from most schools as the prestige of your undergrad is but one soft factor among many that are considered a far second to an applicant's GPA and LSAT index. My point was to say that graduates from prestigious undergrads often dominate law school admits because they, as you pointed out in your last post, are of a high caliber to have passed the "screening" of their prestigious undergrads, not because their prestigious undergrads made it easier for them to be admitted.</p>
<p>In any case, my point wasn't to disagree with your overall stance, since in my own situation I have found a prestigious education to be profoundly more valuable than it's alternatives, I was just pointing out that using law school admissions as a support of that stance is not necessarily a strong point of contention.</p>
<p>And excuse my being a pain in the ass... this is what hours of studying for the logical reasoning and reading comprehension on the LSAT has done to me.</p>
<p>animefreakss4: While I admit to not knowing a whole lot about undergrad admissions, if you raise your ACT score up to around 33/34, I think you would be surprised at the options that open up to you in addition to the schools you've listed. Unless you're absolutely set on those three, don't necessarily limit yourself to them.</p>
<p>animefreakss4: Um, try to get into all of them first before we talk. :-) Too early to say, Don't know much about each of the programs but for premeds, U of M is pretty good, very good at that. Honors programs seems pretty legit too. See which one you get in first, then come back and talk. These are all ridiculously fine choices here, I mean its too early to decide but I may be leaning towards the cheaper honors accelerated program.</p>
<p>I agree with much of what has been said, but I think I should point out a fallacy. Going to a big state school as a pre-med student because you think that it will be easier to keep up your GPA is not as it seems. The pre-med wannabes are quickly weeded out and all the hard working, bright students are placed in the same classes and compete for the A's and B's. At the elite schools much of the weeding out has already occurred. If you were to take all the premeds at Harvard (for example) and compared them with the top premeds at Texas using the same number of students (500 premeds at H vs. top 500 at UT) I suspect that there would be little difference in their abilities. That is the group of people you are competing against. </p>
<p>When I took organic chem at UT (only school I applied to-no money) there were 125 students in the class- all pre-med. The fist day the prof. said (paraphrased)</p>
<p>There are 125 of you here. The top 15 will make an A, the next 25 will make a B, the rest of you aren't going to medical school. Let's get started.</p>
<p>I suspect that more than 40/125 in premed orgo at Harvard make an A or B (grade inflation), so the GPA for that class (at UT) will be LOWER than the same class at Harvard. Therefore going to UT (for example) to get a higher GPA may backfire.</p>
<p>This is all conjecture as I have no hard data, but that's how I think it is.</p>
<p>Bottom line-go where you are most comfortable. If you want to go to prof. school you have to compete with others who want to do the same. There's no easier or backdoor way by going to a lower-tiered school for a better GPA</p>
<p>In the terms of prestigious schools, the GPA thing isn't true.
Read some states, Like 96% of Harvard,Brown,JHU...etc. get into their 1st choice med school.</p>
<p>Ok guys, thanks, I'll be back once I get into some decent colleges. Sorry for interrupting the thread.</p>
<p>I have always distrusted the statistic of the % of med school acceptances. Many (probably most) colleges strongly discourage (and sometimes don't allow) students to apply to med school if their stats aren't good. A MUCH more meaningful statistitic which is rarely reported is how many premed freshman actually apply to med school and what is their acceptance rate using the # of premed as freshman as the denominator. It is not 96% at Harvard. </p>
<p>Again if we were to play the game backwards and take the same # of students at UT (or Mich or UCLA) and compare they would be of the same quality. For example; if only 100 applied at Harvard and 96 got in and we compared the top 100 students at UT (pre-med) 96% of them would also get in. It's just that the top 100 at UT are diluted by lesser credentialed students who applied. Those students didn't get in at Harvard so aren't there to dilute the stats. If you are of that caliber you can get in anywhere. If youaren't you will have lass chance of getting in from anywhere also.</p>
<p>Aardvark, what exactly does your statistic tell us? If one school had a better percentage than another, it could be due to several factors:
[ul][<em>]both schools had equal attrition rates but one had a higher traditional acceptance rate
[</em>]one had a higher attrition rate while both had the same traditional acceptance rate
[li]some combination of the two[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Also remember that attrition itself could be attributed to several different causes such as overly hard courses and a weak initial pool of students. It seems like too many factors affect your statistic for it to be very useful.</p>
<p>There are many reasons to choose a prestigious university which have already been outlined here. All things being equal, I would advise a person to choose the more prestigious school over another. However, if a school isn't financially feasible or for whatever reason a bad fit, consider your second choice school more seriously. Good Luck for next year's kids.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have always distrusted the statistic of the % of med school acceptances. Many (probably most) colleges strongly discourage (and sometimes don't allow) students to apply to med school if their stats aren't good. A MUCH more meaningful statistitic which is rarely reported is how many premed freshman actually apply to med school and what is their acceptance rate using the # of premed as freshman as the denominator. It is not 96% at Harvard.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, but if we were looking at this statistic, state schools would lose to schools like Harvard...badly. </p>
<p>You can see that Harvard produces roughly 1/2 as many med school applicants as larger publics (like Berkeley or UT) despite having a much much smaller matriculating class and presumably much fewer starting freshman premeds. Harvard had 320 medical school applicants last year. Their freshman class is only around 1500 students. Even if you assume 1 out of every 2 freshmen were premed, 50% still made it to the application stage and, of those, 93% got into med school. That's still pretty good no matter how you slice and dice it. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Again if we were to play the game backwards and take the same # of students at UT (or Mich or UCLA) and compare they would be of the same quality. For example; if only 100 applied at Harvard and 96 got in and we compared the top 100 students at UT (pre-med) 96% of them would also get in. It's just that the top 100 at UT are diluted by lesser credentialed students who applied. Those students didn't get in at Harvard so aren't there to dilute the stats. If you are of that caliber you can get in anywhere. If youaren't you will have lass chance of getting in from anywhere also.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Let's assume your assumption is true (that the top 300 applicants from Harvard and the top 300 applicants from UT are of equal quality). Why, then, are there so few students from UT at top med schools compared with Harvard?</p>
<p>Actually, the most prestigious universities are probably cheaper than your state schools if you qualify for need-based aid.</p>
<p>It's simple, you go for a well-established college that has an international reputation (and that includes UT and UWash), firstly, because you never know where life will take you, you shouldn't assume you will always live and work in your little corner of the world.</p>
<p>Secondly, even if you find there's a program that suits your needs, but not really from a recognized school, go for the recognized univ. even if they're a bit weaker. Great universities are always only average when they're bad (like Harvard eng.). They will undoubtedly have their highs and lows, but they will most definitely preserve their reputation (across programs) for many years more than less recognized schools with "better" programs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Read some states, Like 96% of Harvard,Brown,JHU...etc. get into their 1st choice med school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No. You're probably thinking of the % of med school applicants who get accepted to at least one medical school. And 96% is probably high for Brown even using that statistic.</p>
<p>To answer the original question:</p>
<p>"My eventual goal is to get accepted into med school and eventually become a doctor; I'm a high schooler as of now. I've been wondering... what is the point of going to a prestigious undergraduate university (like a top ten school) rather than a less prestigious one where I would receive more merit-based scholarships?"</p>
<p>My statement is based on the following.
1) I went to Harvard undergrad, and was pre-med
2) I went to Stanford Med and was on the admissions committee (voting member) at Stanford, so I know how we take prestige into account when we evaluate applicants
3) And I matched in the most competitive/difficult surgical specialty to get into in a major metropolitan city</p>
<p>If you just want to be a doctor, any average doctor, you need to get into medschool, which you can do out of any college. Job done. Don't stress about it, work hard and you'll be a doctor. You might be a D.O. or you might go to the Bahamas to train, or you may get into an allopathic school, but you'll be referred to as "doctor."</p>
<p>If you want to go to a top med school or match in an extremely competitive specialty in a top metropolitan area, then pedigree matters. Period. You can break the mold by doing extremely well at any stage and transcend barriers, but that's like betting on winning the nobel prize, as your game plan.</p>
<p>Imagine you are program director at the most elite surgical specialty program and you have 2 applicants, 1 person's CV reads:
1) Harvard Undergrad
2) Johns Hopkins Med
3) Stanford residency</p>
<p>and another equally accomplished person (i am not putting down any particular program)
1) University of Alabama undergrad
2) Saint Bart's Med school
3) New Mexico community residency</p>
<p>Which candidate would you offer the fellowship to? One person trained under the best people in the field, the other person got a second rate education. They probably can both take care of patients equally well, they may have the same scores on licensing exams, equal number of publications, etc. but the first person is going to get the spot every time.</p>
<p>Harvard premeds on average as a group do better than second-tier public college premeds with 96% getting accepted to their top 3 choices and 98% attending medschool within 1 year of graduation. They do better in terms of getting into the better ranked academic medical schools. Which in turn feeds into better residency programs. Some might argue, well they probably have higher MCAT scores. But even adjusted for that, they do better. You may never be able to fully account for the fact that a thriving intellectual/academic environment feeds off itself (i.e. if you see your fellow premeds doing amazing research and volunteer work, you're more likely to do those things, versus your fellow premed classmates are working on their beer pong). </p>
<p>Take a cross-sectional look at Stanford med. 86 students -- by representation. 16 from Stanford. 11 from Harvard. 3 from MIT. 3 from Princeton. 3 from Yale. Considering that the ivy league/pseudo-ivy makes a very small fraction of the total premeds in the country, they are heavily over-represented in the best medical schools. </p>
<p>The top students from the best medical schools have their pick of the best/most competitive residencies and are over-represented at the best medical centers, thus the pedigree continues. Graduates from the top medical schools can match and do very well matching in the most competitive specialties, additionally, many top med schools are pass/fail because they know that their reputation alone will make their med students good applicants. Lower tier med schools tend to have grades throughout, so that their top students will stand out from the pack, and might have a shot at the best residency programs.</p>
<p>So basically, a good pedigree keeps more doors open to you. A poor pedigree doesn't shut doors, but makes things more challenging.</p>