<p>Like it or not, that’s the focus of this thread. Maybe the reason these discussions often become “death spirals” is because “prestige” is such a fuzzy concept. To clarify whether it really does or doesn’t matter, one needs to decompose it into observable features that can be examined for correlation to desired, observable effects. Then, one needs to go beyond cherry-picking from personal anecdotes to consider what the available data really shows (or doesn’t show, or can’t show).</p>
<p>annasdad has advanced this conversation by pointing to research that seems to do that. However, I’m not satisfied that he is accurately characterizing what that research shows. </p>
<p>Maybe he is. However, when I look through the bibliography of Pascarella & Tenenzini 2005 (which he often cites), it strikes me that most of the cited work does not directly address this issue. I’ve found a couple that do and that are available on the Internet. So far, for me, the jury is still out on whether features like high selectivity, high research productivity, or small class size matter enough to learning outcomes (or to earnings outcomes) to be worth paying a significant cost premium. Maybe they don’t … but in that case, these features (or others) might still be worth paying some premium, to some people. In that case, yes, it suppose it comes down to “fit” and cost.</p>
<p>lol. For those with pre-meds, in the throes of applying or just thinking about it, come visit me down to the cc trailer park. I’ll buy you a domestic beer. With just a couple of exceptions, the regular posters on the Pre-med board are both knowledgeable and helpful. </p>
<p>As to the flat-ness of US allopathic medical school “quality”, even if one were to assume that was true (and the Step tests assure that it has some “truth”) , lots of differences in feel, attitude, fit, resources, financial aid, classmates, focus, and yup. Even outcomes. Many of the “being surrounded by and taught by the best” arguments bantied about on the UG boards about elite schools are or at least could be applicable to med schools, too.</p>
<p>If you don’t value what an elite education brings to the table in one place, I can’t imagine you’d value it in the other. I value it. Always have.</p>
<p>And, yeah. All these attempts at arriving at a one-size-fits-all generalizaton of the value of an elite education, whether that be UG or med school, is (to borrow a phrase), just plain “silly”.</p>
<p>There is never gonna be a universal right answer but there can certainly be a right answer for a particular family, for a particular student, and at a particular time. It is a nuanced choice. Change a factor just a whit, and you can change the “right” answer. </p>
<p>Prepare your kids well. Give them the resources to make good choices given the family circumstances. Then turn’em loose and try not to look back. In my experience, the kids don’t. It’s just those dangnable 'rents. </p>
<p>One thing more…my kid is home for almost a month (yeah!) and is doing all this again…with the residency process. “Dad. I’m gonna expect you to know something about this so you better get ready.” :eek: Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in. . </p>
<p>The choice is always personal. Don’t forget the nuances. Y’all have fun.</p>
<p>This thread started out asking whether it is worth going to a prestigious college and getting a much lower GPA and not getting into medicine. OP started the thread with a false baseline as opposed to asking what is his best choice of college with a given goal of medical school in the future and a set of schools he is interested in.</p>
<p>Now it has devolved into which college graduate we prefer to treat us!</p>
<p>Going back to the original premise and GPAs and my post in 86, I don’t see lower GPAs from prestigious colleges hurting someone’s chance of getting into medical school based on one of them.</p>
<p>It’s not a “devolution,” although I agree that the original question could have been asked better. If the OP’s ultimate goal is practicing medicine (a reasonable assumption based on what he/she has said), the issue is really what path will offer the best preparation? As most of us adults know, it doesn’t matter where you get your degrees if you are not employable in the end. (Or put another way, who cares what you are “selling” if no one wants to buy it?) Too often on this site people seem to fixate on the short-term factors (which include prestige) rather than look at the big picture.</p>
<p>Yes that was exactly what I meant. I’m sure that four years at a prestigious school would be absolutely amazing. However, what about what comes after?
Also, i saw posts that say that someone who got accepted into harvard would undoubtedly have an ok GPA. While i think this is true, wouldnt the harvard studeny have an easier time at a state U?</p>
<p>Well, no, most of the cites do not directly address the issue, since P&T’s work looks at the broad spectrum of how colleges affect students. The total universe of work that they look at is some 5,100 studies. They address six questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>What evidence is there that individuals change during the time in which they are attending college?</li>
<li>What evidence is there that change or development during college is the result of college attendance?</li>
<li>What evidence is there that different kinds of postsecondary institutions have a differential influence on student change or development during college?</li>
<li>What evidence exists on effects of different experiences in the same institution?</li>
<li>What evidence is there that the collegiate experience produces conditional, as opposed to general, effects on student change or development?</li>
<li>What are the long-term effects of college?</li>
</ol>
<p>Of those, only #3 is directly on point to this discussion. Volume 2 of their work (covering the period roughly 1991-2003) focused on 10 studies, based on three independent samples, that investigated the impact of college selectivity (defined as average SAT/ACT scored) on various standardized measures of academic achievement. The results were consistent with what they found in their (1991) study - “the weight of evidence from these studies provides little support for the premise that attendance at a selective institution has a consistent and substantial positive influence on how much one learns – at least as measured by standardized tests.”</p>
<p>Now you can criticize this in several ways. You can say that there were “only” 10 studies and “only” three datasets. Obviously, more would be better. But when 10 studies, using presumably different methodologies and three different data sets reach the same conclusions, I would think that anyone interested in facts would assign those conclusions a great deal of weight.</p>
<p>Another criticism could focus on the use of standardized tests. The tests included the GRE, MCAT, LSAT, and the National Teachers’ Exam. Those (at least the first three) are the tests that graduate and professional schools use to assess the readiness of students for their programs. Unless you’re prepared to argue that those graduate and professional schools don’t know what they’re doing, you must assign some validity to conclusions based on those test results. A study of more than 200 four-year institutions, after controlling for precollege variables and in-college experiences (such as major, interaction with faculty and peers, social and academic engagement), then assessing performance on tests including GRE, MCAT, LSAT, National Teachers’ Exam, found “Institutional selectivity … had trivial and statistically nonsignificant effects on the quantitative score.” </p>
<p>And those results, P&T report, are consistent with studies assessing performance on more broad-based tests such as the College Basic Academic Subjects exam. Again, different studies, different methodologies, different data sets - they reach the same conclusion.</p>
<p>I would also point out that a study based on the CLA (reported in “Academically Adrift,” and which postdates P&T) found essentially a similar result - institutional selectivity had little or no effect on the increase in critical thinking skills of students.</p>
<p>So you may feel the jury is still out on whether selectivity (which correlates highly with prestige) affects learning outcomes. But the huge weight of evidence for that jury to consider shows that it does not.</p>
<p>(Jurors, of course, sometimes ignore evidence in order to reach verdicts that they want to reach - think the OJ Simpson jury, or certain posters on these threads.)</p>
<p>Not necessarily. That’s the myth, but there’s no evidence to support it. (Lots of anecdotes from anonymous posters on the Internet, but no real evidence.) The only study I’m aware of to directly address the point would seem to indicate that courses at elite research universities are no more rigorous than those at less-prestigious research universities - but even the authors of that study include a lot of caveats that warn against over-generalizing from their findings.</p>
<p>Bottom line: I would not advise choosing a state school over a prestigious private school because you think it would be easier to get higher grades. I would choose your school based on factors like net cost, location, programs offered, and whether you think you would fit in -and then when you get to whatever school your choose, work your butt off to make the best record possible. There is copious research that shows that what a student does when the student gets to college plays far more of a role in the student’s success than does the college the student goes to.</p>
<p>State schools have just as qualified teachers as Harvard. There hasn’t been a good study that can compare the quality of the education that a student receives at a state vs. an Ivy- league college, but there are studies on the costs of state vs. Ivy- league colleges.</p>
<p>Perhaps not addressing that specific question … but there are a number that compare the quality of education based on factors that relate to it, such as institutional control, size, and prestige. The take-away: none of that makes much of a difference to educational quality.</p>
<p>I have no trouble believing that these standardized graduate admissions tests simply telegraph the same abilities that lead to high performance on college entrance tests. I would not expect college selectivity per se (or 4 years rubbing elbows with other high-performing test-takers) to boost one’s performance significantly on these tests. Undergraduate arts and engineering programs are not designed to boost performance on standardized graduate admissions tests. Therefore, it is not surprising that these studies detect no positive correlation (after controlling for student abilities) between attending a selective college and higher performance on standardized graduate admissions tests.</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with whether the graduate/professional schools know what they’re doing. They do the same thing the most selective colleges do, namely cherry-pick the ablest students based heavily on grades and test scores. </p>
<p>Consider the study by John Braxton I cited above ([“Selectivity</a> and Rigor in Research Universities” by Braxton, John M. - Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 64, Issue 6, November-December 1993 | Questia, Your Online Research Library](<a href=“http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-14874871/selectivity-and-rigor-in-research-universities]"Selectivity”>http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-14874871/selectivity-and-rigor-in-research-universities)). Braxton reports that questions requiring a higher-order level of understanding of course content are asked more frequently on course exams at more selective liberal arts colleges than at less selective LACs. Does this practice have a positive effect on learning outcomes? If so, I doubt it would be picked up by tests like the GRE.</p>
<p>The research summary appears to seek a homogenized average, but it stands to reason that within this average there are subgroups that either benefited mightily from elite school attendance or others that even obtained negative benefits from such attendance – say, for example, those students who were emotionally devastated by no longer finding themselves as the all-stars they always thought themselves to be. Richard Feynman wrote about CalTech high school all-stars who could not stomach the fact that they were now C- students.</p>
<p>I do look at where a doctor went to medical school. I also look at where he/she did a residency and a fellowship, if applicable. I also look at bedside manner, size of the office, location and support staff. I don’t care how great a doctor is, if the support staff is unhelpful, that’s not the doctor for me.</p>
<p>Wait, just to make sure, P&T (2005) assert that a review of studies shows that selectivity has no difference in terms of scores on standardized tests such as the GRE, LSAT, etc., controlling for the right variables.</p>
<p>OK, I’ll buy that.</p>
<p>But then, like tk21769 says, I’m not sure such tests are really measures of the quality of education one receives.</p>
<p>I think that it’s just too sweeping to say “prestigious school or state school” for a medical school applicant and arrive at some kind of answer. Which prestigious school versus which state school? Because there are prestigious state schools in my state that are famous for failing out strong students in into chem courses, etc. Kids who thought they were going to major in science and who were strong in science in high school are weeded out. I imagine a lot of those kids would do well in a small into chem class at an LAC because they are smart and had demonstrated ability and achievement in science in high school. So if one was contemplating a state school with a reputation for weeder intro science courses, one might was to think it over carefully and if GPA is going to be of critical importance, choose a state school where its easier to get through those courses with a good grade. </p>
<p>My point is that even among state schools there there is prestige and some may be more difficult than others. In my state we have two state college systems. There would be a huge difference between going to one of the easier ones in the “easier to get into” system than going to the most prestigious one in the “harder to get into” system. You can have the whole prestige argument with state schools as well as with private schools if you wish. And, of course, in the private school world, there will be some private schools that are easier than others. If you are hoping for an easily-earned high gpa, then don’t go to Cal Tech which has tons of prestige but is known to hand out very low grades at times. The prestige won’t help you when you apply to medical school if your gpa is low. So if you are thinking strictly in terms of gpa, then go to a very easy school where you are easily the top of the class and get a 4.0. Or research your schools and avoid a school known to fail out people in weeder classes and look for schools that are strong in terms of providing an education that is a match for you and your abilities and that provides very good support for pre-med students and where maintaining a strong gpa won’t be an overwhelming challenge.</p>
<p>I’m not familiar enough with these tests to have an informed opinion. But apparently medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools consider them to be valid predictors of success in the fields for which they prepare students. Not the only indicators, to be sure, but certainly an important part of the mix.</p>
<p>And of course the CLA, which assesses critical thinking abilities, is exactly on point as to what colleges consider important and claim to be developing. And it shows the same thing - no advantage to attending a prestigious school.</p>
<p>It’s also important to realize, I think, that there are SOME prestigious schools that do provide superior educations (as measured above). But there are also some non-prestigious schools that do likewise. There are measurable factors that predict pretty well what colleges will do a good job and which will not. Unfortunately, these factors are difficult to measure on a wide scale, and many colleges apparently resist having them measured and the results published.</p>
<p>The LSAT includes sections on “analytical comprehension,” “analytical reasoning,” and “reading comprehension,” plus a writing sample. I would think that it would be a reasonably good approximation of the kind of intellectual capabilities that one should have learned in college.</p>
<p>Yes … and I think there is a consensus among parents on this board that if your primary goal in choosing a college is to position yourself for med school admission in particular, you do NOT need to attend a prestigious/selective college. What matters for med school admission is your MCAT score and GPA. If you have the chops to get into a selective college, chances are, you’re already a good test-taker. So, you can concentrate on getting a good GPA - if med school admission is the most important thing you want out of college.</p>
</p>