Why would anyone go to a prestigious college?

<p>loremI is the only person who’s fed you what you wanted to hear about getting into med school. are you satisfied now?</p>

<p>To be more accurate, lorem’s the only one who gave a direct answer to the question.</p>

<p>Why would anyone go to a prestigious college?</p>

<p>Because they can.</p>

<p>@sevmom Clap…clap…clap</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>In some cases, the more prestigious college coincidentally happens to be a better fit, or offers a lower net cost through financial aid, independent of prestige.</p>

<p>In other cases, prestige may be the student’s goal for some reason. In a subset of these cases, the prestige actually matters in future plans (e.g. aiming for jobs at elite consulting companies or investment banks). In other cases, it may just be vanity.</p>

<p>However, prestige (of undergraduate school) in and of itself is not particularly valuable in a practical sense for a pre-med. (The prestigious schools usually do have stronger competition, but also usually more grade inflation to compensate, so those factors may end up being a wash.)</p>

<p>I don’t appreciate your attitude!!!</p>

<p>does that answer your question?</p>

<p>@ucbalumnus thank you for your serious answer. I only wish others could do the same.
@spectastic that’s nice! I dont appreciate yours either! Should i sue you?
This started out as an honest, serious question, but people here changed that very quickly</p>

<p>I’m enjoying reading this thread, so I’ll bite. Not everyone wants to go to a college that is ‘obviously less work’! My youngest child is looking for an environment of intellectuals, who discuss ideas inside class and outside of class. She is not applying to Harvard, but top LAC’s and small universities where she hopes to find students like herself. She is not interested in med school or law school, but most of the places she has applied send a lot of kids to grad school. </p>

<p>The obvious answer is that not everyone is like you or is looking for the same things in a school. You appear to be looking for good grades with as little effort as possible. those are not exactly qualities I would look for in a doctor.</p>

<p>Yes like i said before, im being very shallow about this, i know. But from a practical perspective…</p>

<p>Simple, it is for prestigiosity measured in millharvards.</p>

<p>Lot of harvard graduates do get into med schools because they are good enough at the time of graduation. However, the post assumes one can get in. At 5.8% admit rate, you have 0% admit rate chance. You expect to only get 3.0 GPA and Harvard would not make the mistake of admitting someone without any hooks if they figure you to be that inferior academically.</p>

<p>Yeah, the scenario I was trying to get across was, why would someone who COULD go to harvard go? Besides the name.</p>

<p>of course why would they go?</p>

<p>Let me think…</p>

<p>Why not?</p>

<p>As i said before, they would have a lower GPA than if they went to a state school. I’ve seen posts about how a 3.3 from ANYWHERE has a hard time getting into med school</p>

<p>^ you have no idea about their GPAs.</p>

<p>But I think we can assume that one attending a state school would have a higher GPA than a harvard student</p>

<p>You can also assume one attending a state school has so so MCAT score. so what.</p>

<p>Harvard GPAs are not bad. Caltech is where people get 3.1 and 42 score and get into medical school.</p>

<p>That’s a good point. It brings about the debate of GPA vs MCAT.
However, if someone did have the potential to go to harvard, I think he could self study for the MCAT’s in his spare time. Especially if he makes that his plan at the beginning of college. On the other hand, no matter how hard one tries in harvard, there’s a limit. EVERYONE in harvard is going to be super motivated,passionate, etc, and the average GPA is still only 3.4 ish</p>

<p>You go to Harvard because it attracts some of the smartest and most ambitious people of your generation. If you’re lucky you’ll be in classes and hang out with your generation’s equivalent of Peter Sellars, YoYo Ma, Grover Norquist, Deval Patrick, April Bernard or Arthur Golden. (All of whom I met, some of whom I knew well.)</p>

<p>My GPA was a lot higher than a 3.0 - I’m pretty sure the average is at least 3.4.</p>

<p>That said, if you want to play it safe and save money for med school, go to the State University. At least you won’t spend the rest of your life feeling like an underachiever.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>thanks mom</p>

<p>Well we have differing morals there. I would be thrilled to meet any one of those people. However, I don’t think that I would be feeling that way if I was living by myself on welfare.</p>