<p>so basically, from post #17, I take it that if you go to a top school and aren’t up to par with others who usually apply from those top schools (let’s say your stats are 3.5 and 31 MCAT or something lower from your better applicants at your top school) you won’t get into a top med school. This would be because you are “sub par” in comparison to other applicants from that top school. If the other better applicants from your top school were around 3.7 and 35MCAT then you are screwed and probably won’t get into a top med school with lots of other top applicants, correct?</p>
<p>EDIT: ^^that’s an awesome, inspiring story!</p>
<p>Could someone please explain to me what is so crucial about going to a “top medical school” in order to become an MD? I’m talking about the real world here, real jobs, real lives. . .</p>
<p>^ Yes and no. The daughter of friends barely got into a low-ranked medical school and to hear her tell it, she always feels like she doesn’t know what she is doing, she is doing rotations at overcrowded & poorly equipped clinics where many (not all) of the doctors don’t care if she is learning anything or not, and she knows things are better at the few good hospitals she has been able to spend some time at. But even at those hospitals she is low person on the totem pole and she doesn’t get respect. For instance, someone from a “better” medical school will get to assist in surgery while she gets overlooked & left to fend for herself.</p>
<p>It’s fairly disturbing to think about students like that actually becoming doctors and being responsible for lives.</p>
<p>OP: Go to the school where you will learn the most and be the happiest during pre-med. It will play out in your volunteer work, in your MCAT, in your grades, and in your reccs.</p>
<p>If you do not plan on studying/reading beyond the class and its textbook, pick another field.</p>
<p>I have some close friends in this situation, and it’s usually because they (in your words) “barely got in,” not because they’re at a low-ranked medical school.</p>
<p>The cross-hospital thing matters, but not THAT much – and especially not in the perspective of a career as a whole.</p>
<p>In a vacuum, yes. In reality? Much less than people think. </p>
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<p>An applicant’s file includes much more than GPA. There are so many other factors to look at, including context (like personal hardships which the student overcame).</p>
<p>You can even get to Harvard Medical School if you do not have ANY sciences as an undergrad, and have a lackluster GPA, all from a mediocre school:</p>
<p>This is a more expensive and time-consuming path, but it exists. You graduate with a degree in Russian History from No Name U, realize you were meant to be a doctor, and the GS program at Columbia will likely take you. It isn’t hard to get IN. It is hard to graduate from it with great grades. If you can achieve that, you will be accepted to the finest medical schools in the country.</p>
<p>Stop worrying, start wherever you are today, and work harder than everyone else in whatever you love. You can get almost ANYWHERE from wherever you are starting.</p>
<p>House of London,
Actually, I have a fair amount of knowledge concerning Harvard. I know students (current and former) , faculty (current and former), administrators (former). I’ve worked for Harvard, and taken classes there. I based my comments largely on comments from those I know and articles in the Harvard press (alum and daily), and various other local papers. Certainly, many Harvard students work very hard and certainly deserve their high marks. However, since roughly the 60s, grading has changed. Some professors have openly stated that they will just give everyone an A. Others have stated that they consider that the average grade should be a B.<br>
The GPA at Harvard has been steadily rising for decades. A 3.4 is now average, and a 2.5 is nearly non-existent.</p>
<p>The first filter in Med School admissions is MCAT and GPA (both cumulative and science.) The MCAT score is objective - it doesn’t know or care what undergrad school you went to.</p>
<p>As for GPA and the prestige of your undergrad - consider the reason a 3.8 GPA at Harvard might be “adjusted” in admissions to give it an advantage over Podunk U - it’s because of the underlying assumption that that 3.8 at Harvard was more difficult to achieve than at Podunk. But that’s a group rule - as an individual, the same logic implies that if you attended Harvard and got a 3.8, then if you took the same kind of classes, and put forth the same work, you’d likely get a 4.0 at Podunk. How else to justify any kind of advantage?</p>
<p>That said, yes, there’s an advantage to which undergrad school you attend, but in the end, by itself, it’s not going to buy you much - a 28 MCAT after attending Harvard probably won’t overcome a 38 at Podunk, everything else being equal. The important thing is how well your undergrad can prepare you for med school admissions. That includes quality of instruction, esp. for MCAT preparation, and support outside of the classroom, that is, do they provide or assist you in getting research opportunities and shadowing experiences? </p>
<p>A good indicator to look for is what percentage of undergrads at a given school are accepted into <em>any</em> med school. Some schools provide outcome data that shows which schools their undergrads went on to attend, so that might provide some insight, too. </p>
<p>You’ll want a school that’s “above average” in that regard - with 46% the average, you’ll want to attend a school that does better than that, say, 70%.</p>
<p>But pinning your hopes on specific schools isn’t all that productive - med schools have dismal acceptance rates, and you never know if you’re a fit for that school, in that cycle.</p>
<p>I don’t imagine that there is a simple way to compare GPAs across colleges. Even within the Ivies, there is a fair amount of variance in terms of average GPAs, so an x.y from one is not necessarily the same as an x.y from another. Add in the variance of major/minor/course selection. WOuld you pick a 3.5 GPA from Harvard with a major in English and just enough science courses to squeeze into med school over a 3.9 from a lesser named school with a dual major in biology and chemistry, including some graduate level courses in both?
More important perhaps, is to go to the school that best suits you and at which you will learn the most, without accumulating too much debt.</p>
<p>It would depend on the MCAT and the average applicant from each school (if a 3.5 is pretty normal for a good Yale applicant that would make a diff), but a .3 GPA difference is pushing the ranges of tolerance. I’ve heard some schools adjusting a GPA as much as that, but it tends to be in extreme circumstances like a triple engineering major from Caltech.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of scale for one. Doing research on the side is one thing, committing your entire career to research is another. Side jobs and clinical trials are more than abundant everywhere. If you want go into research completely I would first suggest that you go MD/PhD, because honestly its easier to set yourself up that way when you have a structured (and usually free) research experience for all that time. If you are shooting PhD, then there is an aspect of academic pedigree (which is not the same thing as prestige) in the sense that who you work under and with who you work can have some affect on your career. If you are a brilliant researcher, though, it really isn’t going to matter much. If you aren’t a brilliant researcher, it is likewise not going to matter much.</p>
<p>I couldn’t help but wonder what this “top med school” discussion is about. Have any of you been to a big hospital in the US lately? Did you notice how many foreign (read India) educated doctors you run into? They didn’t necessarily go to “top med schools” in US.</p>
<p>Right, but all of that doesn’t matter when the applicant who attended Harvard and got a 2.5 gets screened out by a computer because his or her GPA is too low.</p>
<p>I was told by someone working in med school admissions that ~70% of the students from ivies and top LAC with GPA of 3.4 to 3.6 get into their medical school. If they have have a 3.2 to 3.4 it drops to about 40% which is the national average. They were trying to convince me that the selectivity of the college the applicant attended did matter. If colleges can judge the relative rigor of high schools (10,000s) why would you assume medical schools can not judge the relative rigor of colleges (~4,000).</p>
<p>Appdad - back to post#2, you can pick your college, but not your public high school. </p>
<p>I’m not an MD, but if I were a HS student aiming for med school, I’d apply to colleges with generous scholarships and up to date undergraduate science facilities and internships or capstone projects and SMALL CLASSES where the exam curves aren’t grueling.
And no party schools - you won’t have time to party.</p>
<p>Also - when you attend college open houses, the adcoms should be able to tell you what percentage of premeds get accepted to med school. Also ask them - and ask students - if students intending to be premed are mostly sticking with it or mostly washing out.</p>
<p>Most Students who attend Ivies or Johns Hopkins - type schools do get into med school but if you think you won’t be in the top half of the class, look for a college that is either more nurturing or less competitive. </p>
<p>Babygrl9205 - look at the women’s colleges.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t worry about how well known any school that you go to is. Sure, everyone wants to go to Harvard for med school but there are a lot of other great ones out there. I went to a med program in Boston over the summer and met some doctors who hold high positions in their fields but who went to med schools that no one had ever heard about. Its more about the education, less about the name.</p>