<p>I would never tell a young lady who had her heart set on NU to go to Yale. It would be a mistake, no matter what she thought her career plans might be.</p>
<p>And vice versa. Yalies do fine in placement, and things are going to turn out well.</p>
<p>In four years, I hope to be hearing from you -- whatever you're doing -- and I'm sure you will be excited about it. We'll be here along the way to talk you through it, too.</p>
<p>Congratulations, that was a very tough decision. Remember that now you have the best of both worlds -- Yale for undergraduate, and you and your fellow graduates going in droves to all of the very best medical schools in the world, as opposed to all going to NU.</p>
<p>Gina - If you are really worried about going to medical school eventually, I would advise you not to overload on the most important (from premed standpoint) subjects, specifically inorganic and organic chemistry and introductory biology... and make sure you get A's!! Even if you don't have a stellar performance in your major, let's say a B+ average, you can always enroll in postbaccalaureate premed courses at some liberal arts college and do well (which should be easier than doing well at Yale) and get into a medical school. It will be possible because you will have a Yale degree.</p>
<p>However, if you get B-'s and C's in organic chemistry and biology at Yale, it will likely be the end of your medical career. So be very careful. If you become certain that you won't get A's in Yale science courses, you may want to consider just putting off taking the premed courses until after you graduate.</p>
<p>Personally I would've made the same choice.... although it would've been different for a higher ranked medical school. Being done with residency by age 26 sounds just too awesome!!!</p>
<p>1.) ... Unless you're entering at age 16, you can't possibly be finished with a residency by age 26.</p>
<p>2.) If you get C's in organic chemistry AND biology (as in, five or six of them), then sure -- that will be the end of your medical career. One or even two will most certainly not be.</p>
<p>3.) If the problem is that Feinberg isn't ranked high enough, then you're going to be in trouble. Feinberg is ranked pretty freaking high.</p>
<p>4.) Remember, the national average among premeds who go to medical school is a 3.5 BCPM GPA. That's half A's and half B's, or maybe a couple extra A's with a C thrown in there. I'm willing to be huge sums of money that Yale's average is lower than that, which would be a good sign. (Kids can have even LOWER grades and still go to medical school.) You don't need straight A's.</p>
<p>1) OK, 27 or 28 might be a better number. But if you started at age 17 and finished med school by age 24, and did a residency in Clinical Laboratory Medicine/Pathology, you could finish by 26. If you did it cardiothoracic surgery, you would be 32.</p>
<p>3) The US News ranks NW at #21, which is OK, but I wouldn't say it's "pretty freaking high", although of course, it depends on your standards.</p>
<p>2) 4) The average science GPA for accepted applicants is 3.57 with a standard deviation of 0.3, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.<br>
Based on the standard scale, B=3.0, B+=3.3, A-=3.7, so the average science GPA is much closer to A- than B+. The average accepted applicant has roughly 3 A-'s in science for each grade of B+, not one to one. A grade of C (2.0) will pull down your GPA so much that to bring it back to 3.57, you need four perfect A's in science. Two C's will mean that you will probably have to switch your major to science and get A's in pretty much every single course. It does effectively mean the end. </p>
<p>Sure, you may be able to manage with a GPA lower than 3.5 but my guess is that you will have to aim for schools much lower than Northwestern.</p>
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average accepted applicant has roughly 3 A's in science for each grade of B, not one to one.
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<p>That gives you 3.75, when the actual number is 3.57. You're not even talking 2:1 (3.66). It's 1.32:1 if you're just talking A's and B's. Obviously A-'s and B+'s will change that weighting.</p>
<p>Gina (and only Gina), if you're still here and still paying attention, PM me privately, and I'll share with you my personal experience. Ske's academic discussion does not fit with what I went through.</p>
<p>It's one thing to give encourage someone who has borderline GPAs in college and wondering if she has a realistic shot at medical school. </p>
<p>It's something else to tell a person who hasn't even started college that it's perfectly OK to get a couple of C's in premed courses, you will still fly into whichever medical school you want just because you went to Yale.</p>
<p>There are always exceptions. Every year someone will get into Yale Medical School with crappy MCATs and GPAs, the same way someone will get into Yale with 1250 SATs and 3.2 GPAs every year. But to count on being that exception is simply stupid.</p>
<p>i think this new topic is a bit irrelevant. ske, i think by getting two C's you mean that it is the end of someone's medical chances at a top tier school (but it still might not be). but getting a few c's in general does not end one's medical career in general. you just wont be going to JHU, Wash U, Penn, or Harvard Med school. big deal. any med school is a great accomplishment. dozens of people got into SUNY downstate medical schools from schools like cornell, NU, and Johns Hopkins, and even some HYP people, with like 3.0-3.3 and 28-34 mcats. suny downstate is by no means a highly ranked medical school.... but theyll be doctors either way. </p>
<p>sad though, those dreams of careers with CNN might be shattered.</p>
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you will still fly into whichever medical school you want just because you went to Yale
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<p>1.) I would never ever tell anyone that they'll fly into whatever medical school they'll want, no matter how high their scores.</p>
<p>2.) I certainly would not attribute any bonus to a student "just because" she went to a highly ranked school.</p>
<p>In these two ways, I agree with you. Gina's going to Yale will not guarantee her whatever school she desires.</p>
<p>"I would never ever tell anyone that they'll fly into whatever medical school they'll want, no matter how high their scores."</p>
<p>Of course not. Many medical schools routinely reject straight-A, sky-high MCAT applicants if they don't perform well at the interview. But if you have poor grades and scores, you probably won't even make it to the interview at many schools because they often use rigid cutoffs. Top schools like Harvard or Johns Hopkins have average GPAs of 3.8. It's theoretically possible for someone with a GPA below 3.5 to get in, but there has to be some other major hook that offsets the deficit.</p>
<p>"you just wont be going to JHU, Wash U, Penn, or Harvard Med school. big deal. any med school is a great accomplishment."</p>
<p>Yes and no. If you want to go into less competitive fields like pediatrics or pathology, it probably won't matter where you go to med school. You could even go to a Carribean med school and probably get a residency slot in the US somewhere. But if you are aiming for highly competitive fields like ophthalmology, dermatology, plastic surgery, etc. or are trying to get into a very prestigious residency program in any field, you won't get in unless you come from a top ranked medical school or are #1-5 in your class from a second-tier medical school. </p>
<p>If Gina has to go to a bottom-of-the-pile medical school after Yale, it can then be questionable whether she might have been better off going to Northwestern, which is a very decent school.</p>