@nrtlax33 What does one learn from aamc applicant/matriculant data that is specific to this thread titled “Your examples of Uninformed/Informed first choices in College Selection?”
What am I missing here?
I sort of got a kick out of #3 on this thread: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2122715-currently-a-sophomore-chance-me-for-hypsm-and-uchicago.html#latest
“MIT - MIT has the exact major that I want to pursue which is finance. They are very highly ranked in finance. They have one of the best STEM program as well.”
It stuck out to me because a lot of schools have that “exact major”.
Three years ago a friend of my son returned from a school visit and explained that “the tour guide’s lower back tattoo was amazing, loved the vibe”. Not sure if he even noticed a library, dormitory, or dinning hall.
As of this recent break he appears to be happily enjoying his junior year.
Also “MIT is really strong in technology which is what I am interested in”.
LOL about the lower back tattoo 
I will say though that one of the small things that made a positive impression for my daughter was when she went to check in for a summer program for rising HS seniors, an autonomous robot handed over her ID while the students monitoring the robot were singing along with “Hamilton.” When we were out of ear shot, she leaned over and said “I found my people.” Obviously could have happened at hundreds of school but it was the icing on the cake.
They miss so much. Once they read the data, they will start to get a sense of what is involved to be a premed. For example, I pointed out earlier that UChicago doesn’t have more than 15 AA med school applicants while Rice has 17 and Dartmouth has 20. (I intentionally pick some schools which don’t have a lot of students.) This is not necessarily a deal breaker. But it is important to find out the reason. Reading the data is the first step. Most uninformed people can’t even take the first step. I hate to point out specific case.
@nrtlax33 According to the data there were 171 med school applicants from Chicago in 2018-19. IPEDS data states that about 5% of Chicago students are AA. This would translate to about 9 students, ie less than 15. Class of 2022 profile states the AA percentage is 9%, which would translate into 15 students out of 171. I don’t understand what this tells you.
"Once they read the data, they will start to get a sense of what is involved to be a premed. "
Not every student desires to be a premed. This is irrelevant at best and unhelpful at worst.
@ccdad99 : Well, if you look at the data, you would see that UChicago is not a good place for a minority to be a premed. If you compare the minority data with Brown’s, you will see Brown has 30 Hispanic, 30 AA applicants while UChicago’s applicants are dominated by Asian. Do I need to interpret the data to this level? You could bring this data back to UChicago thread to help some of the people there.
^ As someone trying to be a friend let it go. This isn’t Brown vs UC.
Different strokes for …
Both great schools.
brown is committed to urm students in its plme program and overall. Plme requires you to attend brown med. if you apply anywhere else you lose your guarantee and enter the regular pool. It’s a good not great med school but cuts way down on the stress. Be a history major if you like. And close friends d was able to take orgo pass fail this semester. She was laughing that it was worth the entire price of admission for her. And she also mentioned how incredibly hard the pre med gunners at brown work. I think it’s a home run program if you can get a seat.
@privatebanker : My kid has a lot of PLME friends PLME is not included in AAMC data. They don’t apply out. As you said, PLME only take one semester of orgo instead of one year and they can take it pass/fail. It is unheard of.
"Well, if you look at the data, you would see that UChicago is not a good place for a minority to be a premed. "
I do not agree the data implies this, but even if it did - it is simply not relevant for most applicants. The majority of applicants are not AA premeds so giving your opinion as if those unique circumstances apply to every applicant is unhelpful at best, harmful at worst. There are literally millions of non - AA, non premed applicants out there and they have different criteria than the ones you first manufacture and then keep repeating in multiple threads. Imposing your judgment and criteria on other applicants is uninformed.
For the love of…cake! Why do so many threads have to veer into elite school vs elite school territory?
The truth is that the kids I know (including my own) care about the right “fit” - size, location, campus vibe etc. They also care about dorms and food.
To me your criteria is your criteria.
The big mistakes to me are going into serious debt and following a boyfriend/girlfriend.
My own kid knocked a school from his list because it was too conservative and another because males greatly outnumbered females.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
More to the point, why do threads veer off into discussing irrelevant topics like BS/MD? Or why does every question require a statistical analysis? Hint - it doesn’t. Move it along, please.
Of course, many college search and selection threads here show a strong bias toward highly ranked schools, so that ranking becomes almost equivalent between the set of schools mentioned. Yes, between that list of suggestions, a student can ignore the rankings, but that is because the ranking bias is already baked into the list of suggestions.
Thank you!. Now back to the originally scheduled programming
:)>-
“Nobel Prize winners may or may not care about undergrads, but their concentration in a specific school might give you an idea about the intellectual rigor of a place.”
Agree, picking a college on nobel prize winners is not unreasonable, especially if it’s in your field or major. And the top ten US schools that produce noble laureates are pretty much the top ten in most rankings - the only outlier is Berkeley, top 10 in nobel but generally not in rankings. But your point on intellectual rigor and nobel winners is spot on, there’s a correlation there for sure, Chicago, Columbia, MIT et al.