You can still go to medical or law school if your undergrad was not highly ranked

[Anonymous]

I was talking with my primary care doctor earlier this week during a visit. He graduated from Tufts medical school, which I knew, but I didn’t know his undergrad was Old Dominion Univ. ODU is a perfectly fine school but from a pure rankings standpoint is something this board with scoff at. My point of this post is a reminder that what you do in undergrad is far more important than where you go. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc come from all sorts of undergrad schools. Should be obvious but I think this bird often forgets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was talking with my primary care doctor earlier this week during a visit. He graduated from Tufts medical school, which I knew, but I didn’t know his undergrad was Old Dominion Univ. ODU is a perfectly fine school but from a pure rankings standpoint is something this board with scoff at. My point of this post is a reminder that what you do in undergrad is far more important than where you go. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc come from all sorts of undergrad schools. Should be obvious but I think this bird often forgets.

Op here - this board, but you could also call me a bird, lol.

[Anonymous]

I think people often confuse "possible" and "likelihood" confused when talking about this topic. Yes, anything is possible I suppose.

[Anonymous]

Yes. They point to the extremely rare individual from a random low ranked college and jump to the conclusion that one's ability to get into medical or law school from that school is the same as it would be from a top ranked college.

[Anonymous]

There are books written about this, there are many threads on this forum about this as well. They all tell you the same thing. The ranking of your undergrad school is not important for med or law school admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. They point to the extremely rare individual from a random low ranked college and jump to the conclusion that one's ability to get into medical or law school from that school is the same as it would be from a top ranked college.

It is not extremely rare. It is common. MCAT score and LSAT score are by far the most important thing. By far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people often confuse "possible" and "likelihood" confused when talking about this topic. Yes, anything is possible I suppose.

It is likely. If you do well on the MCAT or LSAT, your undergrad doesn’t really matter at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are books written about this, there are many threads on this forum about this as well. They all tell you the same thing. The ranking of your undergrad school is not important for med or law school admissions

Right. This is not news OP.

[Anonymous]

It's very understandable why people want to delude themselves into believing this. But still. Come on.

[Anonymous]

I would guess it's more likely for med school because pre-reqs and MCATS are very objective data on which they can determine likely success in medical school. Law school is probably much more subjective and very much driven by prestige.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would guess it's more likely for med school because pre-reqs and MCATS are very objective data on which they can determine likely success in medical school. Law school is probably much more subjective and very much driven by prestige.

It is very driven by LSAT score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's very understandable why people want to delude themselves into believing this. But still. Come on.

Are you a doctor or lawyer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's very understandable why people want to delude themselves into believing this. But still. Come on.

Are you a doctor or lawyer?

No, just a humble troll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people often confuse "possible" and "likelihood" confused when talking about this topic. Yes, anything is possible I suppose.

It is likely. If you do well on the MCAT or LSAT, your undergrad doesn’t really matter at all.

Correct. I went to a third tier liberal arts college in Iowa and then med school at Hopkins.
My brother went to the same undergrad and the medical school at Northwestern.
My cousin went to a complete no-name regional liberal arts college in Indiana and then on to medical school at Temple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess it's more likely for med school because pre-reqs and MCATS are very objective data on which they can determine likely success in medical school. Law school is probably much more subjective and very much driven by prestige.

It is very driven by LSAT score.

Yes - speaking as a lawyer, the irony of law school admissions is that it’s so incredibly and objectively stats-based with the combo of GPA and LSAT score. This is much more so than undergrad admissions. The most subjective schools beyond GPA/LSAT are the very top ones (Harvard, Yale, Stanford), but it’s otherwise a pretty direct line between stats and admissions virtually everywhere else.

To the extent that grads from top undergrad schools are overrepresented in top law schools, it’s really more that those people are overrepresented among top standardized test takers in general (including the LSAT and MCAT) as opposed to the fact that they attended those particular undergrad schools themselves.