Premed undergrad and rigor?

[Anonymous]

Tier of school definitely matters. Here is a ranked list of UG feeder schools. The second list is adjusted for enrollment. There you can see Amherst, Haverford etc. are top feeders in addition to the usual Ivy+ suspects.

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-medical-school


Can you get into med school if you attend a school not on this list? Of course. Work hard to be at the top of your class, get great MCAT scores, and you will have some options. Just not top options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

This is correct based on my family's recent experience: My first is recent graduate from a non-ivyT10, and your description is precisely how her science tests were. Chem major. DH went to the same place for undergrad and went to a top med school as well: the grade "curve' has shifted to more students getting A range, but the average % correct on tests is still commonly 60-70%. Long extrapolative exam questions in orgo, cell bio, physics are the norm, with many questions asking for interpretation and application of emerging research. no one is supposed to get them all right, it is supposed to challenge you to think on a deep level. D is on a gap year at NIH, graduated above average 3.8ish, but that is not top 25% there(they publish cutoffs). MCAT 518, one try, studied one summer which is norm there; undergrad average is 517. Based on premed advising tables will easily get in to her "safety" T75 med schools. The difficulty is at a top school, they are all chasing top-10 med schools, many dozens of the 200+ med applicants get into t10 schools each year. the 3.8x is quite borderline for the t10 med programs from there. In reality it does not matter much, she realizes, but the gap year was a choice to boost the resume for the top tier chances.
Fast forward DS, at a flagship ranked recently in T50 though historically has been 15 spots lower. The tests are easy. Son is an engineer and also premed and it is less challenging than his magnet public stem high school because it is almost all memorization. Only 20% get A- or above not the 45% at the T10, but it seems quite easy to be in that A range; a 3.9X seems all but guaranteed. However there is a large set who get Ds and Fs on tests and drop; the grade distributions are bimodal. He is a high performer, over 1500, just did not have top10% grades in high school to get into a T25, so he had to settle for the flagship. The school does not release Gpa v MCAAT med admissions tables until closer to the process, but the average MCAT is 504 and they say to have a shot at med school at all, advising recommends as close as possible to 4.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

I have no clue how things compare, but can say my child at a supposed inflation Ivy is working their tail off in pre-req. One B so far, the rest are A’s but comes with tons of effort and hours in the library, and not prioritizing a social life. This is a kid that picks things up easily, it’s HARD. The exams are very intense and classmates are all very smart.

Sounds exactly like mine at Penn, and all their premed and bioengineering friends. Hours upon hours of work each day have gone into her mostly As. They all seem to have fun clubs plus premed clubs plus lab research that take up time. They love it except for the midterm weeks get very intense. They do socialize but more like one weekend night of going out, usually after all day studying, maybe a second if it is early in the semester.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s commonly said prestige does not matter, and most say cheapest option with highest GPA and MCAT you can. I get that logic.

I can also understand how high SAT/ACT led to prestigious undergrad schools which led to high MCAT and that’s the correlation to strong med school application success.

I could also see top schools covering more in-depth thus making MCAT prep easier or is it truly directional school orgo is same as T5 orgo and it truly does not matter?

Top schools matter for top school. T5 med schools tend to give a boost to top undergrads. Brown gets a boost, RPI does not.

Certainly! And far more than the T5 med schools do it; spent years on a committee for my T50-65 range med school; undergrad colleges are put into tiers based on rigor and get a slight boost over lower tiers--about 16-18 schools are considered Tier 1, 30 or so are tier 2-- and the major the student chooses is tiered --engineering gets more gpa leeway than others.

This is interesting, as I have seen people claim on here that "major doesn't matter; you can major in anything," but if majors are put into tiers, are "easier" majors receiving fewer points?

Majors aren't tiered in the same way as the schools. It's just that certain majors known for grade deflation might get a little boost. Med schools also love humanities majors, who have an equal or slightly better admit rate compared to STEM majors.

+1

[Anonymous]

Of course they differ. Choose the most affordable option where you can get a high gpa and study hard for MCAT if you want into any med school. If you want to get into a top med school, prestige matters, and still need to do the above. Some will get in from other schools, but much fewer. This information is readily available to see.

[Anonymous]

Curious how many pre-req kids at rigorous schools are taking per semester? I sometimes wonder if mine should take less and breathe a little more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

I have no clue how things compare, but can say my child at a supposed inflation Ivy is working their tail off in pre-req. One B so far, the rest are A’s but comes with tons of effort and hours in the library, and not prioritizing a social life. This is a kid that picks things up easily, it’s HARD. The exams are very intense and classmates are all very smart.

Sounds exactly like mine at Penn, and all their premed and bioengineering friends. Hours upon hours of work each day have gone into her mostly As. They all seem to have fun clubs plus premed clubs plus lab research that take up time. They love it except for the midterm weeks get very intense. They do socialize but more like one weekend night of going out, usually after all day studying, maybe a second if it is early in the semester.

Unpopular opinion but this just sounds like college in general. Ivy parents discovering their kids have to work hard in college comes up every year as if it’s revelatory. Colleges isn’t about baby feeding you information

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious how many pre-req kids at rigorous schools are taking per semester? I sometimes wonder if mine should take less and breathe a little more.

Mine hardly takes any. Takes pre reqs for physics major but otherwise is in upper division courses. He’s breezing through at Stanford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious how many pre-req kids at rigorous schools are taking per semester? I sometimes wonder if mine should take less and breathe a little more.

what do you mean by prereqs? do you mean all the courses that count for med school, ie 2 semesters genchem unless allowed to place out, 2 sem orgo, 2 sem bio, cell bio, bichem, genetics, stats, 2 sem physics, 2 sem calc?

Non-engineering premeds at my kid's ivy are encouraged to take no more than 2 stem classes out of their 4 classes each sem of freshman year(ie two of the above, most commonly chem and calcBC or multi to start) then 3 of the 4 classes can be stem later if they handle it well.
Mine is doing 3 of 4 stem now because they got a 4.0 first semester and clearly can handle it.
Engineering premeds, about 1/3 of which are premeds there, take 3 of their 5 classes as stem, usually Chem physics calcbc/multi to start as freshman, and by sophomore year have 4 of 5 classes as STEM. Engineering kids are built different. Their schedules seem insane to regular premeds.

The school's advising will help them map out a slower plan if freshman year does not lead to a 3.3+. They say 95% acceptance rate for those with 3.5+ when they apply, which is a below-average gpa there.

The problem with taking less is it will be hard to get to biochem and the rest of the courses on the mcat by the spring of junior year, meaning gap year or two will be needed and/or a slowdown can mean summers have to be used for classes so they fall behind peers as far as research and volunteering and clinical hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

I have no clue how things compare, but can say my child at a supposed inflation Ivy is working their tail off in pre-req. One B so far, the rest are A’s but comes with tons of effort and hours in the library, and not prioritizing a social life. This is a kid that picks things up easily, it’s HARD. The exams are very intense and classmates are all very smart.

Sounds exactly like mine at Penn, and all their premed and bioengineering friends. Hours upon hours of work each day have gone into her mostly As. They all seem to have fun clubs plus premed clubs plus lab research that take up time. They love it except for the midterm weeks get very intense. They do socialize but more like one weekend night of going out, usually after all day studying, maybe a second if it is early in the semester.

Unpopular opinion but this just sounds like college in general. Ivy parents discovering their kids have to work hard in college comes up every year as if it’s revelatory. Colleges isn’t about baby feeding you information

Nah college is not hard everywhere and it is relative to the kid. Kid at JMU and kid at UVA. Both did similarly in high school one got off the uva WL one did not. The schools are night and day. The JMU"honors" is a joke and the school is EASY to get a 4.0 with reportedly simple regurgitation tests compared with sibling working much harder at UVA to get 3.8. Majors are similar. An ivy kid probably would find UVA easy, because UVA kid has friends who were made to choose it over T15, had 150 points higher on the SAT, and they find it much easier than uva kid who go in off the WL busting tail to keep the 3.8. Person at work has a kid who has straight Cs at JMU, is a senior, has said it is way too hard. Completely different high school background and an 1100 SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

I have no clue how things compare, but can say my child at a supposed inflation Ivy is working their tail off in pre-req. One B so far, the rest are A’s but comes with tons of effort and hours in the library, and not prioritizing a social life. This is a kid that picks things up easily, it’s HARD. The exams are very intense and classmates are all very smart.

Sounds exactly like mine at Penn, and all their premed and bioengineering friends. Hours upon hours of work each day have gone into her mostly As. They all seem to have fun clubs plus premed clubs plus lab research that take up time. They love it except for the midterm weeks get very intense. They do socialize but more like one weekend night of going out, usually after all day studying, maybe a second if it is early in the semester.

Unpopular opinion but this just sounds like college in general. Ivy parents discovering their kids have to work hard in college comes up every year as if it’s revelatory. Colleges isn’t about baby feeding you information

Nah college is not hard everywhere and it is relative to the kid. Kid at JMU and kid at UVA. Both did similarly in high school one got off the uva WL one did not. The schools are night and day. The JMU"honors" is a joke and the school is EASY to get a 4.0 with reportedly simple regurgitation tests compared with sibling working much harder at UVA to get 3.8. Majors are similar. An ivy kid probably would find UVA easy, because UVA kid has friends who were made to choose it over T15, had 150 points higher on the SAT, and they find it much easier than uva kid who go in off the WL busting tail to keep the 3.8. Person at work has a kid who has straight Cs at JMU, is a senior, has said it is way too hard. Completely different high school background and an 1100 SAT.

I guess, but I’ve had people on this forum talk endlessly about how much harder Harvard or Princeton is compared to Berkeley, and I just don’t see it. Mind you. I’m a Princeton alum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started my 1st sem med school pre-reqs at my T10 and bombed, so I took summer 2nd sem classes at my state flagship and got easy As. Did that for the rest of the pre-reqs every summer.

T10 tests were a beast -- short answer and essay and drawing cycles from memory, while state flagship tests were easy -- matching and multiple choice with maybe one short answer.

I ended up choosing a different health profession, and my interviewer told me they were excited to have someone from [my T10 university].

So maybe consider other health professions if med school isn't in the cards.

I have no clue how things compare, but can say my child at a supposed inflation Ivy is working their tail off in pre-req. One B so far, the rest are A’s but comes with tons of effort and hours in the library, and not prioritizing a social life. This is a kid that picks things up easily, it’s HARD. The exams are very intense and classmates are all very smart.

Sounds exactly like mine at Penn, and all their premed and bioengineering friends. Hours upon hours of work each day have gone into her mostly As. They all seem to have fun clubs plus premed clubs plus lab research that take up time. They love it except for the midterm weeks get very intense. They do socialize but more like one weekend night of going out, usually after all day studying, maybe a second if it is early in the semester.

Unpopular opinion but this just sounds like college in general. Ivy parents discovering their kids have to work hard in college comes up every year as if it’s revelatory. Colleges isn’t about baby feeding you information

Nah college is not hard everywhere and it is relative to the kid. Kid at JMU and kid at UVA. Both did similarly in high school one got off the uva WL one did not. The schools are night and day. The JMU"honors" is a joke and the school is EASY to get a 4.0 with reportedly simple regurgitation tests compared with sibling working much harder at UVA to get 3.8. Majors are similar. An ivy kid probably would find UVA easy, because UVA kid has friends who were made to choose it over T15, had 150 points higher on the SAT, and they find it much easier than uva kid who go in off the WL busting tail to keep the 3.8. Person at work has a kid who has straight Cs at JMU, is a senior, has said it is way too hard. Completely different high school background and an 1100 SAT.

I guess, but I’ve had people on this forum talk endlessly about how much harder Harvard or Princeton is compared to Berkeley, and I just don’t see it. Mind you. I’m a Princeton alum.

I was an undergrad at one of HYPS, and did my grad degree and taught at another T20. The T20 has a reputation of being a grind, and it was. However, although the volume of work at the T20 was greater and the classes were curved lower, the intellectual level of the classes was just a bit lower and the pace was just a little bit slower than my undergrad institution. I've never been to med school so I didn't know I'm practice what this would mean for doctors in training, but I definitely noticed it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious how many pre-req kids at rigorous schools are taking per semester? I sometimes wonder if mine should take less and breathe a little more.

what do you mean by prereqs? do you mean all the courses that count for med school, ie 2 semesters genchem unless allowed to place out, 2 sem orgo, 2 sem bio, cell bio, bichem, genetics, stats, 2 sem physics, 2 sem calc?

Non-engineering premeds at my kid's ivy are encouraged to take no more than 2 stem classes out of their 4 classes each sem of freshman year(ie two of the above, most commonly chem and calcBC or multi to start) then 3 of the 4 classes can be stem later if they handle it well.
Mine is doing 3 of 4 stem now because they got a 4.0 first semester and clearly can handle it.
Engineering premeds, about 1/3 of which are premeds there, take 3 of their 5 classes as stem, usually Chem physics calcbc/multi to start as freshman, and by sophomore year have 4 of 5 classes as STEM. Engineering kids are built different. Their schedules seem insane to regular premeds.

The school's advising will help them map out a slower plan if freshman year does not lead to a 3.3+. They say 95% acceptance rate for those with 3.5+ when they apply, which is a below-average gpa there.

The problem with taking less is it will be hard to get to biochem and the rest of the courses on the mcat by the spring of junior year, meaning gap year or two will be needed and/or a slowdown can mean summers have to be used for classes so they fall behind peers as far as research and volunteering and clinical hours.

Yes. That’s what I meant, maybe my terminology is off. The required classes for med school application.