Is it better to go to a lesser school if you are went to be premed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your student at MIT or Rice or Princeton and other difficult schools is going to have an easier time with med school admissions than a 4.0 from Podunk U.

Sure thing…Whatever you need to believe to make yourself feel better when you write those tuition checks for a premed undergrad degree.

Data is data. For med school admissions, it's better to go to a top school over a middling school for the easy As.

Money and debt are different issues.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to the above posters for sharing their experiences on kids from elite schools with lower GPAs having an easier time with med school admissions than those from state schools with high GPAs. I've seen numerous Reddit and College Confidential posts and a few premed websites stating the complete opposite: it is better to have a near 4.0 at Podunk State than a 3.6 at Elite School. Having a premed kid starting at JHU this August, who is a bit intimidated by JHU's cut-throat and grade-deflation reputation, I really want to believe that the above posters are right. But a tiny voice inside me asks: why is there such a huge discrepancy?

[Anonymous]

Jesuit med schools like any other Jesuit grad school like law schools have traditionally given preference to undergrads from fellow Jesuit schools. Hence a premed applicant from Holy Cross has an advantage vs premed applicant from Middlebury. Same preferences apply to Harvard B School where the number 1 undergrad feeder school is Harvard.

[Anonymous]

My DS went to UVA premed. He and his friend group nearly all got into top 25 med schools. I guess he was in the top tier of premeds at UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a pre-med kid at UVA and a second one at an Ivy. The medical school matriculations from the two are very different. UVA sends primarily to state schools, Ivy sends many to top10 med schools. UVA kids almost all take gap years, the Ivy kids generally do not.

We're both in medicine and realize that an MD is an MD. But it's nice that places like Yale and Penn medicine are in the conversation from the Ivy undergrad.

Agree it is quite different. Moving fown to T50ish colleges is an even bigger hurdle merely to get in to any US MD, unless you are top 10% of the college which usually means 3.95+.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS went to UVA premed. He and his friend group nearly all got into top 25 med schools. I guess he was in the top tier of premeds at UVA.

i think that is the point—T10 is not really doable there without being an outlier? Yet dozens out of the 300 or so who apply every year from each ivy get in to at least one T10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks to the above posters for sharing their experiences on kids from elite schools with lower GPAs having an easier time with med school admissions than those from state schools with high GPAs. I've seen numerous Reddit and College Confidential posts and a few premed websites stating the complete opposite: it is better to have a near 4.0 at Podunk State than a 3.6 at Elite School. Having a premed kid starting at JHU this August, who is a bit intimidated by JHU's cut-throat and grade-deflation reputation, I really want to believe that the above posters are right. But a tiny voice inside me asks: why is there such a huge discrepancy?

I think some is gatekeeping and I think the rest is merely uninformed parents who prize saving money over all else, not understanding you have to maximize chances of admission and doing that will also maximize chances of merit (when you have a 1530+ kid who has a lot of drive and actually has the choice between T10 like hopkins or podunkU). Most who tout state schools ro save money do not have kids who had the actual choice. It is copium.
JHU has a 3.8 median these days. Yours will work hard there but will go to med school somewhere as long as he has a 3.6. He will be able to compete for some merit with a 3.8 assuming he does the regular premed thing at all top schools: research!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks to the above posters for sharing their experiences on kids from elite schools with lower GPAs having an easier time with med school admissions than those from state schools with high GPAs. I've seen numerous Reddit and College Confidential posts and a few premed websites stating the complete opposite: it is better to have a near 4.0 at Podunk State than a 3.6 at Elite School. Having a premed kid starting at JHU this August, who is a bit intimidated by JHU's cut-throat and grade-deflation reputation, I really want to believe that the above posters are right. But a tiny voice inside me asks: why is there such a huge discrepancy?

The college confidential premed “expert” had her kids get in 10 years ago when there was no merit game being played to get med students to pick your school over others. She never served on admissions. She states how rare it is to get more than one acceptance to med school, and while that may be the case for the undergrad programs she knows, it is not the case for a large portion of students at ivies/hopkins/washU. Multiple acceptances is the norm for students above the average for these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesuit med schools like any other Jesuit grad school like law schools have traditionally given preference to undergrads from fellow Jesuit schools. Hence a premed applicant from Holy Cross has an advantage vs premed applicant from Middlebury. Same preferences apply to Harvard B School where the number 1 undergrad feeder school is Harvard.

So basically you are saying that even with the preferences given to a school like Holy Cross within the Jesuit system Middlebury and Williams still have higher acceptance rates to medical school than HC and Amherst and Bowdoin at a minimum equal them. Thank-you for making my point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks to the above posters for sharing their experiences on kids from elite schools with lower GPAs having an easier time with med school admissions than those from state schools with high GPAs. I've seen numerous Reddit and College Confidential posts and a few premed websites stating the complete opposite: it is better to have a near 4.0 at Podunk State than a 3.6 at Elite School. Having a premed kid starting at JHU this August, who is a bit intimidated by JHU's cut-throat and grade-deflation reputation, I really want to believe that the above posters are right. But a tiny voice inside me asks: why is there such a huge discrepancy?

I think some is gatekeeping and I think the rest is merely uninformed parents who prize saving money over all else, not understanding you have to maximize chances of admission and doing that will also maximize chances of merit (when you have a 1530+ kid who has a lot of drive and actually has the choice between T10 like hopkins or podunkU). Most who tout state schools ro save money do not have kids who had the actual choice. It is copium.
JHU has a 3.8 median these days. Yours will work hard there but will go to med school somewhere as long as he has a 3.6. He will be able to compete for some merit with a 3.8 assuming he does the regular premed thing at all top schools: research!

Research is heavily overrated on DCUM. But I agree that a 3.6 at JHU will get you into a med school as long as your BCPM GPA is solid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/from-pre-med-to-md-understanding-the-pathways-to-medical-school/

Top feeders to med school
1. JHU
13. Upenn
17. Emory
23. Cornell
46. Columbia
48. Georgetown
60. BU

Comparing Emory to BU for pre-med of all things is an insult. It's one of the best.

Just so you know, that data is based on publicly available LinkedIn data.

I'm not sure whether that's a reliable source for measuring this type of information.

[Anonymous]

All of this “top med school” talk is over rated. It doesn’t matter. Med school is med school- unless you want tot work on academia and/or research, but that doesn’t pay well anyhow. Majority of even the top, best paid specialists don’t go to “top med schools.” They go to mid-tier US schools, usually public ones. You don’t need to graduate Harvard med school to go on to be a neurosurgeon making 7 figure salary.

[Anonymous]

Not looking for snark, but I have one dc at UChicago and a high schooler who wants pre med. The high schooler is petrified to attend UChicago due to the "intimidating" super intellectual kids she's met through DC so far and the grade deflation. Otherwise school is a great fit. Is her fear valid? She said WashU woild be easier for pre med, but UChicago seems to do well with med school placement. We know ED UChicago and WashU is going to be make or break, so need to decide. She is capable and hardworking but older kid tested better and is more analytical, and near photographic memory, so she is worried she can't cut it. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not looking for snark, but I have one dc at UChicago and a high schooler who wants pre med. The high schooler is petrified to attend UChicago due to the "intimidating" super intellectual kids she's met through DC so far and the grade deflation. Otherwise school is a great fit. Is her fear valid? She said WashU woild be easier for pre med, but UChicago seems to do well with med school placement. We know ED UChicago and WashU is going to be make or break, so need to decide. She is capable and hardworking but older kid tested better and is more analytical, and near photographic memory, so she is worried she can't cut it. Sigh.

Since your DC already knows the culture of UChicago, have her look at less intensive academic colleges. UChicago is not for everyone. GPA is still the number one factor so even if they get their undergraduate degree at a T10 like UChicago, a third tier private like Emory, or from a lesser public like VCU, you will still need a high GPA. What a lot of people are missing is that the success of getting into medical school from T10 colleges is more a function of these students can perform really well on the MCAT rather than the name behind the school. The vast majority of T10 students are going to have high SATs which correlates to a high MCAT score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/from-pre-med-to-md-understanding-the-pathways-to-medical-school/

Top feeders to med school
1. JHU
13. Upenn
17. Emory
23. Cornell
46. Columbia
48. Georgetown
60. BU

Comparing Emory to BU for pre-med of all things is an insult. It's one of the best.

Just so you know, that data is based on publicly available LinkedIn data.

I'm not sure whether that's a reliable source for measuring this type of information.

It is not. It has been discussed many times on this thread. For the real data, look up AMCAS tables for number applying to US med schools from each undergrad, then divide by the number of graduating undergrads to get an idea. JHU is indeed top with almost 30% of each class who eventually applies to med school(altogether--with 0-1-2-gap years). Most ivies and Duke have around 20-25% of each class.