Reply to To you, what schools are truly worth 90k/year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]are any worth it for pre med. or are the top ones only worth it for the pipeline to wall street / finance? son looking for pre-med and just not sure if a top 20 school makes a difference?[/quote]

We chose it, but most don’t due to cost and that’s very fair. No regrets, it’s opened doors to make a really compelling resume for med school. They are so shooting for a top med school also and there is correlation, some I’ll just say it’s that they’d be to students anywhere and have same result though. [/quote]

MD who has a med admissions consulting firm on the side, and experience in top-5 med admissions committee, as does one of my partners. 
The T20ish unis/T5 LACs or so is a significant leg up for top MD programs and MD admissions in general, though whether that is correlation or causation is murky. These schools are far overrepresented among T20 med school students. Consider though these elite undergrad programs are the same ones that historically have the highest SAT ranges (well over half of the student body scoring 98%ile or higher on SAT when tests were required), and consequently list median MCAT scores of 516-518 among medical school applicants in a given year. They have upwards of 90% of applicants accepted to any med school and have "feeder" to Top Med schools reputation, many with over 25% of their admitted applicants landing at top-name research med schools.  Med schools do use undergrad school (and program of study) as a factor in admissions, but it is not nearly as large as stem GPA and MCAT. The students at these top programs who use consultants are often below average at their school, 3.4-3.6 when the average undergrad GPA is 3.75-3.85 at elites. They often seek outside help because they do not like the advice of premed advising(do a postbacc or MS and get the stem grades up). Premed advising rarely gatekeeps at top schools anymore, as parents gave extreme pushback in the early 2010s. Parents involved in med apps is relatively new but it has massively affected undergraduate approach compared to pre-2000, when aggressive weeding out was common and expected. 
Our advice is often the same as premed advising, but offers more hand-holding on the details of individualized plans. Top20ish students have much more success than 3.4-3.6 students from below T60 or so, but the MCATs are usually 512-514 rather than below 500. We get a lot of UVA students: they hang somewhere in the middle. The below-T60 group does not get into med school anywhere, nor do most of their 3.9 counterparts from the same undergrad, because they usually have 508-510. The age old question is do elite schools help with MCAT? Maybe. The science exams tend to be application of knowledge long-answer problem solving tests rather than almost entirely fill in the blank/multiple choice. I suspect that the more important difference is elite students are more likely to be students who have excellent study habits, are fast learners and excel on std tests. 
Just my 2c, from years of application cycles. [/quote]

Well 80% of the kids attending T20 and Top LAC tend to be UMC to wealthy.  They grew up having academics pushed.  But most importantly, they have the financial resources to be considering Top Medical schools as well, rather than focusing on their in-state. Our two in-state medical schools (one being highly ranked) are only $40-50K per year versus $72K for Harvard.  and the 40K is in an area with lower cost of living.  So yeah kids whose parents cannot easily pay the entire way thru medical school are smartly going to search for ones that will save them $20-30K+ per year (times 4).  Or they are searching for a private medical school that is closer to home/relatives, so they can live for minimal costs.   Those 80% however don't have to consider costs, so of course there are more from those "top schools" who get into top medical schools.  Also, yes, only 10-20% of your state school students or other privates might be "equal to T20 students academically" so of course not as many kids from State University are going to be candidates for Harvard Medical school [/quote]

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