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

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[quote=Anonymous][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]

Thank you for this, very interesting read. May I please ask a question on coursework. I read in a premed group where the med school advising and consensus is to not take AP credits and take intro bio and chem in college for pre-req for strong sGPA. At my child’s school this is really rare, and they place out of into and take upper level bio classes to satisfy and start in orgo 1 spring of freshman year. I know the prestige is one issue, but is rigor factor in at all when comparing sGPA’s? As that is also going to be a difference among schools I’d think as to what courses are norms. Really appreciate if you have time to answer, I couldn’t ask in group or I’d get annihilated as all say to take the intro classes.[/quote]

DP: Taking AP courses in STEM in HS but repeating them for an "easy A" in college is done at many many universities with kids who are premed.  Why not take an easy A versus replacing Bio 101 with Bio 325?  It's been a know tactic for many years.  Because your overall GPA and Prerequisite GPA does matter a lot for admissions to medical school
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