Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

UVA is an excellent school. Here is the perspective from advising many premeds at UVA, Ivy/T10 as well as schools quite a bit below UVA.
I am in a group consulting service for med school admissions and myself and other members have served on T5 med admissions as well as mid-range med school admissions. The most important factors are BCPM GPA in the context of the undergrad(reputation as well as peer quality) plus the MCAT.
The extra funded opportunities that Ivy/T10 often have are not that important for admissions though they do help make the students' lives easier. Examples are more undergrad research funding, more spots for research based on fewer students competing for spots, and many ivy-level schools guarantee a research spot somewhere for all undergrads who want one. The ones with hospitals on or near campus have additional programs with less competition than one finds at UVA. However these are small factors compared to GPA and MCAT.

Ivies/T10 for pre-med are only the right choice if your student would likely be top half among premeds there, roughly equivalent to 1510+ (based on test required pre and post covid data) and received AP scores of 5s on almost all STEM AP. Since you mentioned your student was rejected not waitlisted at ivies, he or she may not have been a top-half student there, even if they had gotten in. You would know better than us. For the sake of argument let's say they are a 1460-1480 kid with a mix of 3-4-5 on STEM AP. They have the goods to get into Medical school and should be able to be close to top quarter at UVA, or 3.75+ for the STEM GPA--the BCPM or stem GPA is the one that counts-- making it highly likely they get in to at least one MD program in the USA, as they should be able to get above 510 on the MCAT with that SAT and the known rigorous UVA curriculum.

At an ivy-level school that same student might do poorly (straight Bs in STEM, which is below average for most ivy/T10), considering the average premed at T10/ivy gets a 516-518. It is hard to get into med school with a 3.0 to 3.3 STEM(BCPM) GPA even with a 510 MCAT, though at an ivy the overall GPA could be a respectable 3.6 due to easy A in other classes. The BCPM is what counts. Ivies curve to a median of B+ for the basics(chem, O-chem, calc, physics) and usually upper level sciences to A-. There is not weed-out per se at ivies but having a 3.0-3.3 BCPM GPA after the first two years means multiple gap years likely with a masters program will be needed to boost the GPA to have a chance. Even from a competitive environment like an ivy, which med schools call "Tier 1" schools, a 3.0-3.3 BCPM is a no-go.

TL; DR Bloom where you are planted! Go and make the most of UVA!

I can’t imagine feeling dejected about UVA. I think you need to touch some grass OP - you’ve been in the echo chamber too long.

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Anonymous wrote:UVA is ivy in others eyes, even though may not be in tier 1.

1. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing more.
2. The top SLACs are better at undergraduate education than any Ivy for most subjects.
3. Strong public’s are their equals and often superior for technical education.
4. UVA is a top school but none of the Public schools are the equal to any of the top schools in either of the above categories.
4. You can get to any medical school from any of the above by working hard and taking advantage of what they offer.

Focus in where your kid is, not where they aren't. If they do the work they will be fine.

I don't like all the ivy worship either but it is more than an athletic conference

It’s not. People who don’t know any better perceive it as something more than it is while others who do know better play along because it suits their interests. The 8 schools are quite different from one another and absolutely are not the top 8 R1s in the country by any objective measure. When you see applicants shotgunning the Ivies they are not looking for superior education but rather hunting for prestige. It is a truly banal exercise among some groups.

My first three points above (edited) hold.

Inline

I don't think it's reasonable to say it's just an athletic conference.

Perfectly reasonable given that is exactly what it is and that is was the intent when it was created. The fact that some have tried to morph it into something else is irrelevant.

That prestige you mention isn't an illusion.

It is not an illusion. But it is a byproduct of the schools involved and changes in the college admissions process. In the case of some of the schools in the conference it is not neither earned nor deserved.

There are some industries that will recruit from Ivy at way higher rates than from UC San Francisco

UC San Francisco is a medical school and not pertinent to the conversation but I understand where you are going. But, it is a good place to go.

It is true that the Ivies get recruiting preferences in some fields (IB, MBB particularly) but there are other schools with similar or greater pull than individual Ivies in each category. The top NESCAC schools place better into IB than half of the Ivies. Similar trends hold (top NESCAC and others) for med school and Law school as well. There is another set of schools (some public) ahead of various Ivy members for engineering and CS as well. HYP are considered universally excellent and part of any 'top 10' list but the other 5 float among 15 or so schools.

The Ivies have more Nobel prize winning professors than any other group of schools

Not a particularly useful metric to measure groups of schools. The prizes are again concentrated in mainly three of the eight schools and there are many other schools which outperform many of the ivies. This should not be a surprise given that the Ivy league was formed to align athletics within a regional group of elite colleges, not create a grouping of the 'best' colleges.

The Ivies combined have a larger collective endowment than any other group of schools

Another not very useful metric, schools do not pool their endowments. But, this is another metric which demonstrates the variation among the Ivies. When measured by endowment per student only 4 of the Ivy schools make the top 20 and looking at overall endowments Brown and Cornell badly lag the others.

What groups are engaging in the banal exercise of pursuing ivy?

You already know the answer.

Quite a few of my classmates who went to UVA became successful doctors, and it's a great place for an aspiring doctor to attend.

It's unfortunate the thread got hijacked by an Ivy basher who is pushing the fake narrative that SLACs are better for undergraduate education. That really isn't the case: they may offer smaller classes, but students can take smaller classes at many Ivies (Dartmouth and Princeton stand out) and have access to more professors who are leading lights in their fields, as well as access to greater resources for research and study.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is ivy in others eyes, even though may not be in tier 1.

1. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing more.
2. The top SLACs are better at undergraduate education than any Ivy for most subjects.
3. Strong public’s are their equals and often superior for technical education.
4. UVA is a top school but none of the Public schools are the equal to any of the top schools in either of the above categories.
4. You can get to any medical school from any of the above by working hard and taking advantage of what they offer.

Focus in where your kid is, not where they aren't. If they do the work they will be fine.

I don't like all the ivy worship either but it is more than an athletic conference

It’s not. People who don’t know any better perceive it as something more than it is while others who do know better play along because it suits their interests. The 8 schools are quite different from one another and absolutely are not the top 8 R1s in the country by any objective measure. When you see applicants shotgunning the Ivies they are not looking for superior education but rather hunting for prestige. It is a truly banal exercise among some groups.

My first three points above (edited) hold.

I don't think it's reasonable to say it's just an athletic conference.

That prestige you mention isn't an illusion.
There are some industries that will recruit from Ivy at way higher rates than from UC San Francisco
The Ivies have more nobel prize winning professors than any other group of schools
The Ivies combined have a larger collective endowment than any other group of schools

What groups are engaging in the banal exercise of pursuing ivy?

The Ivy League is an athletic conference happens to be comprised of schools that, at the moment, happen to be prestigious.

UCSF does not have an undergraduate program, so of course the recruitment profile is incredibly different.

The recruitment profile for Stanford is not dramatically different from that of Princeton, despite the fact that they play in different athletic conferences.

Anonymous wrote:You won’t miss anything not because UVA has the same pre-med opportunities (it doesn’t), but because you don’t have better alternatives. Some top private universities have much better pre-med resources than state schools like UVA, the chance of doing real research with a professor, to name a few.

How do you know this? Do you have a UVA pre-med student? The best state schools, like UVA, Mich, UCLA rival many top privates including sone ivies.

Signed,
Parent of an Echols Scholar who declined multiple Ivies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

If you are going to get a professional grad degree doctors are the least likely to benefit from a prestigious undergraduate degree.

An MBA might get a reasonable amount of value from the prestige of their undergraduate but their MBA program will be more important. These are the guys who are most likely to casually mention that they went to Harvard for undergrad to go with their Penn MBA.

A lawyer is unlikely to ever have to mention her undergraduate institution, the law school will be important in early career and even mid career and will likely influence what opportunities are available to you in that time. Unless you went to HYPSM level undergrad but only if you went to a similarly impressive law school. People generally don't mention their undergrad in the professional setting. The paralegals are the mostly the ones that talk about their undergrad degree.

A doctor will not only be unlikely to benefit from the prestige of their undergrad degree, their residency is more important to the trajectory of their career than where they got their medical degree. And that residency will likely be fairly important in their early career opportunities but not much beyond that. Nobody is going to care if you went to UVA, GMU or Stanford for undergrad, you can't goof around but the name on the bachelors degree never comes up.

This.

If you are getting an MD, your undergrad just has to be able to prepare you for medical school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is ivy in others eyes, even though may not be in tier 1.

1. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing more.
2. The top SLACs are better at undergraduate education than any Ivy for most subjects.
3. Strong public’s are their equals and often superior for technical education.
4. UVA is a top school but none of the Public schools are the equal to any of the top schools in either of the above categories.
4. You can get to any medical school from any of the above by working hard and taking advantage of what they offer.

Focus in where your kid is, not where they aren't. If they do the work they will be fine.

I don't like all the ivy worship either but it is more than an athletic conference

It’s not. People who don’t know any better perceive it as something more than it is while others who do know better play along because it suits their interests. The 8 schools are quite different from one another and absolutely are not the top 8 R1s in the country by any objective measure. When you see applicants shotgunning the Ivies they are not looking for superior education but rather hunting for prestige. It is a truly banal exercise among some groups.

My first three points above (edited) hold.

I don't think it's reasonable to say it's just an athletic conference.

That prestige you mention isn't an illusion.
There are some industries that will recruit from Ivy at way higher rates than from UC San Francisco
The Ivies have more nobel prize winning professors than any other group of schools
The Ivies combined have a larger collective endowment than any other group of schools

What groups are engaging in the banal exercise of pursuing ivy?

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

Congratulations on your kid’s acceptance into UVA! I have a rising third-year and what I can tell you is that UVA has every possible resource and opportunity available, including enough research opportunities to choke an elephant. As others have posted, this school is nothing short of fantastic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

Colleges ranked by percentage of undergraduates who go on to attend medical school:

2 Harvard
3 Yale
5 Brown
13 Penn
16 Princeton
23 Cornell
46 Columbia
84 UVA

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/adam.hearn4686/viz/TopFeederstoMedicalSchool/TopFeeders-Med5

UVA has much bigger enrollment than any of these. Cream rises to the top.

True--but you're taking the chance that your state school kid will be the cream. It's not always the case. Big pond, lots of fish.

The No. 1 school, JHU is at 4%, It's still a pretty small number.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

Colleges ranked by percentage of undergraduates who go on to attend medical school:

2 Harvard
3 Yale
5 Brown
13 Penn
16 Princeton
23 Cornell
46 Columbia
84 UVA

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/adam.hearn4686/viz/TopFeederstoMedicalSchool/TopFeeders-Med5

If the denominator is the class size, this will penalize the large schools. Should be based on how many students declare themselves as premed and of these how many get into med school

I think most people care about whether their kid will have better odds. To calculate odds, you need to adjust for school size.

Only if you sincerely believe that 100% of undergrads at every school are premed.

+1. This comes up all the time on this forum but it is faulty reasoning. Large universities have lots of professional schools where the kids were never likely or planning to do career X or grad school Y. If you don’t adjust for the different structure between universities then a per capita measure doesn’t tell you anything useful.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

Colleges ranked by percentage of undergraduates who go on to attend medical school:

2 Harvard
3 Yale
5 Brown
13 Penn
16 Princeton
23 Cornell
46 Columbia
84 UVA

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/adam.hearn4686/viz/TopFeederstoMedicalSchool/TopFeeders-Med5

UVA has much bigger enrollment than any of these. Cream rises to the top.

True--but you're taking the chance that your state school kid will be the cream. It's not always the case. Big pond, lots of fish.

Yes but most of the student body isn’t as competitive/gunner-like as the student body at the above schools. Especially if the UVA student could have gone to some of the above schools but chose UVA for other reasons like cost, culture, etc. I know it’s hard to believe, but lots of kids just don’t want to go to tiny colleges in the freezing north with no sports.

There's plenty of smart students at state schools like UVA these days. That your kid will rise to the top is no guarantee, and being mediocre at a state school is far different than being mediocre at an Ivy.

Well it worked out for us. And the money saved paid for 2.5 years of med school!

Great! But if your kid made their decision based on getting into medical school, they should have gone to Johns Hopkins which is #1 for % of students getting into medical school.

Or students can just do the best they can with the options they have. No one choice is right for everyone.

Math isn’t your strong point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is ivy in others eyes, even though may not be in tier 1.

1. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing more.
2. The top SLACs are better at undergraduate education than any Ivy for most subjects.
3. Strong public’s are their equals and often superior for technical education.
4. UVA is a top school but none of the Public schools are the equal to any of the top schools in either of the above categories.
4. You can get to any medical school from any of the above by working hard and taking advantage of what they offer.

Focus in where your kid is, not where they aren't. If they do the work they will be fine.

I don't like all the ivy worship either but it is more than an athletic conference

It’s not. People who don’t know any better perceive it as something more than it is while others who do know better play along because it suits their interests. The 8 schools are quite different from one another and absolutely are not the top 8 R1s in the country by any objective measure. When you see applicants shotgunning the Ivies they are not looking for superior education but rather hunting for prestige. It is a truly banal exercise among some groups.

My first three points above (edited) hold.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child will be going to UVA. Got rejected from Ivies. What are we missing by not going to Ivies for pre-med. Outside of pre-med, do Ivies and other top schools create employers and other schools create employees

For pre med, your child is missing basically nothing.

Outside of pre med, ivies are feeders for certain elite companies in finance, consulting, and tech. Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Google, etc. That is their main advantage. Ivies also attract type A personalities who go on to found companies, like Facebook and Microsoft. But they aren't magical founder factories - Gates and Zuckerberg notably dropped out. Your kid will get an amazing education and do great things in life from UVA.

Georgia Tech does well with MBB in Atlanta.

https://casecoach.com/b/what-type-of-candidates-make-it-to-mckinsey-bcg-and-bains-atlanta-offices/

"Ivies are feeders for X, Y, and Z"

"GTech is a feeder for some or all of them too!"

True but irrelevant to a discussion of UVA. My guess is you didn't major in English or philosophy at GTech.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA is ivy in others eyes, even though may not be in tier 1.

1. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, nothing more.
2. The top SLACs are better at undergraduate education than any Ivy for most subjects.
3. UVA is a top school but none of the Public schools are the equal to any of the top schools in either of the above categories.
4. You can get to any medical school from any of the above by working hard and taking advantage of what they offer.

Focus in where your kid is, not where they aren't. If they do the work they will be fine.

I don't like all the ivy worship either but it is more than an athletic conference