Berkeley vs. Cornell for Pre-med Re-visited

[sakky]

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1. Berkeley data is incomplete…yeah, so why are you drawing conclusions from it?? According to a UCSF med representative who was answering questions last year, last year was Berkeley students’ best year in terms of admissions to UCSF med…over 25 students (20% of the entering medical class) were Berkeley alumni…many took time off before applying. You won’t find this info in the data set you were looking at but this came from a UCSF med school rep. Hmmmmm. So apparently, many Berkeley students don’t report their acceptances/plans to Berkeley. Understandable, as Berkeley allows its students to apply independently of the school.</p>

<p>2) It’s hard for any public school to compete with elite privates in med school acceptances? Apparently not. <a href=“http://mstp.stanford.edu/students.html[/url]”>http://mstp.stanford.edu/students.html&lt;/a&gt;
Here is the list of MD/PhD students at Stanford…I count 4 Berkeley alumni and only 2 Cornellians…and 2 each from U of Arizona and Oregon State, as a matter of fact. Either you’re wrong or Cornell isn’t as “elite” as you hoped it to be, clown. Okay, now this will REALLY make you cry: <a href=“http://medschool.ucsf.edu/mstp/students/[/url]”>http://medschool.ucsf.edu/mstp/students/&lt;/a&gt; . Here is the list of MD/PhD students at UCSF. I count NINE BERKELEY ALUMNI AND ZERO CORNELL ALUMNI. So where are the Cornellians?..I’ll be fair by mentioning the stats for the MD/PhD program where Cornellians are most likely to be found: <a href=“http://www.med.cornell.edu/mdphd/students/[/url]”>Our Students | Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program; . I count 13 Cornellians and 4 Berkeley students. Hmmmm, I guess Cornell wins as expected…but then again, why would the Berkeley students do their MD/PhD if they got into UCSF’s MD/PhD (UCSF is ranked 4th for research/medicine …Cornell is 15th…and UCSF is ranked higher in terms of graduate education in the biological sciences than Cornell is). Also, I tried to find the stats for Harvard and Yale’s MD/PhD programs but I couldn’t find them…I could go on and on but I think I made my point: Cornell doesn’t have an edge over Berkeley.

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<p>While I am not going to get into the fray over which is better for premed, Cornell or Berkeley, I would say that simply looking at the numbers of students from public undergrad schools who go on to med-school is an extremely flawed way of looking at the issue for one simple reason - public undergrad schools tend to be far far larger than private schools are. For example, you would Berkeley and other public schools to place lots of students into med-schools for the simple reason that they have lots of students PERIOD. Obviously if you just have lots and lots of students, you ought to be able to place lots of them into med-school. </p>

<p>As a case in point, look at it this way. Arizona State, all by itself, has more undergraduates than do the entire top 10 USNews research universities combined. And that’s just one public system in one state, and it’s not even close to being the most populous state. The vast vast majority of undergraduate students in the US attend public schools. </p>

<p>What we should really be talking about are the PERCENTAGES of students who are able to get into med-school.</p>