Cornell vs Full Ride to Honors Program

norcalguy
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:57:00 +0000

Cornell is the slightly more risky choice. But, if you are interested in getting into top med schools, you will need to take risks. Most applicants (even the top ones from state schools) won’t even sniff a Top 20 med school. There are simply too many applicants with 3.8+ GPA’s for top med schools to take them all. However, if you can get a high GPA at Cornell, you have a decent shot. In fact, 80% of Cornellians with a 3.8+ GPA (not even looking at their MCAT scores) get into a Top 20 med school (as defined by US News). This figure is straight out of the HCEC handbook so I’m not making this up.

Now, you’re thinking, what if I get a 3.2? It’s possible. However, if you end up with a 3.2 at Cornell, you wouldn’t have been a 3.8 student at UDelaware anyway. It’s rather amusing to hear marginal students at Cornell whine about how they’d be 4.0 students at their state schools. puhleeeze Their GPA’s may be higher by 0.1 or something but not 0.8.

My advice:
If you like UDelaware significantly more than Cornell, then go to Delaware. If you like them both about the same, come to Cornell.

People will say that your undergrad doesn’t matter but people who’ve interviewed at top med schools know that it does. You don’t see UDelaware kids interviewing at Penn Med or Harvard Med. You don’t even see Berkeley kids. All you see are Cornell, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Duke, WashU, etc. Despite the fact Top 20 colleges only produce 10% of all med school applicants, they often make up a majority of the students top med schools interview.