<p>Afan, I understand you point, but I would again point out that that’s really neither here nor there. At the end of the day, GPA counts, and the fact is, certain schools tend to give out higher grades than others. We can talk about whether that’s actually due to a different course mix or whatever, but that’s not really important. At the end of the day, what matters is the GPA you can present to med-schools. Again, I would point out, the guy who majors in EE at MIT and ends up with grades that are too low for him to get into med-school isn’t going to care about why his grades are so low. All he’s going to care about is that his grades are low. </p>
<p>The only relevance I see is that we end up shifting our discussion from schools to subjects. For example, one could argue that certain subjects are more grade inflated than others. And everybody knows of certain creampuff majors where you can get high grades for doing almost nothing. In fact, I have discussed this very point many times on other parts of CC. </p>
<p>But at the end of the day, the point still stands - if you want to maximize your chances of getting into med-school, you want to get the highest grades you can, and if that means going to where the grade inflation is, so be it. While med-schools might say that they want the best students, what they actually want are the students who present the highest grades (all other things being equal, of course), which is not exactly the same thing as wanting the best students. Hence, one of the things you can do to help yourself get into med-school is to avoid difficult and low-graded coursework whenever you can. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s the truth. That’s part of the ‘game’ of med-school admissions. </p>
<p>The fact is, an ‘A’ in an easy course looks better than a ‘B’ in a difficult course for the purposes of med-schools admissions. Obviously, the best thing to get is an ‘A’ in a difficult course, but if you can’t get that, then the next best thing is to get an ‘A’ in an easy course. The same is true of choosing majors - the best thing to do is obviously get a top GPA in a difficult major. But if you cannot do that, then it is better to get a top GPA in an easy major than it is to get a mediocre GPA in a difficult major. </p>
<p>As a corollary, that still means that you should choose an easier school like Princeton over a more difficult school like MIT if, for no other reason, then because will have a greater variety of easier courses and easier majors to choose from at Princeton than you would at MIT. Hence, the point still stands - if you want to maximize your chances of going to med-school, you want to go where the grade inflation is. The reasoning behind doing so changes, but the final outcome does not.</p>