<p>Not to be rude, but could you clarify what a no-name BS/MD program is? I’m very uninformed on the topic but it seemed to me that the BS/MD programs are harder to get into initially then most schools</p>
<p>BS/MD programs are in general more difficult to get into than normal schools. Much more difficult.</p>
<p>However, even if you look at BS/MD programs only, some of them are more prestigious than others. For example, the Northwestern Feinberg accelerated program would be one of the most prestigious such program. Northwestern is already a prestigious program to get into just for undergrad, ditto for med-school, and you combine the 2 together and you obviously got an extremely prestigious package, and thus extremely competitive to get. </p>
<p>Then there are certain programs that basically combine no-name undergrad programs with no-name medical schools. These would obviously be less desirable than the Northwestern program. But of course that also means that they are easier to get into. I don’t want to name names, but you can look at the list and determine for yourself that some of them will be less prestigious and less selective than others. Still highly selective, but less selective relative to the other combined programs. </p>
<p><a href=“http://services.aamc.org/currdir/section3/degree2.cfm?data=yes&program=bsmd[/url]”>http://services.aamc.org/currdir/section3/degree2.cfm?data=yes&program=bsmd</a></p>
<p>The point is, I think that if you are competitive to get into a highly selective standalone undergrad program, you are probably competitive to get into one of the less selective (and less prestigious, hence “no-name”) combined programs.</p>
<p>Let me submit the example of Caltech. Caltech is a notoriously harsh grade deflator and thus an extraordinarily poor choice for premed. Some people who go to Caltech hoping to do premed get absolutely destroyed by the grading. Hence, they are weeded out. However, I am quite convinced that anybody who is good enough to get into Caltech is good enough to get into at least one of the 32 BS/MD combined programs. Then, providing that you survive that combined program ,which most do, you will get into med-school. But why? It’s the same guy. If he chooses to go to Caltech, he gets weeded out, but if he chooses the combined program, he doesn’t? That demonstrates that the weeding process is far from perfect. Certain paths are easier than others. You take one path in your life and you don’t get into med-school but if you take another, you do.</p>
<p>Would drexel and temple be considered no-name programs? I don’t know very much about the schools I was hoping for some insight.</p>
<p>Yeah, im very curious about Drexel. Mainly because I have a friend who was accepted into there 8-year medical program with barely a 3.0 gpa, 1100 SAT score, and not many ec’s. I’m beginning to think that drexel isn’t up to the standards of other medical schools and programs</p>
<p>Hi, I’m a freshman in high school and i’m curious about if high-tier medical schools like Harvard Med will look at clinical experience in high school. There is a class offered at my school which entails going to a hospital for three hours every morning. However, it is only a regular-level class, so it will seriously hurt my GPA (it counts as 1.5 credits per semester) and might affect my admission into a good college. Is there any advice someone can give me on this situation? I hope someone please replies soon since we have to plan our sophomore schedule by the end of this week (yeah, i know it’s early).</p>
<p>I don’t think they’d value high school experience too much. I think you should keep a high GPA instead, allowing yourself to possibly get admitted to a decent college.</p>
<p>are there any people here who have gotten into Harvard Med School? Out of curiosity, what’s it like, and what are your stats? Thanks</p>
<p>Is there anyone here who’s even in med school?</p>
<p>cool joe… a word of advice. You shouldn’t concern yourself at this stage of the game about Harvard Med school. There are so many intermediate steps and stages that you have to accomplish before you get in there, it is ridiculous to even think about it. First of all, all US med schools provide an excellent education, and allow you to do pretty much whatever you want to do. You should focus on what you need to do to get into a US med school, which is by no means assured. I can pretty much honestly tell you that Harvard doesn’t care at all what kind of volunteer work you did in high school, unless you won the Westinghouse (I guess it’s the Intel award now) or some prestigious science award. If you’re talking about working in a hospital or something like that, every kid who’s a premed does that… Harvard wouldn’t even look twice at it. In order to get into Harvard med school, you have to go to a top tier college premed program, get high MCAT’s, perfect grades, and blow the adcoms away with some amazing accomplishment in college. Your high school record is history once you go to college as far as med school adcoms are concerned. I’ll tell you another secret… what really matters is where you do your residency, fellowship, and specialty training, not where you went to Medical School. Not every student at Harvard Med is going to graduate at the top of his or her class, and not every one will get a prestigious residency. You are better off being at the top of your class in a less prestigious med school, getting great recs from your profs and the dean, and getting a top residency (like at Mass General or one of the Harvard programs). That will determine where you end up more than what med school you went to. I went to a less prestigious med school (still one of the top 25 in the country), and got a top residency and fellowship in New York City. (for Gastroenterology it’s ranked as one of the top 3 programs in the country) When I was an intern I had two other interns on my team… one was from Harvard Med and one was from N.Y.U. I had much better clinical training than the Harvard grad… i.e. I already knew how to take care of patients, put in I.V.'s and do all the stuff you have to do as an intern. The Harvard guy was brilliant, knew a lot of theory, but he didn’t know what to do, and needed a lot of help the first few months. Our chief resident was always giving him grief. The N.Y.U guy already knew how to do everything because he had spent a lot of time at Bellevue (the city hospital for NYU) where they let the med students do everything! So don’t just assume Harvard is where everybody wants to go. Anyway hope this wasn’t too harsh, but will help you in the learning process… it’s a long haul, and right now you should be concentrating on high school grades, preparation for SAT, etc… Volunteer work is great to help you be sure you want to be a doc… but it won’t help you get into Harvard!!</p>
<p>And just wanted to mention to Norcalguy… I’m a Cornell alumnus, class of 1975, B.A. biology (neuro and behavior). That’s obviously a long time ago, but I don’t think the quality of the education has changed. Obviously I can’t judge other schools, but I know Cornell premeds are very, very prepared for the challenge of med school. Keep up the good work! I think you will find med school easy once you get there compared to some of your Cornell undergrad classes!</p>
<p>Sakky, Thanks for information. Unlike the poster you were arguing a couple months back ago in this thread, I truly want advice as opposed to a cheerleader and want to know how I can maximize my chances or if it is even worth taking the road needed to even apply medical school, as it will be an expensive and difficult and risky endeavor.</p>
<p>I currently work as a Software Engineer. So to go back to school and retake the prereqs that I missed would require me to sacrifice my job. I read your post about self-prep for the MCATs but I dont think that would be such a great idea. The University of Michigan has a solid undergraduate pre-med program so I do think the courses would be beneficial. However, not only would I have to quit work, Id have to pay back some of my graduate tuition my work paid for and pay for the year of prereqs as well as application fees, etc </p>
<p>I dont mind doing all of the above if I have a legitimate chance of getting through the initial screening process because I believe if I could score an interview I would increase my chances from that point forward.</p>
<p>However, my 3.63 undergraduate GPA (obviously the GPA got better in the later years) and my (estimated) 3.7 science GPA does not sound as good as I thought it was after reading through your posts, and considering my background is in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan those MIT stats are troubling to see. However my GPA could go up after taking the roughly 30 credits of prereqs that I need. Does the fact that I will have a Masters in Electrical Engineering with a 4.00 help? Or does the graduate GPA not even come into play?</p>
<p>I know the what are my chances questions are difficult to gauge. I just want your opinion on my circumstances if I should take the risk explained above to pursue my interest/dream in medicine?</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it. You’re embarking on a big risk with an uncertain payoff. You might quit your job, pay for all these prereqs, etc. and then after all that find out that you can’t get in anywhere. </p>
<p>Besides, I’ll put it to you this way. Berkeley has a “solid” premed reputation too. But what does that matter when only about 60% of all Berkeley premeds who apply to med-school actually get in (meaning that 40% of them who apply get rejected from every med-school they apply to)? Berkeley’s vaunted premed reputation certainly didn’t do much for that 40%. </p>
<p><a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm[/url]”>http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm</a></p>
<p>Keep in mind that that’s talking only about those people who actually apply. Plenty of premeds get weeded out along the way such that they don’t even apply. Let’s face it. If you get under a 3.0 GPA, you know you’re not going to get in anywhere, so you don’t even bother to apply. </p>
<p>So I question what value does this vaunted undergrad reputation really have? That Berkeley reputation evidently didn’t do a whole lot for those 40% of Berkeley premed applicants who didn’t get in anywhere and all those other Berkeley premeds who couldn’t even accumulate a decent enough GPA to dare to apply. </p>
<p>The truth is, med-school admissions is, sadly, a game. It’s better not to take a class at all than to take it and get a bad grade. All those people who took premed courses and got bad grades have actually made themselves WORSE candidates than they were before when they had no premed coursework. And PLENTY of people at Berkeley (and I presume at Michigan) get bad grades in their premed coursework. That might happen to you. </p>
<p>Hence, don’t think of premed coursework is being only beneficial. It might be beneficial. On the other hand, it might actually HURT you. </p>
<p>If you don’t think the self-study route is viable for you, then fine. How about this. Audit the course. Or just sit in on it. Try to do all the homework, and all the exams. Just don’t take the class for credit. That way, you will be able to derive the learning you will need to do well on the MCAT. You will also be able to see what sort of grade you would be getting if you were taking the class for real, and hence you would know whether you should take the class for real later. However, by auditing or just sitting in, you eliminate the risk of getting a bad grade. </p>
<p>Like I said, med-school admissions is unfortunately a game. Things like grades, MCAT scores, EC’s, and all that stuff are just data points about yourself that the adcoms use to make decisions. As part of the game, you only want to send data-signals about yourself that are good. In a perfect world, you’d be able to send the complete suite of data-signals (i.e. all the premed classes, etc.) that are all good. However,
we don’t live in a perfect world. Like I said, not everybody gets good grades in premed classes. In fact, plenty of people get bad grades. Hence, it is better not to send a data signal at all than to send a bad signal. Sad but true. </p>
<p>What that means is that whenever you have a chance to send an optional signal, you should make sure that that signal is a good one. Otherwise, don’t send any signal. And the truth is, there is some give as to which premed courses you have to take before you apply. You still have to take them all before you matriculate, but not necessarily before you apply. So if that’s the case, and you’re not confident that you will get a top grade in, say, OChem, then it may be wiser for you to not take OChem at all and therefore not risk sending a bad signal.</p>
<p>Wow, long post!</p>
<p>Would anyone happen to know how medical schools calculate your college gpa? Do they give you 4.0 points for every A you got, no matter how low it is (e.g. 92)?</p>
<p>So, sakky, it’s fair to expand the picture you paint to many schools all over the place, right? You wouldn’t single out just a school or two, would you? Perhaps certain places have it worse, and that’s fine to point out, but how prevalent is this at those “talked about” schools?</p>
<p>Sure, you can expand it to all the schools that display these traits. </p>
<p>But I don’t know what you mean when you ask me how prevalent it is at these talked-about schools. What I can tell you is that about 40% of Berkeley premeds who applied to med-school didn’t get in anywhere (along with about 25% at MIT, and 10% at HYP).</p>
<p>The initial post says that basic pre-med science courses for non-science majors will not do. What is meant by this? My understanding is that you can major in what you want, as long as all of the BASIC pre-med requirements are met, ie two semesters basic physics, biology, chem, organic and calc.</p>
<p>Why is HYP only 10%? Do a fewer amount of people apply (only those extremely qualified), or do the schools prepare students better?</p>
<p>Regarding the fact that 10% of HYP students dont get into med school. My only chance at Princeton is ED. Since I am bound to go there if I get in, which is a better option? Is Princeton notorious for weeding and how have the new 35% A policies affected medical school applications. The data I have is 1998-2003 before the new requirements were started. Therefore, is Princeton still a viable option for premed or does a state school make more sense since the grading at Princeton has become harder? Thanks.</p>
<p>Neither. They have smarter, more driven, more talented students.</p>
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<p>Part of the reason is what norcalguy has stated - that the general student talent is high. The other reason, which is why HYP are more successful than MIT is, is that HYP probably do prepare their students quite well, especially via grade inflation. It’s quite hard to get a truly bad grade at HYP. You almost have to put effort and “try” to get a bad grade. MIT, however, is far less hesitant to hand out bad grades. </p>
<p>The other aspect may have to do with EC’s. It is plausible that HYP students have more EC’s than MIT students do. I am not sure if this is true, but it’s plausible. However, I would argue that if this is true, this is also intertwined with grade inflation. If you don’t have to work that hard to get good grades, then you have more time to do EC’s. MIT students have to spend more time to get equivalent grades, thereby cutting into their availability for EC’s.</p>