IHTFP - Loving it or hating it, come discuss.

sakky
Thu, 15 May 2008 00:10:27 +0000

The 90% admission rate from Ivy League schools is misleading because Ivy League schools “screen” their applicants who are pre-med



Uh, really? I am not aware of this practice. Which Ivies screen their premeds?

Now, granted, there are some prominent non-Ivies who do screen their premeds (notably JHU). But Ivies? Which ones?

Grad schools and top companies know MIT has grade deflation… they aren’t clueless



I wish that were true. Yet the fact is, many companies do institute GPA screens, and it’s not as if you will have the opportunity to explain the fact that MIT is a difficult school. If you can’t get past the screens, you won’t even get the interview in the first place.

…70 percent of hiring managers said they screen applicants based on their GPA, but the largest group said they use 3.0 as their cutoff.

[GPA may count toward job placement - University](http://media.www.dailytargum.com/media/storage/paper168/news/2006/10/17/University/Gpa-May.Count.Toward.Job.Placement-2370810.shtml)

Now, to be sure, I don’t think this is a serious problem because MIT students do quite well on the job market.

Nevertheless, it can be a legitimate concern for some people. For example, I know a girl who got a lucrative outside scholarship which would be renewed every year if she maintains certain grades (I think a ‘B’ average). But that requirement isn’t relaxed if she goes to a more difficult school. If she goes to MIT, majors in EECS, and gets straight C’s (or worse), she is going to lose the scholarship.



I believe around 89% of MIT undergrad applicants who had pre-med advisors were admitted to med-school.



This actually leads to another subtopic, which is why exactly doesn’t every MIT premed not have an advisor? Surely MIT isn’t resource-constrained?

[Woes of a Premed - The Tech](http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N9/sproehl.html)