So I was talking to my friend, who is planning on a pre-med track like me, and he told he that he is planning on applying to small schools because apparently according to the people he knew, going to a small school gives him a better chance at a 4.0 than bigger schools? Keep in mind we are applying to Quest Bridge schools, so I really doubt any of the schools, big or small, would be significantly easier to get high GPA in.
I thought it was the dumbest thing I’ve heard that day, but is that actually true? Regardless, I do still plan on attending a top public/private school that I can get into.
Do not choose your college based on what others are saying (including your GC, forget your friends all together), do not have an “easy 4.0” as your criteria for choosing either. There is not such thing as “easy 4.0” at college. Some geniuses may disagree, but for a regular HS valedictorian it is NOT easy by any means to achieve a college GPA of 4.0 at ANY place, including lowest ranked local college. Attend at the place that matches your personality and YOUR criteria for choosing and be prepared to work very hard there. You will need to adjust your academic efforts at any college upwards, no matter what your rank was in your HS class and no matter what HS you graduated from. Top UG is not required, hard work is a must…
Even if we accept the assumption that some schools are patently easier to get 4.0s than others, why would size be the key? Caltech, Williams, and Amherst are all small schools, does your friend really think it’s easier to get a 4.0 at those places than at Harvard, Penn, and Duke?
EDIT: After I posted I was wondering what sort of advice he could possibly be getting and then I realized I bet people are tossing out the “big fish in a little pond” phrase and he assumes that little pond means smaller school.
Mudd is small… and no one has ever said it was easy. :). Students do go to less competitive schools sometimes in an attempt to get a higher GPA for Med school admission. GPA is important, but you also need to get good enough prep to do well on the MCATs, so that is a bit of a balancing act. And sometimes they go to a cheaper school to minimize debt and save money for med school.
My D. graduated from the average size in-state public college, not any high ranking place at all but it was a good fit for her. It was not easy at all to obtain a college GPA 3.98 there. She had to adjust her academic efforts considerably coming from the #2 private HS in our state. Do you think she was “big fish in a little pond” there? Think again. After graduating #1 in her HS class she was surrounded by valedictorians in her Honors college, kids just like her, from the strong public and private schools…and good number of them were derailed from the pre-med track after the first Bio class in the very first semester of their freshman year. Does it sounds easy? I do not think so. According to my D., some of these high caliber HS students were derailed simply because they did not recognize that they needed to adjust their academic efforts. Frankly, D. was shocked by the high level of this first Bio class (she had Honors and AP Bio - 5 on exam and was strongly advised not to skip the first Bio, she was glad that she listened).
Do not believe anybody who is saying it is easy or easier. Maybe it is harder at Harvard, but there is no reason to attend there if you are planning on Med. School anyway, as many of D’s Med. School class regretted attending at Ivy /Elite. They had no advantage at Med. School and they wished they attended UG on full tuition Merit and negotiated with parents paying for the Med. School instead. "Go to a cheaper school to minimize debt " is a very smart approach.
I don’t think that OP’s friend is saying it’s easier to get a 4.0 at a small school. I do think OP’s friend is pointing to the very real advantages of attending a small school if you are pre-med. One is that you will get to know more of the faculty personally when the classes are smaller and there are no TAs. That makes a difference in many ways large and small. It makes it easier to get LORs for the committee letter for example. It means that if you are struggling (illness mid-term, etc…), you can get the prof’s time and attention to catch up - and possibly be cut some slack because they know you. The use of weeding to cut down the percent of freshman who think they are going to be MDs is much less aggressive at most LACs - we’ve seen some pretty arbitrary grading tactics in intro bio and chem classes of 200+ students. Class-mates also tend to be more supportive of each other when they don’t feel like they are in direct competition for a limited number of As and because the norms in smaller schools (where you eat with, live with, take the same classes with the other pre-meds) mitigates against sharp elbow behavior that you can get away with at a big school.
I’m not saying it’s easier to get As at a small school - but it is easier to find a supportive educational environment. Call it ‘hand-holding’ if you like, but I think the experience is a lot more pleasant for those students even though they are working just as many hours on the academics as their peers at big schools. And maybe it’s just a coincidence, but of the 5 kids - all comparable students - who started out pre-med in my S’s high school group, he was the only one at a LAC, and is the only one who is now about to complete med school. I’d like to think it’s my S’s all round wonderfulness that accounts for this, but I actually believe it’s that the other students simply got discouraged by the process at their large schools.
^Many of the pre-meds are going to end up at Honors colleges. Honors classes are small, they might be much smaller than classes at small school. Honors program that D. attended accepted only top 200 applicants.
I do not see any advantages of the small school. Actually out of 2 of D’s finalists, one was small private and now that D. is very familiar with both, she mentioned several times that attending at larger state public (which was her original #2) resulted in more variety of people around her. She said that she would be among the same crowd as in her tiny private HS if she attended a smaller private college or for that matter any of the Ivy / Elite. She did not want to be strictly among very driven and academically focused. In addition to academic goals, she was looking to personal growth and she has refined and further develop many of her social / leadership skills that are so important for the future MD.
It depends on person’s goal. It is important that personality and wide range of goals matches to the place as good as possible. One of D’s goal was to widen her social horizon and she was able to do so. Keep in mind that med. student need to be able to connect to a variety of people in the team as well as very different patients. That special connection that a doc. or a future doc. may establish quickly is a crucial trait and will get noticed on both sides.
Honors classes are just a way that large schools create a small school within, because they realize that there are so many advantages to the smaller environment. Sure there’s more diversity at a large U - but I’ve noticed that most people tend to hang out with people like themselves, no matter what school they attend. And in no way is a LAC comparable to a high school, even a large one. Unlike high school, the people arriving at a LAC have not known each other most of their academic lives and don’t come from the same community, 1/4 of the class turns over each year, and how driven or not a student body is depends on the school. And what about all those bright kids who didn’t get into the honors colleges but would make very fine doctors - or aren’t at a state school with an honors college but at a large and potentially competitive private: They get no support at all.
We can agree to disagree here. My point is that OP’s friend is not dumb at all, but actually being very savvy.
"Sure there’s more diversity at a large U - but I’ve noticed that most people tend to hang out with people like themselves, no matter what school they attend. " - Not all. If a person has specific goal to meet different people and learn how to connect to them easily, then the larger schools definitely present more opportunities with diverse student body by which I do not mean the race or religion or social / economic status, I mean very different people. Not only D. choose a larger school (this was only one reason, but she did not apply to Ivy’s specifically for social reason), she added Music Minor and decided to be in Sorority (was not planned at all), both of which ended up enriching her life at college immensely. She absolutely made a point of meeting different people, it was one of her goals. If it is NOT a goal, then there is no reason to attend a larger school except if it matches all other criteria, I agree with that. The private school that D. considered was not a LAC, but it was small and “geeky” and D. did not care to be primarily among academically focused people, she does not need a boost from her peers, she just wanted to enjoy her friends and be among down to earth people with wide variety of interests. Funny, most of her pre-med friends had un-related minors (Art, Spanish,…) and they all ended up with several acceptances to Med. Schools. I do not know if D’s private alternative was more competitive than the public that she ended up attending. She was challenged plenty and had good choices of Med. School at the end. But all the reasons above were actually irrelevant. The prime reason why D. ended up at public was that she was accepted to combined bs/md program there and that reason somehow led her to be at the place that matched her the most.
Again, there is no general rule here as kids have different goals and choose the places that match their own criteria the best. Size was actually under consideration, D. did not like the excessively large schools like OSU. I just do not see how size would affect a college GPA, I do not see any connection, D. graduated with college GPA = 3.98, got 3 A- in singing classes, she never had any voice coaching prior to college, did not even sing in choir.
N’s mom, my D went to a LAC and found exactly what your son did as advantages of a smaller school. No, it isn’t easier to get a 4.0; her school was known for grade deflation and had +/- grading scale, so that at her school a 92 was an A- and a 3.67. At all of our state schools her A-s would have been 4.0 (and unfortunately -s were given more freely than +s. But because maybe 30 students would apply to med school each year instead of hundreds like at our state schools, there was a lot of support and collaboration along the way for these students from professors, the premed office, and from each other.
I think you have to give the Medical School admissions committees credit for knowing what it takes to get what GPAs at a variety of colleges. If it’s a hard one, they take that into consideration. If it’s an easy one, there is some question over whether you challenged yourself enough.
Not as much as you would think… Most grad schools do, but med schools are notorious for not really giving credit for schools with grade deflation.
I believe that Med. Schools really did not care about the name / size / type of the UG that applicant graduated from. This is my impression. Again, going to the cheapest / free is the smartest choice. I also believe that they do not care because academics at Med. School is so remote from the college academics, by my D’s comment, the level is quantum leap above. They do not care about major at UG for the same reason, might as well be the Conservatory of Music (the actual case, not in theory)
They are?
In what circles? Medical School Administrators or unsuccessful medical school applicants?
NVM
@MiamiDAP “academics at Med. School is so remote from the college academics, by my D’s comment, the level is quantum leap above”
This might be the spot where where you went makes a difference. I’ve been told by a person who went to a top tier LAC that her first year of med school was actually easy because she was so well prepared. The point she saw the value of her education was seeing her peers struggle with things she’d already learned. Another advantage to the small LAC is that there were no “weed out” classes like the infamous Bio 101 or organic chem–all students interested in medicine were supported as much as they could be.
That said, there are so many ways to get from point a to point b. You can start out at community college and end up a doctor. You can go to a big state u, honors program or not, or you can go to an exclusive small college and still end up a doctor. Go for financial, social, and academic fit by your inner gut feeling on a place and be flexible. Resilience is very important to surviving the kind of stress of this career path.
PS ALL of the Questbridge partner schools are excellent schools, pre med or not. Some of them have grade deflation, but students there still go to medical school. Good luck to you and your friend finding the best fitting match!
Imagine for a moment, a large, state medical school. A 1st year medical student there might be studying with 20, 30, 40 or more students that they have been with the last few years in the large state undergraduate program. Some of them will struggle and some will find it easier.
Yet, they all went to the same undergraduate school.
I’m not sure that a few anecdotal stories can tell any one student about where it’s “best” to go.
"I’m not sure that a few anecdotal stories can tell any one student about where it’s “best” to go. "
- The best place to attend could be determined only by student using personal criteria for choosing. Size may and may not be part of these criteria.
"I’m not sure that a few anecdotal stories can tell any one student about where it’s “best” to go. " Completely agree with this, of course! However, it’s still good to collect these anecdotal stories and ask questions when trying to figure out your best fit.