sort of feels like after 900 posts, we just keep talking in circles.
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But it seems like now it is? I have read that students most likely to get into med school these days are from wealthy families, and a disproportionate number are children of doctors (who presumably can help facilitate shadowing and other ECs that help with med school admissions). I donât have first hand knowledge but if true, it seems like med schools have also become elitist?
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Its off topic, but that is not what I see in my area. Any student who asks their own docs is almost always going to be able to shadow. None of my shadowees have doctor parents 
sometimes there is a rumor element to this stuff.
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As a general rule for college admission, profession school admission, career outcomes, or life in general; itâs good to distinguish between correlation and causation.
For example, law school admission shows a high correlation with undergraduate college attended. The more selective the college, the higher rate of T# law school admits tends to occur. However, this does not mean that attending a prestigious undergrad college helps with law school admission. Instead law school admission is known to be well predicted by a combination of stats (LSAT + college GPA) and demographics (strong boost for URM, international has influence); without consideration of college attended.
The 2 statements do not contradict each other because there is a higher rate of the high stat students that law schools favor at highly selective undergrad colleges than at less selective undergrad colleges. If rather than at total count of students from different undergrad colleges, you compare admission results for kids with similar stats and demographics who apply from different undergrad colleges, youâll see a very different result.
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The cost and resulting debt of medical education may be a deterrent for potential medical students whose parents are not able pay a significant amount of medical school costs.
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Graduated from Lehigh in the early 90âs. Child of an alumni. Lehigh has always been seen as a hard work, hard party school. And it really was. The grading scale was to a C. I started in engineering and it was way too intense so I switched to business, which was also intense but allowed me to leave the library. I took all my electives during the summer at either American or UMD because there were not a lot of easy Aâs even in liberal arts.
These are extreme examples, but it makes me wonder whether there is more to it than the selection bias that you alluded to.
Top medical school feeder
Harvard University #1 Harvard, #2 Yale
Yale University #1 Harvard, #2 Yale
Top law school feeder
Harvard University #1 Harvard, #2 Yale
Yale University #1 Harvard, #2 Yale
Harvard Medical School: avg GPA 3.9, avg MCAT 520.59 (98th%), accept 3.7%
Yale Medical School: median GPA 3.92, median MCAT 522 (99th%), accept 5.5%
Harvard Law School: median GPA 3.93 (3.84-3.99), median LSAT 174 (98th%) (171-176), accept 9.5%
Yale Law School: median GPA 3.96 (3.89-4.00), median LSAT 175 (99th%) (172-177), accept 5.5%
Those admissions stats seem impossibly difficult to me.
Why do Harvard and Yale prefer each otherâs students? In the case of Yale Law School, the Yale Daily News stated that 25% of the law school class graduated from Harvard or Yale.
Are Harvard and Yale students more likely to achieve those top-tier school GPAs, standardized test score, and other intangibles necessary for admission because they tend to be more academically gifted than students from other universities?
Or do Harvard and Yale medical school and law school deans just happen to feel that their own undergraduate students tend to be better qualified applicants than the rest of the country? Could there actually be a quid pro quo?
The average LSAT score of law score applicants from undergrad colleges has been published in previous years. Harvard and Yale undergrad college are indeed #1 and #2, with law school applicants from these colleges having higher average LSAT scores than any other college â 167.4 and 167.5 respectively. Harvard and Yale undergrads also have a larger portion of students with top scores near the typical admission range that you listed. Harvard and Yale may not be the top 2 for highest average college GPA of all 2000+ US colleges, like they are for LSAT score; but Harvardâs senior survey mentions a median GPA of 3.9/4.0, so Iâd expect a large portion applicants are >= 3.9/4.0 and some are 4.0. In short, Iâd expect a larger portion of applicants from Harvard and Yale undergrad meet the admission stats range that you listed than any other college in the US.
In addition to Harvard and Yale kids being more likely to have top stats than applicants from any other undergraduate college, I expect there is a bias in which schools students apply to. Students who apply to and attend Harvard and Yale for undergrad, are no doubt more likely to apply to Harvard and Yale for grad than typical, perhaps more so than any other college.
If law school admissions was undergraduate school blind such that they did not know the name of the college for which students applied from, one would stil expect Harvard and Yale undergrads to be more represented than students from any other college, likely by a good margin. Itâs certainly possible that a particular law school also favors students from their home college more than external colleges, but noting that there are a lot of kids who attended Harvard/Yale for undergrad is not a good way to identify whether this bias is present.
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If I were Harvard admissions, I wouldnât want to be producing doctors and lawyers. Boring.
If I were Harvard admissions, I wouldnât want to be producing doctors and lawyers. Boring.
The Harvard first destination distribution in the senior survey and Yaleâs post grad outcomes survey suggest less than 6% of grads from both schools pursue MD/JD soon after graduating. Relatively few pursue grad degrees soon after college compared to other selective colleges.
Instead by far the most common immediate post grad outcomes at both schools are pursuing finance and consulting. Tech (CS) is a distant 3rd. The freshmen surveys suggest most students donât plan on finance/consulting or state a finance/consulting interest in their admission application. Instead many change plans during college.
However, when I look at the private colleges with the largest number of law school grads in an earlier year were as follows. A larger portion of grads pursue law degrees later on, rather than immediately after graduating. Again I expect a good portion did not state an interest on the admission application and instead changed plans, this time after college. LSAT percentiles refer to reference year.
- BYU â 300 (5% of class), 158 LSAT (72nd percentile)
- GWU â 270 (11% of class), 158 LSAT (72nd percentile)
- Cornell â 265 (8% of class), 162 LSAT (83rd percentile)
- Georgetown â 240 (14% of class), 163 LSAT (86th percentile)
- Miami â 235 (6% of class), 156 LSAT (65th percentile)
âŠ
Harvard â 215 (13% of class), 168 LSAT (95th percentile)
Yale â 190 (12% of class), 168 LSAT (95th percentile)
I wonder what the acceptance rates for Harvard and Yale are for medical or law schools at these schools vs other ivies
In recent years, the mean GPA at Yale was 3.7
In recent years, the mean GPA at Harvard has been reported as high as 3.8.
https://hpo.rutgers.edu/resources/admission-statistics/191-medical-admission-statistics-2021/file
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Maybe we should rethink Penn as a liberal arts college when itâs SAS has close to 50% grads in finance and consulting, lol.
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Probably true for many colleges at that level, including traditional LACs
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Itâs a great thing these top schools have holistic admissions, because you know they have to âshape a classâ to make sure everyone isnât the same.
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There definitely seems to be a pathway from Penn to Wall Street, but my two Quakers, who are/were not in Wharton consider those jobs of last resort. When I gently suggested consulting to my engineering kid, he said he wasnât ready to âsell out.â My D, who graduated from Penn with a degree in the natural sciences, said the same thing.
What would we do as a society without a sufficient supply of hedge fund managers and consultants!
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For sure
#notallquakers
ETA: being serious though, I have no doubt that Penn is amazing for students, like yours, who are not in the pipeline. Confusing to me why so many seem to be.
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Iâm guessing, but ROI is likely part of it for some.
I will note that there are plenty of people in consulting and banking jobs that do good things. The whole idea that people choosing these careers are labeled âsell outsâ seems unnecessarily mean spirited and myopic.
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I donât think it is a sell out, but I think it is a concerning trend. If more and more of our best and brightest are siphoned off by finance and consulting who is going to be left to innovate in ways that can address our most pressing problems? A career in finance/consulting can be rewarding but I just donât view it as the pinnacle of achievement the way it is often portrayed.
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