<p>Top schools are going to be well represented because they have bright students to begin with. They also provide their students with many advantages such as research opportunities, smaller classes, etc. I’m not saying that there is no advantage to going to a prestigous college. I’m saying that there is not DIRECT advantage given by adcoms simply because of the fact you go to a prestigous college. If some kid from UC Irvine managed to find research opps on his own, good recs, and a 37 MCAT, then he has just as good a chance as someone from Northwestern with all of those things. In fact, adcoms may look favorably on the kid from UC Irvine because they realize it’s much harder to get good research opportunities and recs than from Irvine. The benefits of attending a prestigous college come from the increased opportunities not from a conscious effort by adcoms to select for kids from prestigous colleges.</p>
<p>In your situation, even if we were to eleminate all state schoolers from the applicant pool, there will still be more than enough applicants from Top 20 colleges to drown you out. No matter how you look at it, a 3.3 from NU is not going to cut it at mid-tier or higher med schools.</p>