Life after Berkeley and Chance me?

sakky
Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:55:42 +0000

Aren’t there curves at UCLA too? There are curves at most universities, at least in the real majors.



As terenc said, your position on the curve is dictated by the quality of the other students. As the old saying goes: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king - meaning that even if you perform terribly, you can still earn an A if everybody else performed even worse.

In that sense, for the purposes of med-school admissions, like terence said, it is indeed better to be the big fish in a small pond. All things equal, you are better off going to a school where the other students are less capable, thereby giving you an easier chance of earning top grades.

Now, granted, there are important second-order effects that ought not to be neglected - not least being the sociological component of personal motivation. Let’s face it - the less motivated the other students are around you, the more likely that you too will become less motivated.