<p>To think the adcom is completely blind to that info is naive.</p>
<p>I don’t think that they are completely blind…which is why they care if they see that while at a university you took your pre-reqs at a CC. And, I do think they might be concerned if your undergrad was so lowly ranked (like old 4th tier) and not science strong.</p>
<p>But, I don’t think that they care very much if the student went to Brown vs UMich vs UCSD vs Purdue vs Georgia Tech vs UConn vs UOregon vs Clemsom vs SUNY Bing, etc. They know that most “good schools” have good science programs.</p>
<p>The elite private schools give a little more weight to your undergrad school. However, public medical schools have very little leeway to judge your school.</p>
<p>Not sure who the adcom is for a medical school. The evaluations are done mainly by the faculty.</p>
<p>*However, public medical schools have very little leeway to judge your school.
*</p>
<p>I’m not sure about that. </p>
<p>The public med schools in our state would definitely know that a graduate from School A would not have as strong of science course than School B…if both schools were in the state or general region.</p>
<p>Bluedevilmike has stated here on CC (and others have agreed with him) that a student will get a small tip for attending a top 10 uni or a top 5 LAC. I have heard that certain med schools, have “relationships” with certain UG’s. That is no different than what UG have with certain prep schools, etc. So yes, I think the name of some UG can have a “slight” advantage when applying to med school.</p>
<p>We’ve had two top 20 med school admissions/faculty tell us that they absolutely do care. They said they have a list of colleges they consider worthy. They don’t interview those from schools not on their list. Their words - not mine - and I haven’t seen the list. Their answer was in response to this question when asked by a prospective undergrad student in a group session Q & A.</p>
<p>I suspect med schools not in the top 20 might look at things differently as would state schools who show a preference to those from their state.</p>
<p>Likely true, but it is also self-serving in that they are yield conscious, not only for thier own numbers but their own time. If say, xx med school in upstate NE rarely convinces a grad from say, UCIrvine (Calif has several top-ranked publics instate) or a Texas college (TX = great prices and great schools) to matriculate, NE med will just stop interviewing such applicants. It’s just not worth their time if they know that, historically, 90+% ain’t gonna come.</p>
<p>While you are right that there are typically no people at med school whose SOLE job is admissions, there very much is an admissions committee made up of the faculty who partake in evaluating/interviewing applicants.</p>
<p>i<em>wanna</em>be_brown - that is precisely my point. They are not adcoms but real professors who tend to evaluate candidates in a totally different way than the adcoms we pay attention to in undergrad.</p>
<p>The problem with State schools is they go by the book. I know someone on faculty of UMDNJ dental school who is on such a committee. He told me in no uncertain terms that out of 100+ points, they have precisely one point for name recognition. Other schools may have a different weight. His advise to me was to send my kids to a school where they can ensure almost perfect GPAs if the goal was medical school and any medical school in US would do.</p>
<p>Southwest in Dallas, a State school and one of only two schools in texas ranked in top 25, admits students predominantly from UT and A&M. The charter requires them to admit 85 or 90% residents and we do have a large percentage of students who have gone to top 20 schools that are residents. However, I have seen a lot of them get rejected due to their lower GPAs from well known schools. OTOH, UT in Houston, likes to diversify and get students who have gone to big name schools around the country. So I assume they do have additional weight for name recognition. I even know some students who were given in state tuition to lure them if they have attended a high profile school and are applying OOS. Who can refuse medical education at 15k tuition?</p>
<p>bluebyou, I know two applicants, one from Texas, the other from southern California. Their outcomes tell me what you said is likely true. (They may still interview you, but are reluctant to potentially “waste” their precious admission slot and the time/efforts. The texas one did end up going to a NE school.)</p>
<p>I think no matter what college you go to, you need to be in the top X percents of your class. The lower-ranked school you go to, the X needs to be smaller. However, many top-ranked colleges are premed/prelaw factories, (percentage wise) which produce a lot of these students each year. This needs to be taken into consideration also. In other word, you need to excel no matter where you go.</p>
<p>*We’ve had two top 20 med school admissions/faculty tell us that they absolutely do care. They said they have a list of colleges they consider worthy. *</p>
<p>Well, that list must be quite broad because we all know kids who’ve gone to Flagships and mid-tiers who’ve been accepted to the tippy top med schools.</p>
<p>Re: Feinberg (Northwestern Med)–when I interviewed there last cycle, there were two kids from state schools (both Big XII). Me, and another guy. The rest went to schools like Brown, Yale, Penn, U Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Harvard–which are all top schools in my book.</p>
<p>The other state school kid? Took a few years off after undergrad to pitch for a major league baseball team.</p>
<p>(Should note that I know of another student who went to a mid-tier private school in the midwest, had a great run as an undergrad, and picked up a Feinberg acceptance and some merit money. Ended up choosing another med school though.)</p>
<p>Azn pride, you should go to the school where you will be happiest and do the best. That being said, if you really can’t decide between the two, I would err on the side of choosing the more prestigious one, not just for medical school, but for ALL the benefits the more prestigious schools have to offer.</p>
<p>texaspg,
I know that they are different, but that doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not all schools are viewed at equally in their eyes. I’m a student interviewer for my MD/PhD program and one of my advisers in med school is the dean of admissions for the medical school. Your GPA and where your from are certainly important, but honestly, they’re just benchmarks, and once you get above the thresholds, it comes down to whether the school can imagine you as a physician (e.g. the nerd with no people skills doesn’t get in anywhere), and how well would you adopt their “brand” (i.e. be an example of their mission statement in the future. Are you an OOS applicant interested in research/heavy specialization while the school wants to turn out primary care docs to serve the state? This applicant gets rejected here but accepted at a school looking to generate specialized academics). Every interview I went to as an applicant featured essentially the same speech: “Everyone here is academically qualified to go here, now it’s just a matter of fit.”</p>
<p>The reason why you see so many kids from the best schools is because that’s where most of the best kids are, and medical schools want the best kids. Similarly, because the best schools have all the best kids, it might be a little harder to standout in a class and therefore GPAs can often be lower. I doubt any school has a strict “bump kids from X school up .Y points” but I’m sure when they look over their admissions data from previous years there tends to be an unconscious bump that may be relatively consistent, and thus what they say to close friends.</p>
One applicant from either Penn or Duke a few years ago posted that, especially in the leadership EC area (“president” of zillions of “premed-related” clubs do not count much as many of these are created for the sole purpose of helping their application – most of these clubs die out after the application cycle is over and the next year applicants would likely initiate their own clubs), it is harder to stand out at many top schools. This has something to do with the fact that the top colleges place so much emphasis on “personal quality/leadership type” ECs in their college admission criteria. Once in college, boy, you will see, for example, so many alpha-male type students who have been a leader before they set their foot on campus. Often you will see most people in the group strive to be a leader and none of them would settle to be a follower or even a second-tier leader, and they often disagree with each other and involve in a heated or even “explosive” discussion, (Some of the personality may be a perfect fit for Wall Street type jobs, not necessarily good for research-heavy lab jobs though.)</p>
<p>This might be an entirely different topic (and if that’s the case, then my apologies). </p>
<p>In my #253, I believe I implied that since many interviewees at a highly ranked school (Northwestern, which was referred to in #252) were from highly ranked undergraduate institutions, that going to a highly ranked undergraduate institution confers some benefit on winning an interview at a top school. </p>
<p>What I failed to point out is how much self-selection I believe happens among the applicants. I attended a big state school, and of my (very qualified) pre-med friends who applied last year, remarkably few of them applied to top schools. Same goes for friends who attend private schools of a similar caliber to mine–they just don’t even apply to those top schools. In the same vein, friends who attend top undergraduate institutions tended to apply to top medical schools also. </p>
<p>To me, this could illustrate that winning an interview is much less an issue of where you went to undergrad (like I wanna be Brown points out in #254 re: benchmarks) and is much more an issue of your personal qualifications. I don’t think it’s accurate to conclude that the presence of interviewees from highly ranked undergraduate institutions and the lack of interviewees from other institutions implies that the former group was categorically chosen over the latter group for interviews. </p>
<p>(And I’m not saying any poster has made such a conclusion. I’m just pointing out something I meant to mention in an earlier post.)</p>
I believe BRM mentioned the self-selection phenomenon before. I had the impression that, at DS’s college, almost everybody with a “reasonable” stats would apply to some top schools. Some even feel the peer pressure for doing so. It does not mean most are “successful” in the end. (I would guess maybe “only” a couple of dozens among a couple of hundreds got into one of these schools. Likely about 10 got into one of the top two like H or JHU each year.) It just means they would give it a try. The point is: more from these colleges give it a try, so naturally more (percentage wise in the admitted class) got in in the end.</p>