<p>My daughter left this website up and I saw this discussion board. Let me tell you my perspective. I have a B.A from Princeton and an M.D. from Northwestern. I am an Assistant Professor at U. Penn School of Medicine currently and have been on the admission boards for both Northwestern and Penn medical school. The answer is: of course med schools look at GPA’s differently from different schools, and they also look at what courses you have taken, your research experience, your MCATs and your letters of reference. As far as state v. non-state, all medical schools, except those in D.C., receive state funding and are required to accept a percentage of in-state applicants (based on where your primary residency was in high school, or if you have been independent of your parents for 2 years after college graduation). This is a no-brainer…and I am surprised that there are 4 pages devoted to this subject. I have not gone through all 4 pages, but it is a waste of time debating this very clear cut topic…just look at how many Ivy League medical schools have students from Ivy League undergraduate institutions. That said, you can’t do anything about where you got into college at the point that you are applying to medical school. However, you can get straight A’s taking a difficult course load and you can do research. Further, you can do your best to get outstanding letters of reference and make sure that you proofread your application. I can’t tell you how many applications I simply put into the reject pile because they are sloppy and have grammatical mistakes.</p>
<p>The pre-med advisory people at Princeton say that as long as you have a 3.3 (a bit above the average gpa at Princeton, but as I’m sure the average gpa in science majors is lower, there may be a bit bigger difference) and have a decent MCAT (29-30), you’re getting into med school. Not necessarily a top one, but your average state school med school. The MCAT is the big equalizer, so I’m sure that’s weighted more, but I have a feeling that someone with a 29 MCAT and a 3.3 GPA from a state school undergrad doesn’t enjoy the same security, regardless of whether or not that’s fair.</p>
<p>I wonder of that Princeton grad with 29/3.3 would get into a CA med school, UCs have wicked high stats</p>
<p>I’m not pre-med (chem/bio double interested in pharmacology/research ever since I came to Emory), but I wonder if the adcoms for med. schools just ignore the grade inflation at schools like Harvard b/c of it’s prestige. Or do they just give the students the benefit of the doubt? I go to Emory and we have ir, but I’m going to guess that Emory challenges its student body a little more than some of the schools with higher average gpas. I don’t think it’s a difference in work ethic and SAT scores. When your average is over a 3.5, the coursework/curriculum and it’s rigor should be re-evaluated. I also notice that many pre-meds here tend to scoot by because they avoid the more challenging, but significantly better professors so as to keep their GPAs high. This isn’t cool in my opinion, and the fact that med school adcoms may not be able to see past this is concerning to me. These folks who found every chance to take the easy way out may become my doctor in the future. They also do things like taking organic chemistry and biology in the summer where it is much easier (and they know it). Shouldn’t adcoms notice stuff like that? And unfortunately, since they did not really try to learn anything, they’re relatively wealthy/upper middle class and will simply spend 1K+ the next summer on some program that help them learn the stuff they refused to learn so that they can do well on the MCAT. It’s a sad farce if you ask me and it completely ruins the intellectual atmosphere among science majors here. Everything is about artificially inflating the gpa for the med. schools. Not many are willing to challenge themselves.<br>
It would be cool if adcoms at med schools took a closer look at top schools and put in time to identify the most notorious/difficult professors for key pre-med courses that contain several sections. Here, the difference is like night and day between some profs. for gen. chem, gen. bio, and organic chem., and even some upperlevel biology courses. I dare say that when the student shows up the interview and that school is interviewing more than one person from the same top institution, they should be asked to bring what they view as their toughest organic chem. midterm or something (like here, Soria, Weinshenck, Spell, Eisen, Calabrese, Morkin, are all notorious for tough exams, but they are all excellent profs., but most dodge them like the plague going for the least stimulating, but easiest profs.).<br>
Point is, seems many have learned how to rig the system. There are such large discrepancies in the rigor of each prof., that many/most students are taking perhaps pre-med courses as easy as the easy-moderate sections at some state school. The goal of these students is to put Emory on the transcript, do as little work as possible, and get the inflated GPA in hopes that the “Emory” will make it look as if they did more work that their state school counteraspirees. This isn’t fair, and I’m sure Emory isn’t the top school where this happens. The problem could be solved if Emory just told all the pre-med profs. to significantly raise their standards to put them in line w/the better profs., but you’re dealing w/tenured profs. And normally a more challenging course=less time for their research and more time dealing w/the undergrads., so eventually the trend becomes chronic. </p>
<p>Also, med. schools should also raise a red flag when they see pre-meds at top schools taking the intro. physics course instead of calc. based. Physics w/no calc. is a lie. And I can’t understand why students w/slightly higher SAT math scores than those at Georgia Tech, our tough partner across town, are allowed to take a watered down physics course, when the Tech students are not. If a school ranked 35 expects more of its students, so should top 20s, especially of its pre-meds, which may not be engineers, but should be able to handle a challenge. Med schools need to come up w/a different formula that discourages artificial/self-grade inflation and more emphasis on grasping tough material. Or they simply need to come up w/a different set of standards altogether (more math, real physics, perhaps some comp. sci experience). Again, currently, the process has a bad influence on undergrad. intellectual environments even at top schools like ours. It can be downright terrible. People freak out as soon as they get a a B/B+ in a tough profs. course b/c they fear their chances of med. school going down the drain.</p>
<p>Just an opinion/insight from a student at one of the pre-med factories in the top 20.</p>
<p>My experience in medical school admissions is the same as usualgirl. Your academic record is evaluated for medical school in the context of your school, courses taken, grades, work load, trends, LOR’s, and MCAT’s. I would also agree with research being important but my experience in medical schools is limited to four of the " top ten" medical schools on both coasts so I am not certain that other medical schools view research in the same manner.<br>
I do think that medical schools are somewhat local in their applicant pools and matriculants. UCSF, Stanford and UCLA for example seem to draw from a somewhat different pool of applicants than Yale and Penn although there is considerable overlap. One could probably say the same for WUSTL and Michigan although I do not know these schools personally. All these schools do draw many of their applicants from the best colleges and universities in their own areas. Yale and Penn med students are mostly from the Ivy’s, top LAC’s like Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Amherst etc, and National top Universities like MIT, JH, Emory etc as well as Flagship State Universities. UCSF, Stanford and UCLA see many of the same students and lots of California applicants from UCB, UCLA, UCSD, Stanford and USC. I think most from the east tend to like to stay close to home and this is also true for the west. There are very few students at these medical schools who come from less known colleges except perhaps URM’s. Much of this may also have to do with self selection.
I think you probably see this in other state medical schools which tend to take most of their students from in state residents who tend to go to one or more of the state’s public flagship Universities or major private area Universities. Private Medical schools often show some in state preference and draw from the best Universities in their area.
That a particular college makes a difference can also be seen on the interview trail where you always run into other medical school applicants who all seem to come from the same schools. You will also see this phenomena again if you apply to a competitive specialty or residency except you medical school is now part of the main criteria. Getting a fellowship is heavily influenced by your residency and academic positions usually come via your fellowship mentors.</p>
<p>I’m basically saying that this self selection is stupid. Many of these students that took advantage of the million extracurriculars and excessive research hours are not doing out of a passion to learn. They are doing it because it is available at the university and the medical schools look extremely well upon it. Many at top schools are willing to dumb down their workload just in the way I was mentioning to accommodate this stuff. Med school adcoms should taking a look at this. Admittedly this could be a reason that Emory struggles more than other top 20s with med school school placement percentage. Perhaps there are too many students with this mind set. However, again I am sure this is the case at many of the very top schools, but these students just automatically get the benefit of the doubt (this is another reason for the difference), even if the average gpa at the institutions is over 3.5-3.6, I would look more into what courses those grades were coming from. (While admittedly humanities and social sciences at top schools are tougher in a sense, there is still sky high grade inflation there. Many students will add these as fluff classes. Also students will take the upperlevel sciences that inflate the GPA the most. Some curve in excess of B+, so if the course average is over 80, they still curve. This tends not to happen at public schools), who taught their major pre-med courses, etc. Sure this is an additional burden, but I really don’t want academically/intellectually/dispassionate lazy people being my doctor. I’d rather take a doctor from some top state school (especially like Berkeley, Ann Arbor, UT, or an engineering school)</p>
<p>Point is: While these students attended a significantly better “school” it is possible that they made no attempt to obtain a significantly better “education”. They just wanted a better “name” on their diploma and many will take the spots of people who attended public schools and did just as well. The assumption that the students at top schools necessarily had more rigorous courses needs to be re-evaluated. No amount of research or ECs should obscure the fact that they attended a 50K+ institution to avoid working hard and learning. It should make you wonder how passionate these folks are about being a doctor. Trust me, not many. Some literally only do it b/c their parents say so, or for job security/wealth. This would be acceptable if they at least showed that they did care to do well at they will do starting at the undergrad level, but they don’t. Instead, they just make it appear as if they are good, when they really aren’t. If you place them in a tough course, they will whine like babies and attempt to beg the prof. to raise their grade if it’s below a B. Folks at top schools’ entitlement mentality is another factor that allow them to rig the system and gain extra grade inflation. Clearly, many med schools’ admission process help to justify and perpetuate this entitlement mentality. I honestly wish some folks currently on med school adcoms could either teach or attend classes with my generations’ students (especially those at top schools). If you weren’t a believer in grade inflation before, you would be then. You give them an inflated grade or your course evaluation suffers and your tenure is delayed b/c the teaching score is highly weighted and a good portion of it is the evaluation. If you attend classes with them, the first question they will have about a course/prof. is “how easy is it?” and even if you respond they are “tough, but an amazing lecturer, so you learn a lot”, they will instantly be turned off by the fact they are tough. They will seek another prof. My former orgo. prof. advises freshmen and many are pre-meds and he even admits that many just straight up ask him “which prof. is the easiest?” Way to go med. schools for stimulating anti-intellectualism even at top schools. And I’m pretty sure some of the grade inflation is to maintain high grad. rate, student satisfaction, and prof./grad. school placement, so thus a higher rank, so no doubt that not touching the issue of entitlement and anti-intellectualism works for schools now. They just give students exactly what they want (b/c these students pay 50K+ a year). If students don’t want to be challenged, most profs. won’t do it. Even science courses will be watered down.<br>
After seeing some of the crap that my peers do here, I am completely down for seeing a legit “weed-out” process coming back to top schools. I don’t consider the current “curve the average to B-, b/c one too many B-s means no med. school” as a weed-out. Make them take tougher courses and curve the average or let it sit on a C/C+ (gen. biology here is the only class willing to do so). Students will have to just get used to working hard.</p>
<p>The answer is: of course med schools look at GPA’s differently from different schools, and they also look at what courses you have taken, your research experience, your MCATs and your letters of reference.</p>
<p>Usualgirl…</p>
<p>This bolded part has also been a point of discussion many times. Some have argued that aside from the req’d and “strongly suggested” courses, that the other courses (major/minors) don’t get considered. I’ve sensed that that isn’t really true. I do think that a strong curriculum of challenging coursework is more impressive than another curriculum of “easier courses” and req’d pre-med courses. </p>
<p>It just stand to reason that a GPA 3.9 coursework in a double major of Chemistry and Physics is more impressive than a GPA 3.9 coursework in Sociology (with similar MCATs, etc). </p>
<p>As for consideration of schools…What is the differentiation once you’re looking at schools past - say - the top 15 schools and the top 2-3 LAC? </p>
<p>I can imagine that a graduate from - say - Purdue is looked as being more favorable as - say - a graduate from a combo of a CC and low-level directional state school.</p>
<p>The bottom line is if you have selected wide range of schools according to your stats, you will get somewhere. Pre-med advisory is crucial here to evaluate and suggest. I know that my D’s state school pre-med advisory not only point out to the very proper list of schools (mainly approving what she already had), but also did everything on time and much earlier than some others (according to CC posts). Both aspects, 1)proper list of schools and 2)timely (early) application led to very good results. </p>
<p>There is a match to any reseanoble combination of UG college/GPA/MCAT. People who are matching properly will get accepted. I am not including EC’s, LOR’s since everybody has them. What is a point of giving bad LOR’s? To damage UG school reputation? That would be not logical at all.</p>
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<p>Of course, but one needs to consider two other critical items: 1) Ivy League and other top 20 school undergrads screen out low testers. Thus, their undergrads, by definition, will do better on the MCAT (and LSAT) relative to students at other, lower-ranked colleges; higher test scores = higher chance of acceptance into professional schools. 2) Private med schools are expensive. Perhaps Ivy League Med schools have wealthier student bodies, in that some of the students that they accept turn them down for lower cost, instate options? Dartmouth Med at full pay vs. UT? Tough choice.</p>
<p>Regardless of #2, the fact is that it is difficult to separate out the admissions impact of generally higher MCAT scores from undergrad ‘prestige’. (OTOH, I have always believed that academics tend to be prestige hounds, and that undergrad does matter…)</p>
<p>^The diff. in price is not that great. It all depends where you get the most Merit $$. It is not private vs state. Some private have lots of $$ for Meirt scholarships and actually send notification of future Merit award together with acceptance.</p>
<p>bernie, It appears you dislike how most prestigious colleges run. (Unfortunately, the more prestigious a school is, the more preprofessional students it may have).</p>
<p>The two issues you mentioned: 1) Not all classes are equally tough. 2) Some top colleges are too “easy.” All of these can be resolved by a national test (a real achievement test unlike MCAT) like most other countries do – similar to the STEP 1 test in medical schools.</p>
<p>But how to evaluate the quality of the ECs which is an important criterion in this country’s merit system? We can even claim the most noticeable “merit” between a very top student (who is sought after by the top private college and likely a top medical school) and an “only academically top” student (who may not be sought after by a top college or a top medical school) is the difference in the quality of their ECs.</p>
<p>Regarding “Students will have to just get used to working hard.” They do work hard – they work hard on the medical related ECs, volunteering, as social activists, etc. as these matter more than pure academic stuff. The personal qualities obtained through these ECs are valued highly in this country. For those who are into academic only, there is a track for them: either a PhD track or a MD/PhD track.</p>
<p>Oy! Rigor of courses means that you take real courses, not “football strategy” or “printmaking” or “interpretive dance” or other things that are b.s. from the point of view of medical school. It does NOT mean that you have to load up on physics, biomedical engineering, etc. It just means that if you take a literature or history class, make sure that it is a class that people who are literature or history majors would also take. I have seen transcripts that are loaded with what are obviously “gut” courses (as we called them in my day, I don’t know what they are called now). And, as an admissions committee member, I will tell you the obvious…we know what is a gut and what is not and that if you have a 4.0 and have only taken easy classes, it’s easy to spot. As to research, stop complaining, it is important. If your school doesn’t have a professor that you can do research with, do it during summers for a professor, if not at your school, another school. </p>
<p>I am going to say this and then get off of a site that my 18 year old spends time on…Medicine is an advocation, not just a vocation. If you don’t know what real medicine is, and just base your notions of being a doctor on television shows, you are going to wind up miserable. I went to Northwestern with a bunch of 6 year meds, (the program doesn’t exist anymore, I forget if it’s now 7 years or 8 years, but that’s neither here nor there.) Many of these kids, who had been so eager and ambitious and DETERMINED to be a doc, found themselves in the wrong profession. Medicine is hard, it can be REALLY boring (I switched from Internal Medicine because I thought I would commit hari kari if I had to sit through one more patient telling me about their bowel habits). You have to know what you are getting into, and you should do whatever it takes to do this. And no, research is not just for an MD/PhD track, it is for every medical student to consider. Remember, medicine and medical/surgical procedures change constantly, if you don’t like research, (and you don’t have to end up an academic for this to be true) then medical school is not for you. To be a doctor, you are not only required to take x number of CME every 2 years to renew your license, you need to know what the research says about current standards of care, new medications/procedures, etc. </p>
<p>This is not a game. If you want to be a doctor, than roll up your sleeves and do what you have to do…and yes, it might be a little harder at a school that is not an ivy. But medical school is not easy and having the responsibility for taking care of people’s lives is not easy. So if you want it badly enough, and don’t have the grades to get you there right after graduation, you will get a master’s, do research for a year, whatever…but quit your bellyaching and start studying.</p>
<p>Any impression that students in top colleges don’t work hard is completely untrue. DS is attending a top college, and in talks with him and his peers. we have found out that most pre-med students work really hard and they take the demanding classes as well. They don’t take the easy way just to boost their GPA. They know that they are in competition with capable and hard-working classmates, and usually the percentage of As handed out by professors is capped in each class. Many take graduate level classes during their junior and senior years. In most of the graduate classes, the undergraduate students usually do better than graduate students in terms of grades.</p>
<p>I believe that the students in top colleges are more “homogeneous” intellectually than in most state flag universities where you can find excellent students, but in a smaller percentage.</p>
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<p>WashU touts similar statistics except our suggested MCAT is 30. I don’t know exactly what grade inflation means but for all of our classes that are curved and even those that aren’t the mean is b-</p>
<p>*I believe that the students in top colleges are more “homogeneous” intellectually than in most state flag universities where you can find excellent students, but in a smaller percentage. *</p>
<p>It’s probably true that elite schools have high stats kids across all majors, but it’s not really relevant that flagships have a smaller overall percentage of excellent students OVERALL since pre-med majors don’t typically come from all majors equally.</p>
<p>At flagship universities, you don’t find excellent students equally distributed across all majors…instead, they are largely concentrated in about 5 majors…bio, chem, engineering, physics, and math. So, at a flagship U, many/most of your pre-med classmates are going to be excellent students.</p>
<p>bernie, I respectfully disagree. I think it’s fine to have grade inflation at top schools. I don’t see a high average GPA as a problem at top schools because you have to consider the competition (very often underestimated, by the way). They have to compete with some of the smartest, most talented, most hard-working students in the nation. This is not to say that other schools do not have these students, simply that top schools have a higher concentration of them. You may disagree, but again, people here are often underestimated by those anti-prestige. I think it would be injust to give someone the same grade as another who, although did similarly well compared to his/her peers, had a lower level of competition to face.</p>
<p>*top schools because you have to consider the competition (very often underestimated, by the way). They have to compete with some of the smartest, most talented, most hard-working students in the nation. *</p>
<p>I think we need to really define grade inflation. If grade inflation is simply the idea that classes that are loaded with super-achievers are going to have a higher number of A’s, then I don’t agree.</p>
<p>My kids attended a Catholic high school. The school only offered 2 Spanish III classes. One class ended up with nearly all AP kids in it (it wasn’t an AP class). Therefore, that class had a lot more As than the other class. That is NOT grade inflation IMHO. </p>
<p>however, if the Spanish teacher had tried to “even things up” and give the same number of A’s in the other class, now that would have been grade inflation. </p>
<p>Also…we’ve all seen kids post in the other CC forums that they have “All A’s” but their test scores are very modest. That suggests that their schools have grade inflation. </p>
<p>So, which is it…</p>
<p>Is grade inflation when lots of A’s are given when they aren’t deserved? </p>
<p>Or…Is grade inflation when lots of A’s are given because there are a bunch of smarties in the class?</p>
<p>I say it’s the former, not the latter.</p>
<p>I don’t have that “impression”. I know it is true to a large extent. While many may be willing to work hard, it is often a last resort. I understand that students here are capable, but that doesn’t mean they rise to the challenge when given the opportunity. Also, be very careful when you mention difficult “courses”. Again, some can simply take “difficult” courses with a professor whom they know is easy. And the rumor of capping As, is only to some extent true. And I really don’t care about the A-grades, those should be difficult to get. However, the way many top schools curve traditionally difficult courses (I said courses not sections), it assures that most get Bs. Sure a B may be low for med. school, but the fact is many of the students shouldn’t even be earning B grades. They aren’t entitled to Bs just so that they still have a chance in my opinion.
mom2collegekids: that’s exactly what I mean. It is the former. </p>
<p>Yelopen: We aren’t being graded on a traditional(hardly no top schools have profs. that grade on a bell) curve however, grades are generally only curved up (non-competitive curve). Like in some orgo. sections, thje average is a 68, yet this is curved to a B-. This doesn’t happen at Georgia Tech. The average people would get about a C. This isn’t fair to them. Their SAT scores aren’t that much different from ours. The As and Bs are undeserved is what I’m trying to say. Also, having more As/Bs is fine if the course was truly easy, the teacher was great (but even then, only smaller classes will see an advantage here), and a normal grading scale was applied. However, this is often not the case. Normally the grades are curved up so that the grades come out looking way better than what they are. And the average folks and those at the bottom get the biggest boost, while those already at say a normal B-/B (80-83) range may move only 1 level up, and some of the Bs will remain Bs. When the average is a 68 and this is curved to a B-, that’s saying that a D+=B-. Uh, no. I would have no problem if this was the case only for those in sections w/profs. that give more challenging exams/material, but I know that the significantly easy profs. do it too. I would also have no problem if all the profs. had the same difficulty, and decided to curve in a similar fashion, but this isn’t the case. I have looked at less challenging orgo. courses here compared the exams to those of my friends at Georgia Tech and UGA. It’s about the same. The grades at UGA and Tech would not be boosted as much for similar performances. Again, if the high grades were a result of the students straight up doing better or having to work significantly harder/being exposed to tougher material, no problem. But if we are simply being rewarded for being qualified to come to Emory, it’s crap.<br>
Basically I’m describing the issue by comparing top 20s to other public schools with great academics that of course grade much harder. Your assumption only works if profs. were grading on bell-curves where some people’s grade can be curved down. This hardly ever happens.</p>
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<p>This is indeed difficult to tease out. However, at many top medical schools, 70% of the student body comes from just a handful of colleges. This suggests to me that medical schools do consider your undergraduate school in the admissions equation. Unless, you believe that the top colleges contain 70% of the best med school applicants and the thousands of other colleges only contain 30% of the best med school applicants. Even if that was true, what would that say about the quality of competition in the state colleges? If 70% of the best applicants duke it out within just 20 colleges while the other 30% are diluted across thousands of colleges, then essentially GPA’s from top universities and GPA’s from state schools would become incomparable due to the huge chasm in the quality of student bodies. There is no way medical schools can ignore such a big difference in competition.</p>
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<p>And yet if you compare the MCAT vs. GPA correlations of students from top colleges vs. students from state schools, they show that at the same GPA level, students from top colleges perform better on the MCAT. For example, the median MCAT of the worst Cornell applicants (with 2.8-3.2 GPA’s) is similar to the median MCAT of 3.4-3.6 students from UMich. If we were to compare Harvard to a conventional state school, the differences would be even greater. Either the quality of education is much better at top private colleges or the quality of the student bodies is just that much greater, but all your whining about students coasting through top colleges with straight A’s just hasn’t panned out in the statistics. Statistics show that top undergrads are still tougher than state schools.</p>