Med School Admissions: GPAs weighed same for all undergraduates at all universities?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>I’ve never said straight As. I’ve said unwarranted higher grades (again, I don’t care about As. An A is hard to come by and it should be. It’s the B/B+ is given extremely generously). Georgia Tech is probably harder than us if only for the differences in grading (you may think it’s unfair to compare w/an engineering school, but their school of sciences is the one w/the lowest average GPA. Our SAT average is probably like 40 points apart, that can’t justify a .3 difference. I’m willing to bet if Emory was mostly science like Tech, it would still be at least .1 difference in average gpa. A 40 point difference doesn’t warrant it). And also, I would expect that many students at top privates are able to do better on the MCAT if not only because many can afford to take some of the more expensive MCAT courses (I’ve seen this one over and over again). I am being completely truthful with what I observe here at Emory. I don’t know much about other schools other than the fact that their SATs and average grad. gpas are similar. And I would expect Cornell to be harder than many schools. I know it is tough for a fact so your stats. are not surprising. I’m just claiming that the phenomenon happens here, and it probably happens to some extent at other schools. I’m giving you my direct observations. I have met many really in it to learn, and they do end up doing well, but I can’t say this is the majority. I will also admit that Emory is pretty innovative especially when it comes to teaching biology and bio lab. However, even with that said, most can just choose a professor that would allow them to dodge the rigor very easily. I will also concede that the hardest profs. in each pre-med course (minus physics and math of course) are indeed much tougher than even those at even Georgia Tech, but their are only like 2 of those teaching 3 sections between them (less than 1/2 of all sections taught). We kill them (despite their workload being higher, the material here and the exams are tougher for such courses) when it comes to some of the sections of biology courses, organic chemistry, gen. chem, and even biochem. The tougher profs. in psyche dept. is probably significantly tougher too. However, keep in mind that most are not going to take these if they don’t have to. </p>

<p>Also, again I’m using Emory as example, you Cornell (known for very tough bio program). Emory obviously has issues as indicated by its med. school admit percentage. Yes, you may choose to look only at those with a 3.5+ and a 30+, but I think the others matter. Normally the issue cited is that many pre-meds here have a high GPA, but not that high of an MCAT. So my “whining” using Emory as an example has some validity.
I know that this place can be challenging (me and many of my friends choose to do so, but again most chicken out including some of my friends), but I’m just saying that such a challenge is easier to dodge, perhaps more so than some of our peers (or not, because their average GPAs and SATs are similar). I can mention how 16 people suddenly dropped Dr. Weinshenck’s orgo. class once they heard Dr. Liotta (very easy, almost pushover), was overloading people. For many, Dr. W. was simply a last resort after Dr. Morkin and Liotta filled. This is the pre-med culture here whether one wants to admit or not. Emory is solid, but it isn’t perfect. I’m just pointing out some flaws that so happen to be relevant to med. school admission.</p>

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<p>If you do a quick search on mdapplicants.com:</p>

<p>Out of the 220 or so profiles that come up with high MCAT (35+), low GPA (3.3 and below) applicants, 80 come from a top 20 university. If you add in Georgetown and UC Berkeley, essentially half of the profiles will be from just 22 universities.</p>

<p>Out of the 173 profiles that come up with low MCAT scores (b/w 15-28) and high GPA’s (3.9 and above), 1 (ONE) come from a top 20 university. If you add in UC Berkeley and Georgetown, you find 2 (TWO) profiles.</p>

<p>I know mdapplicants is self-selected. But, I think the difference here is too great to ignore. This picture of students who are gaming the system and taking advantage of grade-inflation at top universities is just not reality. The students from top universities are crushing those from other colleges on the MCAT. If anything, this shows their GPA is too low in comparison to their MCAT score.</p>

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<p>I would need to see evidence that bio courses at Georgia Tech is curved differently from bio courses at Emory. You can’t compare the grading of bio majors to the grading of engineering majors. This is the reason why people think MIT is a tough school when in fact, non-engineering courses at MIT are actually curved quite generously.</p>

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<p>Except around 80% of applicants have taken a prep course. Basically, everyone takes one, whether they attend a private school or not. </p>

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<p>Actually no. Cornell would be one of the “easier” top 20 schools. Its student body is among the weakest out of the top private colleges and its grading is just as inflated as everyone else (3.4 average GPA).</p>

<p>And Cornell publishes the median grades of all of its courses online. How much easier can it be for a Cornell student to do exactly what you’re suggesting?</p>

<p>I agree with you that Emory’s MCAT scores are very low for the quality of students it has. I’m not sure why. You are obviously a lot more familiar with the school than I am. However, I’m not so sure you can generalize your observations about Emory to the other top private colleges.</p>

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<p>I checked it out, and I think looking at say the top 35-40 may be more informative, because it seemed as if those from other non-top 20s weren’t really doing badly comparatively. Like the fact that there were two data points from Purdue that had 36 MCAT, 2.98 gpa is interesting. I see some like that for Ann Arbor, UT, Berkeley and Chapel Hill too. There seems to be some type of difference in grading. A lot of the people in the 2s that did well seem to come from public schools, while a lot of the top 20 people had like 3.2s (though yes, there were definitely some in the 2s). Some people have gone as far to claim that students at top schools do indeed handle standardized testing better (for whatever reasons). Either way, if you look at Emory, you’ll notice that it doesn’t seem to appear that often. However, we’re assuming that the website is an acceptable sample size. I will concede that perhaps the other top schools are doing it right, but we aren’t (need to get it together). The phenomenon I mention does occur here, that’s all I can say. This seems to help prove me wrong about its potential prevalence at the other top 20 (or 22) schools.</p>

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<p>Fair enough Norcal.
Also, you are right about the engineering courses. The ones at Tech are actually graded quite generously. It’s the natural/hard science courses that are graded tougher than normal at Tech. I already said that I think Emory biology (at least intro.) is in general harder b/c of the material is simply more intense (topics are standardized, but they can teach in w/e context they want. Escobar is the easiest now, so people flock there). And they don’t tend to curve. Georgia Tech’s intro. biology has a curve that awards the top 5% a 100 (thus an A), and then after that they apply some formula (my friend took and said that the average was like a 74 which is about the same as our harder sections take a few points. The difference in size of the sections can probable account for this). I think intro. bio here normalizes the sections versus one another, and in my freshmen year, they were so tough that they curved the borderline grades in one of the bio sections down to the nearest level. However, for the last two years (not this year though), we had a guy who believed in inflation (came from Johns Hopkins so didn’t like their weedout process) so designed really easy exams that yielded an A- average and since he was. dept. chair, nothing could be done about it.<br>
General chem. at Tech has a slight curve. General chem. here is almost never scaled or curved. Orgo. here has the arbitrary curve for most profs., w/exception of the freshmen orgo. prof. (the other tough prof.) who has a set scale. The Tech orgo. classes are essentially standardized, and they have grade breaks (a set scale) on the syllabus. I would describe the Tech classes compared to what I had w/the freshmen Ochem or what I’ve seen from Weinshenck as moderate. Emory’s seems to range from easy to very difficult. However, for sophomores, Weinshenck is the only difficult option. What’s weird is that Weinshenck’s class generally gets higher exam averages than the others either b/c of his teaching ability or the motivation of students who “risk” taking him. Same for freshmen orgo. prof. People at Tech get to take “survey of biochem”, we don’t have such a course. I compared our biochem to that, and theirs is indeed a joke.<br>
But anyway, If you pit our hardest (say orgo. and bio) vs. Tech’s hardest (physics and calc… Our counterparts are pitiful in comparison. I wonder how we get away w/it. I’ve even seen material from other top 25s in these subjects and it’s much harder. We really suffer in these by not having engineering), you’ll generally find that the grades are not as generous at Tech. I’m sure that ours are at least a 2.5 (in fact I think it’s like 2.7-2.8class average b/c they say it’s usually a B-) but you can check out distributions for Tech classes and you’ll see that they are more willing to give C/D/Fs and have closer to a flat 2.0. They curve so that most people around the average in a hard section get a C, not a B. So it’s a little different. They try to help those closer to the top more than those at the bottom.</p>

<p>I just don’t understand why students here don’t understand that they are cheating themselves by dodging rigor. Seems as if students from other top schools have figured it out. How in the world did they change or obtain a different culture. Or maybe the standards are more uniform at these schools so you can’t escape. I know that if most profs were like the hardest of each pre-med course. Emory would be a bit tougher than many peers. Just wondering if there would have to be a shift in culture or if the faculty themselves can do something. Either way, it’s clearly in the best interest of Emory pre-meds for things to change, whether they like artificial inflation or not. They may need to be force-fed rigor like students at engineerings schools (one must admit that while grading may be generous in such courses, they have a very heavy workload not to be seen at a place like this).</p>

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<p>what is the best source of non-self reported info? (prior post mentions mdapplicants.com are self reported?)</p>

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<p>^ There is no central clearing house for this info. With this said, the data published by AAMC is not self-reported. There are very few colleges which publish such data in a very honest, extensive and detailed way – Cornell and Emory seem to have published this kind of data in a useful way.</p>

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<p>Wow, this is quite a mass of information. My son is an excellent student and a very strong cross country runner. On the one hand, he has a dream of competing against the best athletes, just to see achieve whatever he can in a sport he loves. On the other hand, it makes me wonder if the demands of Div I athletics will make it impossible to research, intern and participate in other medically related ECs. To what degree will Med Schools appreciate Div I athletics vs penalize him for being too busy to research?</p>

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<p>No. Its not a 40 point difference, its a 130 point difference. (from college board). The average Emory student scores a 2085/2400 (roughly 2100 the past couple of years), which represents the top 2% in the country. Georgia Tech has a 1955/2400. </p>

<p>BTW, kids who take weinshenck def. know what they are getting themselves into. I had him last year, and almost everyone worked incredibly hard and had their **** together. This semester I decided to take morkin, who is pretty easy compared to Weinshenck. Morkin doesn’t go into nearly as many details as Weinshenck did, and she is very straightforward on her tests/quizzes. Weinshenck is def. the best orgo prof here, I learned A LOT that semester. Unfortun. I couldn’t take him this year due to scheduling problems.</p>

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<p>DDD- I cannot speak to DI sports, but my Dd was on a club team which practiced year round and competed at nationals. She had the option to skip practice if she needed to study, her varsity friends did not, but they had priority scheduling and tutors.</p>

<p>I think it may depend on the sport and the actual time commitment, it may be doable to do the tough schedule and maintain solid grades, but fitting in the volunteer and shadowing work could be a challenge, though much can be done over the summer.</p>

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<p>Collegeboard hardly updates that site, and even if it did, the writing portion matters (not to mention the writing portion is so new that they have apparently had difficulty qualifying it) but so much when you are comparing students in the sciences. Either way, M/V is like a 1399 average at Emory, but like a 1350-1360. That’s not a large difference.</p>

<p><a href=“http://factbook.gatech.edu/content/sat-scores[/url]”>http://factbook.gatech.edu/content/sat-scores&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I imagine that their distribution is tighter though. I think our high-end for the mid-50 M/V is a bit higher. The low ends are somewhat similar.</p>

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<p>Actually the scores are based on the previous year’s class. In other words the 2085 is for my incoming class. Your incoming class had a much higher average (which is why we used to be ranked 18th and fell to 20th). The reason my class had lower scores is because that is the year Emory had to resort to its waitlist a lot because of the recession ( a lot of kids that emory initially accepted, couldn’t attend due to loss of family assets).</p>

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<p>Yeah, but point is M/V scores between Emory and Tech aren’t that different. And in light of what you said, Tech’s scores have gone up a little, so that makes them even closer to your class. I’m already wondering how class of 2015 will turn out at both. Seems like top 10s are getting the most apps., so Emory may struggle again this year, but hopefully I am wrong.</p>

<p>And let’s be honest, the stereotype is that engineering oriented people don’t know how to write as well. Tech’s lopsided distribution of SAT scores between M/V/Wr just proves it lol. Of course you would expect Emory to pull in more students w/better writing scores b/c you have lots of business, social science, and humanities oriented students applying. Most aren’t going into STEM majors.</p>

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<p>Hopefully they don’t care what school you went to for undergrad. My whole college choice was based on that premise!</p>

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<p>From my perspective, parent of kids with 3 BAs, 1 BS, 1MA, Phd & MD in progress, this discussion of one prof vs another, one B+ vs another B+, etc, is all a waste of time.</p>

<p>YES, in this world SOME people game the system
YES, some times the guy who is #20 at a top HS might have been #1 at another HS
YES, there maybe some person somewhere who takes all the “light” science classes that look like real science but are easier and that person may be an a ‘lesser’ college and they may subsequently get into med school.</p>

<p>But why do you spend paragraphs and paragraphs arguing a 0.1 GPA or 1 point MCAT or 50 point SAT difference, really, really (think Seinfeld’s inflection there) ReAlly, who cares. Most people don’t care.</p>

<p>So what if some other dude games the system, that is not your problem. There is so much to be done in prep for med school, there is almost no forgiveness for the youthful indiscretions that happen in so many college experiences. If a dude at any school can keep it together, day after day, week after week, term after term and get 3.5+, easy school or tough school, then more power to him. What is really difficult about applying to med school is that you have to be so on your game every single day, no room for mistakes. Heck too many B+/A- marks hurt your GPA enough, avoid anything worse.</p>

<p>So, stop wasting time arguing about this school or that school. Yes, MIT OChem is probably harder than Ochem at Cal State Fullerton. But a kid who only could choose that commuter school still has a chance at med school if he is perfect.</p>

<p>You only need to worry about making yourself interesting and appealing to schools, not about the small percentage of people who were really good in a lesser school or got high marks in a lesser class. Of the 40,000 applicants, that is a small percentage of your competition.</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, I understand the ‘unfair’ feelings. But I learned those lessons when D1 was applying, without boring you with details, I saw kids get better options due to unfair parameters. Oh well, whinging would not change it, arguing would not change it, we had to deal with the options we had in front of us.</p>

<p>I just don’t quite fathom why the multi page threads pursuing the point that some one could game the system. Yes, they can. Oh well, whatever, focus on you not on them and make yourself smashing enough to impress and stand out above the 1000 kids who gamed the system and the other 39000 applicants.</p>

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<p>Sorry 311710rvmt, but I think that to some extent, they DO care. </p>

<p>You have over 2000 colleges which will have top, driven, smart students with high GPAs, and MCATs applying for med school and which may very well be interested in top 20 medical schools. These students may have chosen to attend their UGs for a variety or reasons : finances, family, location, but for med school may want a top 20.</p>

<p>And you have 20 top colleges that will also have similar students. Assuming that ALL the premeds at these colleges were top, driven, smart students with high GPAs and MCATs and that they were applying to top 20 med schools, the numbers still don’t add up. There is a disproportionate number of these students at top medical schools compared to students coming from the rest of the 2000 schools.</p>

<p>I have never bought the argument that “the Ivies, Stanford, MIT have the best students and therefore their students are likely to be admitted to the best med schools” , because I am sure that 2000 schools must turn out a greater number of smart kids, than just 20 schools.</p>

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<p>I think, in absolute numbers, these non-top-20 schools (assuming there are “2000-20” of them) will produce more high MCAT scorers (let alone the number of high GPA students.) </p>

<p>Thus, if a medical school puts an emphasis on stats (especially the high MCAT scores because there are well too many applicants with a high GPA as compared to high MCAT scorers), they will admit more students from a non-elite college proportionally, as compared to those “ivy-incest” ivy medical schools.</p>

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<p>For one, not a pre-med. Just saying that gaming the system can sour the intellectual atmosphere in the sciences(you should see how much they whine when a class is hard and how often they pressure the prof. to dumb it down. Often they cave in some manner. I hardly hear/see this happen at the top publics) as a whole and that students at Emory (where I go obviously) clearly are not being successful (as indicated by I believe Norcaldad’s proof that I was wrong in my sweeping generalization) in their ability so they should just stop. Fact is, if a bunch of students are pressuring profs. (or only choosing easy profs.) to water down courses (this actually is often the solution of many profs, hence the discrepancies observed throughout one course) or inflate grades, it actually affects the experience of those who are moreso there to learn than to simply make a grade, by who knows what means, and simply move on. It eventually sets the trend for what courses should be like at said institution (b/c these students are paying 50K+ a year, and as the number 20 school that slips every now in then in the rankings. You don’t want to become known as the “tough” school all of the sudden. It’s best to be grandfathered in with such a reputation). And over 2 1/2 years, I could see certain courses get significantly easier (as in they’ll simply have the worst, but easiest profs. with the historically higher grade distributions teach a higher percentage of sections).
I could cite specific ex., but it won’t do any good b/c you don’t really know anything about Emory (at least that’s my assumption). How do I know? I have several sophomore and freshmen friends that I actually tutor/help, so I can often compare their material to what most people experienced the year(s) I took a certain course. Seems like other schools don’t cave to such pressure as much, or students at those just suck it up and move on. Don’t know what’s going on here, but if it isn’t reversed, people who actually come here for a challenge or to learn will be very disappointed. And that’s unfortunate. Luckily my upperclassmen status allows me to choose classes where this environment is avoided. I choose the more challenging profs., usually w/smaller classes where people come in knowing that they will have to work. Heck I even take courses in the grad. school. Seems to have worked so far. I’m getting what I wanted out of my Emory experience even if I had to dig to find it. This works way better for me. Pre-med classes are horrible.
The problem can be solved on two ends, the students here should want more rigor/relevant material to do better on the MCAT, and the profs. simply grow a spine. But some profs. I talked to have straight up said, that if the students don’t want it, they will not waste precious time trying to do it. I imagine the atmosphere would be a tad different if we had an engineering school because everyone wouldn’t be quasi-cut (it’s not that bad, but still…) throat pre-meds. It would add more diversity (in terms of career path) to the STEM majors. Most other top schools have one, so I now realize how the phenomenon may certainly be less pervasive at such institutions.<br>
MCAT: I think I that’s kind of what I mean. I looked at some of the “data-points” on that website mentioned, and it seemed that many public school students had really high MCAT scores that rivaled many applicants of those at the top 20s, which is why the top schools only made up 1/2 of those with low gpa and high MCAT. One can look at the glass as half-empty or half full.</p>

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<p>“And you have 20 top colleges that will also have similar students. Assuming that ALL the premeds at these colleges were top, driven, smart students with high GPAs and MCATs and that they were applying to top 20 med schools, the numbers still don’t add up. There is a disproportionate number of these students at top medical schools compared to students coming from the rest of the 2000 schools.”</p>

<p>-Maybe so, but it is not supported by my D’s experience, which means that there is no point in this discussion, since everybody is different. So, I am with somemom, who pointed out that all these minute differences are irrelevant. Process is very subjective, sometime ther is no clear reason for acceptance/rejection. From my D’s experience again, location of home/Med. School seems to be playing large role in selection. Should we make general statement about it? I am not sure. It might play some role at some Med. Schools - that was my own conclusion based on my D’s experience.</p>

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<p>^^Exactly, and that was my point #2 – for which I used cost as an example. In addition to turning down a Top 20 to attend the instate, at what perhaps could be a lot less $, some/many go instate for all kinds of personal reasons – or turn down a Top 20 med for all kinds of personal reasons, one of which just might be a strong interest in Primary Care.</p>

<p>My son’s good friend from HS, Stanford grad, was accepted to a couple Top 20 schools, one with some decent money. But parents are ‘forcing’ him to take the full-pay offer @ Irvine. (Don’t ask.)</p>

<p>So yes, the top xx colleges have more high testers than the top 10 undergrads in total. (Heck, Cal alone has more high testers than Harvard…) </p>

<p>But yes, despite common wisdom of cc, I have always believed that academics, like government and Wall Street, are prestige-'hoes. But without access to the data, ala The Gatekeepers, it is only speculation.</p>