<p>BB- I am not quite sure how an adult can be forced to choose a med school and am not familiar with a full pay offer (tuition? living expenses?) but Irvine is an excellent med school and if any poster said they could go to a UC med school for free vs $200k at HYS etc, I would take the UC.</p>
<p>Now if they have a large funding portion at that top school and bring it down to $100k out of pocket it becomes more of a personal value judgment and long term goals (academic medicine)</p>
<p>I don’t think UCI was top 20, but it was at least top 50 on a list that was around 150, so it’s not like going to the Caribbean and if he plans to stay in CA, certainly there would be many connection to be made staying local</p>
An engineering student with a BS degree does not need to have a high GPA to get a job. Most are not very motivated to get a MS or PhD after a BS, unless they are from an overseas college.
The kind of class taken may matters more than the overall GPA an engineering student gets when he/she does job hunting.
Arguably, an engineering track is not very rewarding one (money earned or job security) in the long run (after he or she has been working for 10-15 years.) Many above average kids, unless they are very lopsided toward this field, are not motivated to enter this field due to this reason.
Engineering schools have its own set of serious problems, no matter how politicians claim it is important.</p>
<p>“Many above average kids, unless they are very lopsided toward this field, are not motivated to enter this field due to this reason.”</p>
<p>-but on the other hand, one has to be way above average to major in engineering as classes are much harder than pre-med in other majors (Bio,…etc.). Engineering is by far the hardest one of all and lots of very top kids from private HS struggle, hire paid tutors…</p>
<p>Just saying that having one inside of the “liberal arts” university could help the academic atmosphere. Sure many in it may be pre-med, but they’d have to be brave souls to do so, and obviously have some respect for the field and perhaps the creativity/innovation involved in becoming a good one. Yes, predominantly engineering schools do have issues. But having it as an option at a school where such majors would not completely dominate could indeed add. Not to mention, in our case, it may be a motivator to improve the quality and rigor of math and physics courses (or the departments as a whole).</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>There may be some applicants who will not be satisfied unless they are accepted at a top 20 medical school but I do not think the number is large. I think that the majority of applicants to medical school will be happy if they get into any U.S. allopathic medical school. The majority of applicants to medical school do not get even one acceptance from even the lowest rated medical schools. When I was applying in 1996 only about 16,000 out of approximately 50,000 applicants were admitted anywhere.</p>
<p>As a graduate of one of the 100 medical schools that are not in the top 20 I am still an MD, still a USMG, was matched to a residency, obtained a license to practice medicine and have a successful medical practice. Although I did not have to endure it, I am sure that not getting accepted into any medical school and having a life long dream of becoming a doctor destroyed is a crushing disappointment for the majority of medical school applicants who will experience it. Not getting into a top 20 medical school was not even a minor let down as long as I had an acceptance letter in hand from a U.S. allopathic medical school.</p>
<p>*Quote:
Hopefully they don’t care what school you went to for undergrad. My whole college choice was based on that premise! </p>
<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>First of all, I don’t think there are 2000 colleges that are producing such students…maybe about 400…at most. </p>
<p>I don’t know where 3117 went to college, but if he went to a good school, he’ll likely be fine. It might be argued that those who go to top 20 schools have some kind of edge, but after that, the edge disappears. Med schools aren’t likely going to care whether you went to a school ranked #50 or #90.</p>
<p>I recently emailed the Director of Pre-Health Advising at my son’s mid-tier flagship. I had heard what the school’s acceptance rate is for American MD medical schools, but I wanted to make sure. </p>
<p>This was his answer…</p>
<p>*We do enjoy an acceptance rate among US, MD medical school applicants that consistently exceeds the national average. If we look at what I would consider a qualified applicant (GPA above 3.6 and an MCAT of 28 or higher), our acceptance rate has hovered in
the mid 80%s.
*</p>
<p>“-but on the other hand, one has to be way above average to major in engineering as classes are much harder than pre-med in other majors (Bio,…etc.). Engineering is by far the hardest one of all and lots of very top kids from private HS struggle, hire paid tutors…”</p>
<p>Engineering is certainly a very difficult major but I doubt it is by far the hardest. I think that nearly anyone who earns a BS in Physics could get a degree in engineering but I do not think a majority of students who get a bachelors degree in engineering could get one in Physics. My experience with Engineering majors is that while they do well in the Classical Physics that make up the lower division Physics courses they must take, they have a great deal of difficulty with the much less intuitive concepts found in upper division Physics courses such as Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.</p>
<p>"Engineering is certainly a very difficult major but I doubt it is by far the hardest. "</p>
<p>-I have been in engineering for many years. It is the hardest. I did not like it (after working for over decade), I switched. You can swtich pretty much to any UG major with great success after engineering. However, the "memory’ classes might be more challenging for engineering type who tend to rely on logic/concept/math.</p>
<p>I thought at traditional engineering schools like Georgia Tech, NC State, and Purdue, it was the classical physics and E and M combination (I.E., intro physics courses) that were absolutely brutal. It is these classes and the intro. calc. courses that they tend to struggle with. And normally this is because they are freshmen, but I’ve seen the material from Tech, and I know ours (even calc. based) has not stacked up for quite a while. I need not comment on what I observed from MIT’s open course ware. So these intro. courses are true foundational courses at such institutions, and I know Tech seems to grade on the hard curve (many sections of mechanics and E and M have between 2.0-2.3 averages b/c the median/average folks are only curved to C). The way they design those courses at such schools, it seems as if the students who are successful should be able to handle upper level physics courses well. But I can’t say that for sure though (perhaps I can take a look at the grade distrib. for such courses at Tech and see if they are in general better as expected). It could just be those institutions in particular. But yes, I would agree that physics is very hard (and so may chemistry be, especially at places like Northwestern, Caltech, MIT, and Stanford from what I hear). We don’t have engineering and many people like to say that Neuroscience is Emory’s hardest major when in reality there is essentially only 1-2 tough courses. I tell those people to come on over to the dark side (the chem. and physics dept.). Of course many people know that from there experiences in gen. chem or orgo. w/a tougher prof.<br>
I couldn’t tell if physics may be harder then engineering, I just know that generally hard/natural sciences have lower grades at Tech, than those in engineering. I expect engineering to be more rigorous out of class work/project load, but maybe it is not as subject to harsh grading b/c it involves more creation/innovation instead right and wrong answers. Whether either is harsher on the gpa or not, both are incredibly hard in most cases.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, EVERY four year university in the country (over 2000 of them) is going to have students that are top driven, smart, with a high GPA and MCAT (at least ONE). Why wouldn’t they?? You will find such students at any local Community College as well.</p>
<p>The point here is that students coming from top 20 schools DO have an edge getting into top 20 med schools, just because they are coming from top 20 schools. How much of an edge? Who knows? It depends on the particular school, but there are “preferences”. Even within the top 20, there seems to be a certain bias-(Harvard Med does not particularly like U Chicago nor WashU undergrad students, and Yale Med loves Brown undergrads)</p>
<p>Just like you said, most kids are happy to get into ANY med school. I was bringing up the “edge” of coming from a top 20 and trying to get into a top 20. For ex, SDN seems to be full of students who want to attend top 20 schools, not just ANY school.</p>
<p>The reason that I said that I don’t think that there are 2000 schools producing med students is because many colleges are rather career specific…like those who are largely teachers colleges. I really don’t think that 2000 colleges are producing high MCAT students every year.</p>
If my memory serves me well, kristin once posted a link to some AAMC page on which the number of applicants within certain MCAT and GPA ranges are shown, for the past 10 years. For each year, there are only about 400-450 applicants a year who apply with 3.8+/39+ (or 3.9+/38+? Can not remember which one for sure.) Kristin kind of wrote that this page is the only page that she thinks is of the most value to her.</p>
<p>This implies that not every one of these 2000 schools produces at least one student with this kind of stats. The truth may be close to what mom2collegekids posted if we are talking about a LizzyM score of 77+:
With this said, many CCers believe that, once your GPA or MCAT is above some threshold (say, > 3.8/36), any increase of one of these two numbers does not give you more boost (An exception may be wustl medical school :)). This is likely true.</p>
<p>mcat, students do not have to have that specific combination of GPA and MCAT scores to be considered top applicants. As a matter of fact, not even the top schools produce many of those. I was just generalizing. At any school, even community colleges, you are going to have someone with a 4.0. And at any 4 year school you are going to have someone with a high MCAT.</p>
<p>In terms of absolute numbers, 2000 schools MUST turn out more of those than 20 schools.</p>
<p>MyO, I totally agree with the statements in your post #113.</p>
<p>I remember seeing somewhere that U. of Wisc, a state school, produced most of CEOs in this country. So, for those who are graduated from an elite college, you need to remember that in the future you will very likely work for a boss who was graduted from a state university – An exception may be that your family is so rich and connected that you have resources to run your own company! (Or, you can relax and wait till you are almost 35-40 years old and then decide to do something great – and still have a good chance to succeed. – maybe even became the President of this country because of your natural talent of leadership, even though you were a gentleman-C when you were a college student.</p>
<p>MyO, as I have mentioned, while you might be correct in general, your statement about
“The point here is that students coming from top 20 schools DO have an edge getting into top 20 med schools, just because they are coming from top 20 schools.”</p>
<p>is NOT supported by experience of many, including my D. My conclusion is: do not pay any attention to statistics, work hard at ANY place, pursue your interests, investigate unknown (as one should do in UG no matter if they go to Med. School or not), prepare for MCAT to insure a decent score, compile list of Med. Schools that match your stats and your own criteria and you will have very positive results, even if your list include top 20. It might sound like cliche, but this simple approach that does NOT include too much calculations in regard to choice of UG and choice of classes (as some suggest to max your GPA). All these calculations will result in additional stress and will take fun out of your UG years and Med. School application because you would always calculate what you should have done differently.</p>
<p>* students do not have to have that specific combination of GPA and MCAT scores to be considered top applicants. As a matter of fact, not even the top schools produce many of those. I was just generalizing. At any school, even community colleges, you are going to have someone with a 4.0. And at any 4 year school you are going to have someone with a high MCAT.</p>
<p>In terms of absolute numbers, 2000 schools MUST turn out more of those than 20 schools. *</p>
<p>I wasn’t concerned with the top 20 schools. However…</p>
<p>I think that in “terms of absolute numbers,” about 400 schools turn out more students that are med school material (MCAT & GPA) than those 20 schools. The rest of the schools are “hit and miss” or not at all. Again, many low level colleges or career specific colleges do not have the science programs at a level to be churning out med school material.</p>
<p>I can think of many colleges that I know aren’t turning out med school students…they are known for being teacher colleges, art/film/fashion colleges, music colleges, nursing colleges, or business colleges. I’m not even sure if the unranked directional universities are churning out many med students. I think those would be very “hit and miss”. </p>
<p>If my memory serves me well, kristin once posted a link to some AAMC page on which the number of applicants within certain MCAT and GPA ranges are shown, for the past 10 years. For each year,* there are only about 400-450 applicants a year who apply with 3.8+/39+ (or 3.9+/38+? **Can not remember which one for sure.) Kristin kind of wrote that this page is the only page that she thinks is of the most value to her.</p>
<p>This implies that not every one of these 2000 schools produces at least one student with this kind of stats. The truth may be close to what mom2collegekids posted if we are talking about a LizzyM score of 77+:
*</p>
<p>I doubt many students from very low-level or unranked schools even have an MCAT 35. Keep in mind that those schools have a very low mid range ACT and typically do not have the merit money to attract many/any high stats kids. Many of these schools are not going to have students with even an ACT 28 on campus.</p>
<p>"Many of these schools are not going to have students with even an ACT 28 on campus. "</p>
<p>I doubt that you find good number of ACT 28- in a pool of Med. School applicants. I would imagine that most are ACT 30+. That is my guess, no supporting statistical data.<br>
MCAT of 35 is resoanable to achieve if one works hard preparing for MCAT even for those who are NOT super duper star test-takers.</p>
<p>the mean mcat score is a 25, with an SD of 6.4; thus, ~35% score <19. Now obviously, not all of those will apply, but plenty will.</p>
<p>Approx. 5% of total (82k) testers scored a 35+ last year. Just over 1,000 break 38 each year.</p>
<p>Not sure that working ‘hard’ will cut it for most. IMO, an ‘average’ IQ person could student 24/7 with tutors for life and never score that high.</p>
<p>^Interesting. I know that good number of people will get “mcat score of a 25” on their first PRACTICE test without ANY preparation. So, “the mean mcat score of a 25” tells me that about 50% of test takers take real MCAT without preparation. Not very smart idea at all.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that we can conclude that folks take the mcat without prep. As noted upthread, there are 2000+ colleges with just average students. In my state, the Cal States accept anyone with a C+ average who is breathing. (Earning B’s in College Prep classes ain’t too hard out here.) All of the 30+ Cal State campuses have plenty of premeds who will take the MCAT, even with prep. But most of them have no chance whatsoever of breaking 30. For example, Cal State LA, with 20k undergrads, has a 75% SAT score of 970/1600, and an ACT 75% of 20.</p>