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<p>Top privates tend to have stronger concentrations of talent, which makes it harder to earn good grades. They also give out higher grades on average, which obviously makes it easier.</p>
<p>In practice, I crunched a few of the numbers in the law school context, and the first effect is much larger than the second.</p>
<p>silence_kit, This may depend on what your targeted grades would be. If you aim for straight As (instead of A- or B+) for most classes, it is not that easy because of a very high concentration of kids who strive for As. Even for a foreign language class (or math or physics etc.), there are many students who have a very solid preparation before they set their foot on the college. (reads: many kids may be immersed in that language since very young as their family has arranged this high quality language learning environment for their offsprings for many many years.) Some kids may read, write, and speak fluently even though they just take “mid-level” language classes. Even for some seemingly more relax classes like an introductory music class for non-music-majors, you may find a quite high percentage of classmates have been rigorously trained in music (read: parents have spent a lot of money on it since their kids were toddlers) for over 10 years before college.</p>
<p>I heard that some premed who happens to be very lopsided toward sciences almost dares not take any core education classes in the regular fall/spring session due to the fact that his talents are too focused on math/sciences. (He was a rank-1 student from a public high school and had tons of AP 5’s.) If he went to a public school, he could easily use his APs to avoid this kind of GPA hits because of these non-science classes. He did not have this choice at his college as the APs (as well as dual-enrolled college credits) are worth nothing at his college, as far as the core education requirements (including foreign language) are concerned.</p>
<p>*if you have a huge deficiency AND if you don’t come from a prestigious undergraduate…, you are going to have substantially more difficulty getting into prestigious medical schools *</p>
<p>I think if you have a HUGE deficiency, you’re probably going to have a hard time either way.</p>
<p>*I mentioned my niece in another thread. She went to a top LAC with major debt. She ended up with a 3.5 GPA and a degree in Math with premed prereqs… If she had gone to Purdue or Indiana U (neither are crappy schools), she likely would have had a 3.8+ GPA and no debt.</p>
<p>Med schools seem to know undergrad schools’ grading policies. Reed’s campus average GPA has been 3.1 for over 20 years, and still 71% of med school applicants get in. The rate jumps to 83% for Reed grads with a 3.1 science GPA or better and a 28 or better MCAT. <a href=“link%20to%20data”>url=http://web.reed.edu/ir/medschool.html</a> So harsh grading policies shouldn’t matter much.</p>
<p>Nice discussion. I would say that same GPA from a top school and a not-so-top school is probably treated differently if other stats are similar. Of course, one unknown and soft measure is the interview.</p>
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<p>Just one data point, but D1 who attended both a top 5 public and highly selective private would concur with this. Whatever degree of grade inflation she encountered did not make up for going from being in the top 5% of her cohort to being in the middle of the pack.</p>
<p><a href=“*I%20had%20a%20friend%20who%20got%20one%20A%20and%20the%20rest%20A+'s%20while%20founding%20an%20international%20nonprofit,%20playing%20volleyball,%20being%20generally%20awesome,%20and%20triple%20majoring%20in%20Electrical%20Engineering,%20Physics,%20and%20Economics.%20He%20actually%20worked%20pretty%20hard,%20but%20if%20he%20had%20picked%20a%20single%20major%20he%20wouldn’t%20have%20had%20to.”>quote</a>
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<p>^all hail.</p>
<p>When you guys say top 25, are there any state schools included? If so, which ones?</p>
<p>^^^ If I remember correctly the only state schools that are top 25 schools are UVA, UCLA, UC-Berkley.</p>
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The top 25 do include UCB – not sure about UCLA and UVa. But I don’t think anybody particularly cares about the top 25. Has anybody discussed that in this thread?</p>
<p>^I guess that leads to my question: Does the ‘top 25’ vary from school to school or is it straight off USNews? </p>
<p>I’m asking such an odd question because a school like Michigan is ranked 29 because 4 schools are tied for the 25th rank and a few others are tied at different spots (like 21, etc.). So, is the top 25 set in stone? In your eyes (and adcoms) would Michigan students get that ‘boost’?</p>
<p>From norcalguy on post #16:</p>
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<p>I thought the number thrown around in the past was top 10. But I’m not gonna argue with ncg ;)!</p>
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<p>Yeah BDM. People have discussed the top 25 getting ‘boosts’ if every premed aspect isn’t in line. As in, if one part is lacking the top 25 helps. </p>
<p>If the top 25 isn’t that threshold, what is BDM?</p>
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<p>Oh I definitely will. I think there’s probably 8 national unversities and three LACs that get extra consideration. Extending things to the top 25 (Emory, Berkeley, etc.) is definitely way too far.</p>
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<p>Just curious, but what they and what’s the crossover with the top 4 USNWR’s CLA’s of Williams Amherst Swarthmore and Middlebury?</p>
<p>Why is USNWR referenced? Schools tell us repeatedly to ignore the magazine editors’ opinions, that they do.</p>
<p>So…from the above posts…are we to infer that maybe the top 10 national schools plus the top 3 LACs are impressive to med schools. </p>
<p>But, then after those 13 schools, the rest fall under the headings of “known/satisfactory” and “unknown/questionable” schools?</p>
<p>I’ve seen students get into schools “above their GPAs” from Harvard, Yale, Duke, and Penn. I assume the effect also applies to Princeton. Maybe a couple of others, but I don’t really know which. (Stanford?) The statistics definitely show that Emory, Berkeley, and MIT don’t get much of a boost at all – MIT actually seems to receive a PENALTY relative to the national average.</p>
<p>I’ve also seen it from Swat, Amherst, and Williams. Not sure about Middlebury.</p>
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<p>You can see that it’s not actually USN based. MIT is more prestigious and higher ranked than Duke, for example.</p>
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<p>Re #56: Yeah, I think broadly speaking you’ve got three tiers of schools. Tier 1 probably has like 10 schools in it. Tier 2 includes most of what you think of when you picture a “college.” Tier 3 is things like online colleges, trade schools, etc.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think there’s anything special about Duke or Penn. I think Cornell or Northwestern or Notre Dame are treated exactly the same as Duke or Penn when it comes to med school admissions. Thus, I don’t agree that extra-consideration is only given to 8 schools. Emory has a low acceptance rate not because med schools disrespect it but because, for some reason, its students perform poorly on the MCAT. And I still think people way underestimate the amount of grade inflation that goes on at MIT. After the freshman year, MIT gives out 40%+ A’s just like the rest of the grade-inflated privates. The fact med schools don’t treat MIT as a grade-deflated school is because it’s not a grade-deflated school. There’s no “disrespect” given towards MIT. It’s respected exactly as it should.</p>
<p>The average stats of a MIT applicant getting into med school is a 3.7 GPA and a 35 MCAT. Is it because med school require MIT applicants to get a 3.7 GPA and a 35 MCAT before they’re accepting them? No. It’s because MIT applicants in general are applying with high GPA’s and high MCATs. A poster who was an alumnus of MIT showed me concrete data that MIT does indeed pass out a very high number of A’s in its classes. In other words, biology at MIT is not any harder than biology at Harvard. The only difference, and the reason MIT is perceived as harder, is that MIT has a higher proportion of engineers. But, when you control for major, then MIT is not any harder than any other top school.</p>
<p>What does it mean (besides apples and oranges) when the average stats of an MIT grad getting into med school are 3.7 GPA and 35 MCAT, and 83% of Reed grads with 3.1 or better GPA and 28 or better MCAT get in? Ok, ignore GPA; MIT inflates, Reed does not. Do MIT grads need a higher MCAT to get in? I know we can’t tell for sure with these few data.</p>