I think it would be interesting to run this through a stats program (although I am not volunteering!).
My guess is it would say that in fact GPA and MCAT were positively correlated with admissions percentage at a pretty high level, but then there is a residual component not being explained by GPA and MCAT.
The next question is then what would fill in that residual component. Again I think the stats analysis would say whatever it was was clearly correlated with Yale v National. But there are lots of plausible explanations for that, including the other things med schools have confirmed they consider besides GPA and MCAT.
Basically, without being willing to do the real work myself, my eyeball stats program suggests this data is not inconsistent with the idea that GPA and MCAT are the primary factors, but then a bunch of other things are secondary factors. And while many of those secondary factors may correlate with school name, that is not the same thing as a causal relationship.
Consideration? Sure. But I doubt itās significant. A successful student at Yale that got into med school probably would still get into med school from Rutgers.
I also note one of the things that is very hard to study is what would happen to GPA if you moved an individual applicant from one college to another. Or for that matter to MCAT, although I think most people assume that is more insulated. But we know different colleges have different grading norms, different curriculum structures, different student pools, and so on.
I definitely do NOT think you can simply assume that a person who gets a 3.5 at Yale would do better at Rutgers. On the other hand, I also do not think you can assume a person who gets a 3.8 at Rutgers would do as well at Yale. You just donāt know, not to my knowledge at least.
So the advice I have heard which I feel makes sense is to make sure to choose a college where you are confident you are competitively qualified and have a good shot of doing well in difficult classes. Maybe you are confident about Yale, and great if so. Maybe you would be more confident at Rutgers, in which case I for one think it would be fine to consider that.
So interpret as you see fit, but for sure whatever this means to you, make sure you are going in confident you will do well in these difficult classes. Because this data definitely does NOT imply GPA does not matter.
Having a sample size of 1 makes it difficult to do a true apples to apples comparison, particularly since there are many contributing factors to med school admission besides just stats, including out of classroom activities, demographics/residency, interviews, which med schools (particularly MD vs DO), or simply how many schools the student applies to and how resilient they are upon continuing if rejected. There can also be different degrees of application control by undergraduate school. For example, some colleges may dissuade students from applying who they believe do not have a high chance of being admitted for reasons besides just stats. There can also be differences in which applicants are included in the stats the school chooses to publish and which applicants are excluded, as well as time interval (including repeat applicants).
The OP mentioned the following schools ā UAB, UGA, Emory, Vanderbilt, and WashU. Some example stats published by these schools are below. Emory and Vanderbilt are both private schools that have roughly similar USNWR ranking and selectivity, so why do they have such a large difference in published admit rate of their med school applicants? I expect that there are many other schools that show such variation in the undergrad collegeās published stats, rather than simply being a function of more undergrad prestige = more preferred by med school admissions, so higher admit rate.
Compliance with my earlier post is not optional. This is not the cafe. The OP asked a question about their situation, and thatās the topic for this thread. Iām not deleting OT posts above my note, by I am deleting responses to those OT posts.