Princeton vs Yale

underarchiever
Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:02:23 +0000

The GPA of Princeton in natural science is not good for a pre-med. Princeton pre-med students need a shelter in humanity and social science classes to raise their GPA. When that shelter is taken away, they may have to change their plans accordingly. Taking additional medical related classes, performing medical related services and doing medical research in the gap years may give one an edge over undergraduate students. When you have a 3.4 (quite marginal for medical schools) GPA, you may resort to these activities to level the application a little bit against higher GPA undergraduate applicants. To find whether deflation has an impact on pre-med application from Princeton, one can simply look into the ratio of undergraduate/alumni applicants. A lower ratio would indicate an adverse impact even if the overall applicant numbers are not changed. At this point, an average Princeton undergraduate is not competitive for medical school (at least for natural science major). You have to do many extra things to beat out the candidates from other institutions. Outstanding Princeton students, however, should do fine just as those students with similar grades from other IVY league schools, MIT, Caltech and Stanford.