Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and did well. It does not prove any point.
But most importantly, we are talking specifically about pre-med route. GPA of 3.9 at some random school is better than 3.5 at an elite school. If you are premed student, you need to be top of the class - wherever you go. If you can be top student at Harvard, you may get a very slight advantage compared to a top student at No-Name school. But you are paying more for Harvard and taking a higher risk (since you are competing with the strongest students).
Completely agree with everything you said. Thatâs what we hear from majority of people in the field and we share those views based on our own experience as well. Being strategic (for premed!) suggests going to school where you can be top of the class. It also often saves money 
PS. I am not suggesting this strategy for students going in business, finance, etc.
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You are absolutely correct.
âSeriously, for a kid who âwants to be a doctorâ any one of the 158 or so medical schools in the USA will be great, and for vast majority of these, the âprestigeâ of an applicantâs undergraduate degree isnât important.â
This!
Prestige of UG may even backfire. Not only higher ranked schools can be more costly but competition in the classroom is likely to be more intense.
This video was shared on CC multiple times because the professor proves the point well:
Malcom Gladwell is an author, not a professor, and he doesnât prove the point well in the video. There are major flaws in both his logic and his summaries of the research. I expect this is intentional, as the point is to sell books. Book sales are higher, if the conclusion seems unexpected.
Looking up the paper Gladwell references, the SAT numbers are from the 1980s and are for âInstitution Aâ, which is not identified as Harvard in the paper. But the far more important issue is the percentages do not refer to STEM persistence. Instead they refer to the distribution of science majors at graduation across all students⊠not just those who intended to major in STEM. For example, suppose a particular college had the following SAT math distribution among science and non-science majors.
- Freshmen Year: Planned science major average 700 math, Non-science averages 600 math
- Graduates: Completed science majors average 720 math, Non-science averages 620 math
The kids who complete a science major do indeed have higher math SAT scores than non-science, but in this hypothetical example, itâs not because they kids with lower SAT scores are âdropping like fliesâ, like Gladwell claims. Itâs instead because the kids who intended to pursue science majors started out with higher math SAT scores than the kids who did not intend to pursue science majors. I donât find it surprising that this pattern exists at all colleges Gladwell lists â kids who pursue science majors have average higher math SAT scores than kids who do not pursue science majors.
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This is also about competition you place yourself in.
To return to the original topic, medical schools do not care much what college the applicant went to. So, if the student is confident in their career choice, it seems wise to pick safety school - to save money and potentially earn higher GPA. But obviously every situation and every student is different.
But reality indicates that this is a facile argument.
More than half of all âPre-Medâ Freshman do NOT become doctors. The reasons vary- students fall in love with something else, they apply widely but canât get admitted for various reasons, they get a C in Orgo and their advisor suggests majoring in something else, etc. But a kid who âwants to be a doctorâ needs to pick a college with both âI become a doctorâ and âI donât become a doctorâ in mind.
And Iâm not impressed with the âpick a college so there isnât intense competition in the classroomâ argument. Talk to a third year med student- anywhere- and ask them how their surgical rotation went. Ask a fourth year how that âI want to become a dermatologistâ plan is working out. Ask a first year resident in internal medicine what itâs like trying to impress your attending on 6 am rounds when youâve been up all night and havenât eaten anything besides granola bars for two days.
It is a brutally competitive field, and folks on CC dispensing the CC wisdom of â donât go somewhere prestigious because it will backfireâ are really ignoring reality.
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The idea is that student with 700 SAT is at the bottom of the class in college A, but the same student is at the top of the class in college B. It is more where a student stands relative to others.
Of course, this theory has some flaws. For example, we can question the validity of SAT when estimating studentsâ abilities, etc. But he is making a very strong point.
That is a very fair point. They say have plan B, C, D, etcâŠ
Competition in premed classes will always be intense regardless of college. It may just be a little more manageable for a student to survive in one college vs the other. Imagine two into Bio classes. College A is ultra competitive. All students took AP Bio and have extensive science background. Class will be catered to that crowd. College B is your average college where a few kids took AP Bio and those kids immediately have an advantage. Professor teaches the class knowing the student body.
A student who is going to be a competitive med school applicant is shooting him or herself in the foot but trying to cover core science classes with the least amount of effort required to get an A, whether the professor is teaching to the lowest common denominator, or whether the class is geared towards students who want to become HS science teachers, or students fulfilling the science requirements for OT or whatnot.
I know kids who tried the âIâm taking my premed classes at the local state U branch over the summer because the curve is brutal at my ârealâ universityâ trick and it failed miserably. The local state U branch (not a flagship) is a relatively chill place academically. Easy to get admitted, easy to graduate.
Except for math and science. The competition is intense. One neighborâs kid described it as âsitting in a classroom filled with first gen Americans who do nothing but study because their entire extended family is depending on themâ. Are there easier science classes there? Yes. Need to fulfill a distribution requirement and curious about chemistry? Thereâs a class for you. But it wonât tick the box on med school admissions.
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Why are you thinking that it wonât tick the box on med school admissions? There are students in medical schools who come from universities with wide range of selectivity level.
I know so many strong kids who went to prestigious college because they were accepted there and did not survive premed competition. If they went to a less competitive, it is possible that the outcome would be different. Again, medical students come from all colleges and they do not get much advantage for graduating from a cut-throat competition school.
Yes, there are students who would be top level at Harvard. If money is not an issue then why not? But it is safe to assume that 90% of Harvard students were in the top 10% in their high schools. However, in Harvard, 90% of them will not be in that top 10%âŠ.
I missed the point that you were talking about summer classes. Yes, that is not the best scenario. The student would be better off going to that school to begin with - instead of chasing prestige and going to college with the competition they cannot tolerate. I know a few students who did exactly that (went to top school and tried to take summer classes to avoid taking them in their home institution). They ended up leaving premed path.
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Presumably, @blossom was referring to courses like Chemistry or Physics for Poets, rather than the selectivity of the college.
Example: https://www.physics.columbia.edu/content/physics-poets-0
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That sounds like a fun class! 
I think she was referring to the same classes but in less competitive college.
I am well aware of what idea Gladwell is proposing. The problem is the research he lists doesnât support this. It instead shows that students who major in science have higher average math SAT scores than students who do not major in science, which is not a surprising finding.
Other peer reviewed studies Iâve seen suggest that a studentâs absolute grade can have a strong impact on persistence in major, but this is not the same as relative position in class. For example, I previously mentioned that Harvardâs senior survey showed that bottom 1/4 of the class started at 3.75 GPA. Even at 25th percentile, the overwhelming majority of grades are Aâs. Different colleges have different curves. In general, private colleges with a larger portion of high achieving students give a larger portion of A grades.
If that mostly A student with a bottom end of class 3.75 GPA at Harvard had instead attended a less selective college than Harvard, do you think theyâd have a better chance of pursuing a science major? Do you think theyâd probably have a higher GPA at a less selective college where only a small portion of class receives A grades? Having taken classes at both more and less selective colleges, I donât think itâs that simple.
Itâs not only ânot simpleâ, it ignores the fact that at a âless competitiveâ college, the gross statistics are highly misleading for the population we are talking about.
Your kidâs roommate at âless competitive collegeâ may have had 1000 SAT scores, but that kid is NOT going to be your kidâs lab partner in Orgo. That kid may be majoring in Sports Managementâ and be a serious student and a hard worker, but the averages at a large public U donât distinguish between the tail ends and the median.
But for the doubters- donât take my word for it. Talk to actual students you know. Ask them how easy it is to be top of the heap at their âless competitiveâ college if they are fulfilling the pre-med requirements.
I know kids who have gone to various branches of the City College system in NYC. Hunter, Queens, Baruch, CCNY. They are getting their $%^& handed to them. These are kids (or families) who assumed that a âpractically open admissionsâ college was going to insure that their kid was top dog. But the kid majoring in Criminal Justice who wants to become a parole officer in a system where having a BA means a higher salary, is NOT taking physics with your kid.
Avoiding âcompetitionâ is not likely a successful strategy for becoming a physician- at least the way the system works now. The entire process is a continuous weed-out factory.
You are making a lot of valid points. Yes, communications and physics majors in the same college will have a drastically different experience.
You cannot avoid the competition regardless you go.
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I spoke to a (unverified) T5 med school AO who said that some medical school do have an internal list of prestigious undergrads which get a GPA bump to acknowledge their rigor. I asked whether RPI and Brown were on the list, and they said that Brown was while RPI wasnât.
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That would be acknowledging an unknown. Thereâs no assurance a top school has higher rigor. And some, like Harvard, already bump their GPAs by giving away As like Santa Claus (spelling corrected - thanks @Momofthree24) gives gifts.
Perhaps a school, on their own, might. A school can do as it wants. I highly doubt this is a consistent thing.
Nonetheless, most people donât seek out Drs by med school attended but rather by do they take my insurance and can I get in. Iâm sure 99% of people have no idea where theyr Drs went to school - or what even the top schools are.
Are u Miami, UIC, Mizzou, U Tenn, U Tex, St Louis U, Wright State top 5?
Vanderbilt is a top level oncology school. Iâm up through the letter C - and thatâs some I came across.
Itâs a fascinating discussion and I suppose just like at the undergrad level, a school can do what it wants. And I donât know if all publish their criteria like U Mich does but they donât list the âwhereâ at all.
Who are the top 5 baseball players who ever played ? Or football? Or basketball ?
There will never be a âcorrectâ answer to all and there will never be a correct answer to this question that satisfies all.
Well, one thing we all can agree on: Santa Clause doesnât give gifts, and neither does Santa Claus. 
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This thread is not in the cafe and is about undergrad prestige in getting into med school.
Please stay on topic. Further off topic posts will be deleted without comment.
Note that a number of posts have been moved to a new thread. See link below!