<p>@Cue7: I have no way to judge who had the corner on better presenting pre-meds, Penn or the U of C. Everyone I knew at Chicago who seriously wanted to go to medical school, got in and seems to have done pretty well at it. And of course going to med school is not just about intellect – it is to some degree because you have to be able to think through the material. But it is also very much about discipline, drive, and purpose. </p>
<p>I was reacting to a fairly common meme here, which is that the U of C was awful in the 80s and 90s because it was not a terribly selective place in terms of applications submitted, students admitted, and yield. This of course overlooks the strengths of the education, even if the college was being run in a very, very flawed manner at the time. It also overlooks the extent to which other schools back then were also less selective. Columbia for instance, took about 25% of its applicants. And only Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford were much more “selective”, with admissions rates between 10% and 18% or so, if I remember correctly. </p>