UCSD vs MIT for premed

[sakky]

<p>

According to the English language, you’re right - a “committee” does not comprise one person. But in premed technospeak, a consolidated letter - no matter how many people are involved in the act of consolidation - is referred to as a “committee letter”. Duke also has only one person doing the job - but it’s definitely referred to as a “committee letter”.

</p>

<p>But that gets back to the subject at hand - whether private schools really can get better information about their premed students because of their ‘committees’. I would assert that, at least on the ‘committee’ part, this is probably untrue. It might be true, but I suspect not. At least for MIT, and almost certainly not for Harvard. Somehow I doubt that all of the advisors have to compile all their reports about how many consolidated letters they ended up writing. I believe that the schools obtain their self-reported data by just sending out surveys to the students and then reporting whatever they get back, and without cross-checking it with the advisors. </p>

<p>

I certainly don’t think I’m in the top quartile for MIT bio GPAs, if only for the fact that I’m not premed and hence never really cared about my grades all that much. I’ve always been under the impression that the premeds were getting much better grades than I was – I mean, somebody is getting all those A’s that I wasn’t getting sophomore year.

</p>

<p>Fair enough, however I think mollieb would agree with me that there are students in MIT who major in Bio and do quite poorly. While she said that somebody out there is getting all those A’s, on the other hand, somebody out there is getting all those C’s (or even worse than C’s). </p>

<p>My point is, nobody should come to MIT expecting to get good grades handed to them just because they’re majoring in Bio.</p>

[Pre-medwannabe]

<p>MIT is just waaaay better. It also has great Financial Aid plans so do not be afraid of the cost of going to school out of state.</p>

[bluedevilmike]

<p>

I have a feeling courses with lots of grad students will be easier.

</p>

<p>Let me know how it goes. I’m curious, too. Of course, drawing any conclusions based on one class will be statistically not a good idea… but it’s better than nothing. :)</p>

[nikeswooshguy]

<p>MIT has far better acceptance rates, though that may be largely due to the higher caliber of incoming students as compared to UCSD. SD has a mediocre placement rate that’s about the national average (50%) wheras MIT has a very high rate (75-85%), don’t quote me on that. You can find the stats for most schools by going to their premed advising site (usually located under the “Students” section)</p>