USC or UCLA for Pre-Med?

warblersrule
Tue, 25 Dec 2012 02:46:47 +0000

RML:

The Rhodes has criteria which seemed to favour and support private schools. In other words, some of the Rhodes’ criteria are averse, disinclined to public schools’ nature. That alone makes the whole process unfair, prejudicial, biased, and therefore, isn’t a good measure of assessing which schools are better in academics.

And yet UNC and UVA are public but do extremely well with 45+ winners each, matching colleges like Brown and Chicago. Each of them has extremely strong local competition, moreover - Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Davidson, and Wake for UNC, for example. In contrast, Stanford is Berkeley’s only real competition in NorCal/Hawaii/Nevada.

I’m not suggesting that UNC and UVA are better than Berkeley, mind you – simply that they have better advising for the Rhodes, and it shows. Advising is likewise important for med admissions.



RML:

Second, there what seemed to appear a division of schools based on undergrad prestige. Whether you like it or not, there’s what they call, HYPSM. Then there’s the top 30ish/40ish, then the top 100ish, more or less. Schools that fall below HYPSM but within the top 30ish/40ish do not really set apart from each other. For example, Cornell (ranked top 12) isn’t really significantly superior to CMU (ranked # 28).

Oh goodness! Make up your mind. Confusingly, you like making sweeping statements like the following:

Berkeley v.s. Emory

Emory is great too. But Berkeley is better, and way more prestigious as a whole

Which is it? Are they the same after HYPSM or not? Is it only Berkeley of the top 30 universities that is “way more prestigious” than other universities?