Vanderbilt vs state fullrider

fdgjfg
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 19:11:33 +0000

@crazym0m

You’ll hear this repeated a lot around the campuses of top schools, and it’s generally just a “grass is always greener” type thing. If there’s anything that premeds love to do, it’s complain. They do have a fair bit to complain about, but you should take it with a grain of salt. I’ll repost a response I had in another thread:

There is some argument to be made for going to state school so you can save money and keep a high GPA as a premed.

However, it really depends on your goals. If you’re just trying to be some sort of doctor, pay as little as possible, do it as fast as possible, and have the easiest classes as possible, then state school is your best option. If you are interested in MD/PhD or academic medicine/a career in research, the tier of your med school matters - and the high tier med schools tend to recruit from the high tier undergrads. This is due to general prestige factor, combined with the fact that top undergrads give you access to top medical centers, which gives you access to top tier labs and research training opportunities. There is evidence for both types of bias. In this AAMC report, adcoms at med schools ranked selection factors into categories of high, medium, and low importance. If you look at page 12, public medical schools list undergraduate selectivity under low importance. However, private medical schools list it under high importance. Privates also list research as of high importance.

https://aamc-orange.global.ssl.fastly.net/production/media/filer_public/7c/fb/7cfb5f43-f9cd-4a5a-bdad-36e735b5844a/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf#page=12

I’m also always of the opinion that life isn’t a utilitarian exercise where the goal is to die with maximum money. You can’t take any of it with you. If you have no preference, sure, why not save some coin. But if you really like the atmosphere at a competitive school, and you think will make your life more enjoyable (don’t just do it for the number on US news ranking), why not spend a little extra.

If your state school doesn’t have any financial advantages, I think the choice is easy.

Also on the weeding issue: I think that everyone who gets weeded out here deserved to be weeded. I can’t find the source but I remember seeing a statistic saying that every year, between 50-60% of the freshman class states medicine as their career goal. Most of these kids never actually wanted it, they just didn’t know what they did actually want to do, and being a doctor is a well known/respected career path. Then they see that they have to do a lot of work, they’re not really willing to that work, and they get Cs and drop. Cs and lower here are mostly because the person didn’t put maximum effort into studying, rather than not being intellectually gifted. N=1, but I didn’t shy away from taking hard classes, and I do feel like my classes here did a good job of preparing me for the MCAT (scored in the 99th percentile). Who knows, maybe I would have done the same at a state school though.