<p>Justice~, is the med-school admissions rate at MIT “fantastic”? I guess it depends on how you define “fantastic”. See for yourself</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html</a></p>
<p>74% of all MIT students who apply to med-school get into at least one med-school (the other 26% get rejected from every med-school they apply to). Is 74% “fantastic”? It is certainly better than the national average. But then again, the student body at MIT is significantly better than the national student body at all colleges, so you would expect that the admit rate would be higher than the national average. What we should be doing is comparing the admit rate of MIT students to that of peer schools. For example, I would assert that the quality of the student bodies at MIT and, say, Princeton, are roughly equivalent. Yet the admit rate for Princeton grads into med-school is almost 90%. I don’t know about you, but Princeton’s admit rate seems to be far more of a fantastic rate to me than is MIT’s rate.</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf[/url]”>http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf</a></p>
<p>As to why MIT students don’t feel screwed, well, not to be overly controversial, but a lot of MIT students haven’t looked at the data. Many of them are laboring under the dubious belief that med-schools will compensate them for their tough coursework. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. Again, look at the data. The average MIT admitted student had a 3.7/4 (where MIT’s 5-point scale was translated into a 4-point scale). The average admitted Princeton student had something around a 3.5-3.6/4. So an MIT student actually needs HIGHER grades than the average Princeton student, a shocking fact when I think we all agree that MIT tends to grade harder than Princeton does. But that’s what the data says. Look at the data. So tell me again about how your friends at MIT don’t feel screwed? I would say that they should first look at the data and then compare it to the data of other elite schools and then figure out whether they still don’t think they’re getting screwed. </p>
<p>Finally, about the contention that the MCAT’s are based on advanced science. Oh really? Um, have you actually looked at the content of the MCAT’s. The content is basically English, general chem, inorganic chem, general bio, and general physics. All of this stuff can be learned from a premed sequence at any school. That’s all fairly basic stuff. Furthermore, anybody who’s applying to med-school must take the entire premed sequence anyway. So if you take a weak major, you still gotta take O-Chem, physics, etc. etc. in order to satisfy med-school admissions requirements. Hence, you still have plenty of opportunity to bone up on all the things you need for your MCAT.</p>
<p>Now, I never said that people should not major in what they like. My point is that your choice has consequences. If you like electrical engineering, then you should study electrical engineering. At the same time, you should understand that if you do study EE, you may be reducing your chances of getting admitted to medical school. That doesn’t mean that you should automatically choose not to do EE, but it does mean that you should know the possible consequences. Go into the process with your eyes wide open. You can choose to do whatever you want, but you cannot have the consequences of your choices be whatever you want.</p>
Completely agree!</p>