Who Turned Down HPME For an Ivy League?

bluedevilmike
Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:06:54 +0000

I disagreed very strongly with the physician ellen’s post quoted. See:

1.) I’ve recently obtained Duke’s incoming freshmen numbers, approximately. As it turns out, we have more students applying to medical school each year than actually enter as premeds. So we actually have negative attrition, and our 85% turns out to be a pretty good estimate.

I should have realized this, being a negatively attrited student myself.

2.) “In the end no matter where you go for med school, the best residencies go to the best students in each class, and that can be done at BU, and GWU as easily as Wash U.”

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of the truth, but it is truthful. Obviously the top students at any school will get the medical schools/residencies they desire. As BRM is fond of saying – and I am fond of quoting – “Excelling is a panacea.” This is fine if you’re an excellent student, in the top few handful in your class. But mediocre students – such as myself – can often be substantially helped by the resources made available by top-flight programs.

For example, UC Berkeley – a high-caliber institution – sends about 13 students to top-ten medical schools each year in a class of 10,000. Duke sends 45 with a student body of 1600. If you’re going to be in the top 0.1% of your school, then you can go wherever you like and it’s not a problem. But what if you’re not that kind of student? What if you’re only a top-2% student? Marginal students can be very helped by the advising and curriculum that private schools like Duke can provide.

For the record, by the way, I wasn’t even in Duke’s top 12% – or my high school’s top 50% – and I certainly have no complaints.

3.) “the last thing I look at when I scan a candidates CV is the college and medical school from which they came.”

This is obviously true, and it continues to prove BRM’s point about excelling wherever you go being the most important component. But there is a certain degree of chain-reaction inertia. Can this be overcome by an excellent student? Of course. But, again, what about middling students? It’s true that the valedictorian of the University of Texas at Houston will probably do just as well as the valedictorian of UC San Francisco, but the kids in the middle of those two classes will have very different outcomes.

4.) “When my D told me about the premed students taking sleeping bags to the library”

I certainly never saw this happen at Duke. I won’t speak for other schools, but I suspect NCG and PSAS will be here shortly to tell you that they didn’t see it at Cornell or Penn either. My father certainly never saw it at MIT.

I don’t know what kind of school this physician’s daughter goes to. Certainly I don’t know anybody who slept at the library. Duke’s library isn’t even open past 2 AM.

6.) “I think you are all better served to just to buy a lottery ticket and pray.”

The process may seem very random to outsiders, but – trust me – it’s not. Or, at least, there are ways to minimize the problems associated with that randomness, which is why the advising you’ll find at Yale is crucial to the application process. (I’m sure NU’s advising is fine, too.) It is nothing like a lottery, and in fact the underlying system makes a great deal of sense once you accomodate some variation in outcomes.



These horror stories are not representative of the premedical process at Ivy League schools and should not be taken seriously.

And MS4M, I understand that you were not saying this maliciously, but words like “crazy” should be used judiciously and in context. Students are making the best choices they can, and making the decision they feel to be best for themselves does not deserve to be insulted.