Does your university's prestige matter?

[FFH]

I read them all and I can't say that any of them was more effective since they were all variations on the same theme.
It isn't the content that has made them valueless, it's their ubiquity.

Thank you for offering that perspective. In general, what makes an applicant stand out positively?

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[icosahedran]

nope

 

[gyngyn]

I can imagine the volume can be pretty overwhelming to the adcom. That being said, from an applicant standpoint I feel like doing something is still better than doing nothing, even if the net benefit is minimal. Knowing how quickly some people can be screened, I think getting that LOI in the door, at least for the marginal candidate, can turn a 'meh' into an 'ok maybe.'

I can't prove that there isn't a school someplace where this is the case. I don't think it's in CA, though...

 

[gyngyn]

Thank you for offering that perspective. In general, what makes an applicant stand out positively?

Someone who, with humility and grace, has distinguished himself in his chosen field of study (and the sciences) and has validated evidence of the personal qualities we expect in a physician.

 

[WUPM]

No. Everything you said is wrong.

Well here's the logic: Take a group of 98-99th percentilers, and give them a course series difficult enough that over half of them drop out, like you see at Hopkins etc.

Now you look at University of State X where the student body sits more like 70th percentile. Statistically speaking, odds are pretty good that even people making A's there (who are probably 90th ish?) would fall well below the "top half of the top 2%" standard that is set by elite university course series. Granted there can be outliers and geniuses who go to state schools because its better financially.

This gets backed up by the MCAT. The average undergrad MCAT at ivy's (when it occasionally gets released) is usually in the 32-33 range, multiple std dev.s above national averages.

So yeah, the people dropping out of elite premed tracks because they get C's, are probably still in the national top decile and would get A's at their local state schools; reversed, many people clearing the A cutoff at state schools would not stand a chance if they were suddenly surrounded by vastly tougher competition. This actually hurts a lot of people at the top schools, who could have gone to med school if they hadn't attended top colleges.

 

[Aerus]

Well here's the logic: Take a group of 98-99th percentilers, and give them a course series difficult enough that over half of them drop out, like you see at Hopkins etc.

Now you look at University of State X where the student body sits more like 70th percentile. Statistically speaking, odds are pretty good that even people making A's there (who are probably 90th ish?) would fall well below the "top half of the top 2%" standard that is set by elite university course series. Granted there can be outliers and geniuses who go to state schools because its better financially.

This gets backed up by the MCAT. The average undergrad MCAT at ivy's (when it occasionally gets released) is usually in the 32-33 range, multiple std dev.s above national averages.

So yeah, the people dropping out of elite premed tracks because they get C's, are probably still in the national top decile and would get A's at their local state schools; reversed, many people clearing the A cutoff at state schools would not stand a chance if they were suddenly surrounded by vastly tougher competition. This actually hurts a lot of people at the top schools, who could have gone to med school if they hadn't attended top colleges.

You are assuming that a high school GPA and the SAT actually measures how well they do in college courses. There is a correlation, but that doesn't mean much. You will be surprised how many 99th percentilers struggle in state schools. Yes, in general, state universities will be easier, but to say that the top students at state schools will be at the bottom at top schools is just arrogant and presumptuous.

 

[Aerus]

Well considering that these are the metrics that every undergrad admissions office in the nation uses to determine if an applicant will do well at their school, I should hope that there is a significant correlation.

And there is. At my undergrad, professors from the statistics and mathematics department regularly consulted with the undergrad admissions office on this matter. One of my math professors once spent a few minutes of class showing us an analysis he did on the correlation between SAT math scores and college math grades. The results were strong enough that the department decided to revise the way it did math placement for freshmen.

Trying to predict the college performance of an individual using their SAT score and high school GPA is probably a futile effort, but when you are looking at the average performance of hundreds of students, SAT scores and high school GPAs become very good predictors.

This is all off-topic though. This thread isn't about whether highly ranked private schools are more difficult than state schools; it is about whether going to a highly ranked school helps you in med school admissions. The answer is yes, but only slightly.

I don't disagree. I was attacking mostly his claim that people who are the top of their state school will most likely be at the bottom of top schools. That is an individual analysis of SAT/GPA and is not a valid claim. Because a correlation exists, highly ranked schools are, without a doubt, on average more difficult than state schools, but people blow up the difference in difficulty.

 

[FFH]

I don't disagree. I was attacking mostly his claim that people who are the top of their state school will most likely be at the bottom of top schools. That is an individual analysis of SAT/GPA and is not a valid claim. Because a correlation exists, highly ranked schools are, without a doubt, on average more difficult than state schools, but people blow up the difference in difficulty.

On a related but different topic: study shows, in general, people's income are determined by the kind of schools they would be able to go, not by the ones they actually went. So let's say someone who would have gone to an Ivy chose to go to state schools for various reason, he/she would have made the same amount of money in his/her life time. The only benefit that the top schools seem to confer in terms of life time income was for those people who come from disadvantaged social economical background. The reason I mention this is just to say that for a lot of people, going to the much cheaper state schools doesn't really hurt their chance of future success and I know many who actually do choose their home schools over the fancy ones. Which means that the top students at state schools are not necessarily there because they couldn't go to better schools.

 

[Ace-Co-A]

Well here's the logic: Take a group of 98-99th percentilers, and give them a course series difficult enough that over half of them drop out, like you see at Hopkins etc.

Are you claiming that half of the undergraduates at Hopkins and similar schools drop out? Oh really?

Now you look at University of State X where the student body sits more like 70th percentile. Statistically speaking, odds are pretty good that even people making A's there (who are probably 90th ish?) would fall well below the "top half of the top 2%" standard that is set by elite university course series.

I'm not sure what the bolded portion of your post means. I think you're speculating here.

This gets backed up by the MCAT. The average undergrad MCAT at ivy's (when it occasionally gets released) is usually in the 32-33 range, multiple std dev.s above national averages.

Do you mean for med school applicants or matriculants from Ivy league schools?

I'm always trying to track down data on the subject, and - although a few outliers (including MIT, which makes such data available on their website) exist - I'm usually frustrated by the lack of available data.

I hope my post doesn't come across as being overly critical. I am interested in this subject [i.e., the comparison between prestigious schools (Ivy's & other top Privates) and state & low-ranked schools], and I'm always trying to learn more about it. On the one hand, generalizations like those you make in your post seem fair (i.e., that students from Top Schools should be given an advantage in med school admissions because their competition is so much more strong). On the other, the question might be asked: how different can the environment really be at high-ranked, prestigious schools and low-ranked schools? Should we even make distinctions based on pre-conceived notions? Indeed, many admissions committee members flat out deny that students from Top Schools have any sort of advantage. At the end of the day, all that matters is what AdComms think! -- and there does seem to be excellent representation of Ivy League and Top Private School students in medical school (whether this is self-selection or a bias in the application process in favor of these students is impossible to know).

Thanks!

 

[Ace-Co-A]

I'm pretty sure he meant that 50% of people who go in premed eventually change to a different course of study. That doesn't sound too high to me. In fact, I'd assume that the premed "dropout" rate is much higher at state schools since a lot of science courses curve to a C at state schools.

Aha! If that's what he meant then I'm less surprised! In fact, if that's what he meant, it wouldn't surprise me if it was about 50% of pre-meds who 'dropped out' from Hopkins (or Chicago, WashU, etc.). I saw someone (@moop ) state that something like 92% of Ivy grads who apply do get into med school. That is shockingly high success rate, but if their average MCAT and GPA markers are as high as reported, then it is well deserved.

Yea, the percentage of pre-meds that dropped their med school interests throughout college at my state school was enormous. I think only like 15 got in to med school my year, out of - perhaps, more than 600 or so that stated as 'pre-meds' there.

 

[Straw Hat]

Here's my +1. I realize this is pre allo but hey it might hold true for some other school as well. As per my friend who interviewed and was accepted to pcom. They were really impressed with his gpa from Emory while playing sports there. He said they considered his 3.2-3.3 average to be equal to straight A's at UGA or another Georgia state school. Which is funny because one of the chem professors at Emory who also teaches at a nearby CC said Emory and all the state schools in GA follow the same template and have basically the same exams. He said tons of UGA students would try to take chem at his CC thinking it'd be easier only to find out it was exactly the same as taking it at UGA/Emory/etc. In general though, I don't think schools care too much. Good grades and MCAT falls higher on the list than undergrad imo.

 

[Aerus]

On a related but different topic: study shows, in general, people's income are determined by the kind of schools they would be able to go, not by the ones they actually went. So let's say someone who would have gone to an Ivy chose to go to state schools for various reason, he/she would have made the same amount of money in his/her life time. The only benefit that the top schools seem to confer in terms of life time income was for those people who come from disadvantaged social economical background. The reason I mention this is just to say that for a lot of people, going to the much cheaper state schools doesn't really hurt their chance of future success and I know many who actually do choose their home schools over the fancy ones. Which means that the top students at state schools are not necessarily there because they couldn't go to better schools.

Although I can't comment on the study you presented, I hope that to be the case, since that's similar to what happened to me.

 

[WUPM]

Are you claiming that half of the undergraduates at Hopkins and similar schools drop out? Oh really?



I'm not sure what the bolded portion of your post means. I think you're speculating here.



Do you mean for med school applicants or matriculants from Ivy league schools?

I'm always trying to track down data on the subject, and - although a few outliers (including MIT, which makes such data available on their website) exist - I'm usually frustrated by the lack of available data.

I hope my post doesn't come across as being overly critical. I am interested in this subject [i.e., the comparison between prestigious schools (Ivy's & other top Privates) and state & low-ranked schools], and I'm always trying to learn more about it. On the one hand, generalizations like those you make in your post seem fair (i.e., that students from Top Schools should be given an advantage in med school admissions because their competition is so much more strong). On the other, the question might be asked: how different can the environment really be at high-ranked, prestigious schools and low-ranked schools? Should we even make distinctions based on pre-conceived notions? Indeed, many admissions committee members flat out deny that students from Top Schools have any sort of advantage. At the end of the day, all that matters is what AdComms think! -- and there does seem to be excellent representation of Ivy League and Top Private School students in medical school (whether this is self-selection or a bias in the application process in favor of these students is impossible to know).

Thanks!

1) Yeah I was referring to the number of people who come in pre-med and end up not applying to medical schools.

2) I'm saying that if you take the top fifth of a STEM course from an average public university, the majority of them would be below the 98th-ish percentile that is usually needed to clear "premed" course at top schools like I mentioned in my first point. For example, someone who is 90th percentile nationwide would easily be a top student at many state schools, but would be near the bottom of their classes at an ivy, where half the people at 98th+ can't even hack it. It's speculation, but based on reasonable assumptions. There will certainly be outliers so I'd never assume of an individual applicant but if you look at a large body of "top at my state school" and compare to "had to drop from Hopkins" the latter would likely still be more capable as a whole.

3) I meant of the undergrads. It's been posted before and then taken down, a lot of schools keep internal records but don't want to publish them, just like with GPA distributions. It's very hard to learn of outside of one's own school.

4) I think it is possible for adcoms to know there's a large gap in ability but not care all that much. A top student from any school will likely make a great doctor, and they only have to report MCATs and GPAs, not what schools those GPAs were earned at. If I were reviewing two apps, identical in every way except one was high GPA from state and another slightly lower GPA from ivy, I'd go with the first not because I thought they were actually more capable, but because my school could then publish more impressive numbers.

I guess I'd sum it up as this: A lot of 98th+ percentilers are forced to drop from top school premed tracks. Chances are, if you plucked all the 90th percentilers killing it at state schools, and had them battle the same competition that beat the 98thers, it would be unexpected for them to survive. Viewed in reverse, it is incredibly unfair and ridiculous that half the people at top schools are made to drop, since compared to the rest of the nation they would have come out on top.

 

[Lamel]

You are conflating high school performance with college performance. I touched on this in my earlier post about SAT scores. When an Ivy league college fills their incoming class with high school 98th percentilers, they are pretty confident that most of that class will become college 98th percentilers. But they also expect that some of their high school 98th percentilers will be outliers who translate to college 40th percentilers. These college 40th percentilers probably wouldn't do very well at a state school that fills its class with high school 70th percentilers.

How will MOST of the class be at the 98th percentile?

And at the bold, what if the 40th percentile at the prestigious school is the 70th percentile at the state school?

I really don't even care about these arguments, but I am just trying to understand what you are saying. Your same logic could apply to the state school; they expect good performance, but people will do bad as well.

The fact of the matter is that adcoms are the only ones with in-depth GPA/MCAT data from each school, so they are in a much better position to decide if undergrad competition needs to be adjusted for. All we do in these threads is discuss conjecture, but without the data we can get nowhere.

 

[Lamel]

Absolutely not. Especially if you are coming from a tiny no-name school which has only ever sent two or thee applications to their med school.

They certainly have more information than we do.

 

[shouldvestudied]

Adding my own Ivy/State School experience to this:

In 2009 I graduated (barely) with a 2.6 in Molecular Biology from Princeton. Flash forward to May of this year and I just finished up a second bachelors in Physics at my state university in New England with a 4.0. The difference in difficulty between Princeton and my state school was immense. While some of my improved performance can be attributed to being properly medicated for hypothyroidism, which I wasn't while I was at Princeton (TSH at 80), I still found the state school classes to be much easier than the ones I took at Princeton.

 

[MommaMD]

I think some of the differences in UG are mostly for kids who either go straight to Med School or only take a single gap year before applying. I know, for example, that many students get "counseled" out of pre-med track by the science dept to keep their own numbers of admission high (i.e., 95% of our applicants to med school get accepted). Whereas others don't pull together committee letters or even offer an opinion for their graduates - OR consider those who are going back to Med School after armed services or several years of working etc who basically have issues with two science prof reqs!

The hope is that adcoms look at the whole of your application, if your numbers gel well enough, to determine not only where you attended school and how well you did, but how you spent your time and whether you took advantage of opportunities or squandered them. At a big state school, is it harder to get work as anything other than a grunt in a lab setting? At a small school, are they doing the kind of research or have the kind of resources that impress? Are there considerations made for either or both?

Mostly, I think it's like beating a dead horse for the most part - and goes all the way back to college admissions and the kind of high school attended. It's impossible to truly say what kind of effect - negative or positive - these things have because decisions aren't made in a vacuum with this being the only consideration. But I obviously wouldn't suggest saying "So, I went to Podunk U because I knew I wouldn't have to work as hard as I would have at Swarthmore, where I was also accepted."

 

[Lamel]

Not really. For big premed schools like Cornell, Wash U, Hopkins, and Berkeley, admissions offices will have a lot of data. But if you're from Mississippi State University and you're applying to Northwestern for med school, Northwestern may only have received five applications from Mississippi State in the past ten years. That isn't enough for them to have a feel for what the grade distribution is like. All they can use to estimate the rigor of your school is your MCAT score and your committee letter (if you have one).

Okay, that's fine, but we don't even have the MCAT info unless the undergrad releases it, and we certainly don't have the information from the committee letter, so you're not really disagreeing with what I am saying. Adcoms are still more qualified to assess this, and your percentiles argument (though maybe logically sound) is still conjecture.


For the record, I believe undergraduate prestige does matter, but I think people take the wrong approach towards it. It's not about comparing a 3.7 from X to a 4.0 from Y, it is about taking the GPA in the context of the entire application.

 

[WUPM]

@Euxox I think you are way off on your logic. I've always agreed that there are freak outliers in both directions (some National Merit go to state schools bcus its free, and some people get into Ivy's that end up being terrible students out of their own poor judgement rather than competition). It gets harder to argue when you start talking about large chunks of people across representative groups of schools.

But here's an example:

University of Hawaii (Manoa) is right in the middle of the USNAWR's (admittedly flawed) rankings. Their ACT 25/75th is a 21-26. So I'll be really generous and say that a big sample of top students there would be a full deviation above their school's 75th percentile, giving them ACT scores of about 30 and placing them at about 96th percentile in their school (it's more likely the people making STEM A's there average around 28).

Compare to WUSTL, a USNAWR next-best-10 known for premeds where the 25/75th is 32-34. Only the top third or so make it through the premed track - and of the two thirds that drop, the vast majority do so after giving their all and getting C's, not due to slacking or other non-competitive reasons.

By the numbers, the odds are hugely stacked against the Top UH'ers (avg. 28ers) making it through the WUSTL curriculum (which cuts over half of avg. 33ers). Granted there will likely be a couple outliers at both schools (People with 35s at WUSTL who end up dropping and people with 28s at UH that could make it, etc) but as a group there is no way they'd survive at the same rates as many imply while defending less prestigious schools.

Again I have nothing against either set of schools, average state or big name private. I think that either school's best and brightest would make for wonderful doctors.

My major concern is just that taking only the best and brightest from the full range of schools makes no sense. A system where only the top third at Ivy and at State both go to medical schools makes less statistical sense than sending three quarters of the former and one tenth of the latter. It's been said many times before: if you really want to be a doctor, ideally go to a top school and get a 4.0. If you are realistic and want to be a doctor, it's much safer to go somewhere that you know you'll stand at the top of the class, than to put yourself among geniuses and pray you come out above average.

If my younger sibling had a 30 ACT and was choosing between local (very decent) state school or somewhere like Hopkins, and they wanted the best shot at a career in medicine, by the numbers they should go state.

This is also seen in the flat GPAs and very different MCATs across schools. Stanford (MCAT 33-41) and Loma Linda (25 - 36) both have the same GPA range 3.5-4.0. With my view of things this makes sense: Stanford is taking mostly top-third students from top-tier universities, who bring along top percentile test scores, while Loma Linda is taking a lot of top-third students from average universities, who bring along much more average test scores. Explaining that score disparity despite equal GPAs (which is found across most near top - near bottom comparisons) becomes extremely difficult if you don't invoke massive differences in capability between the undergrad institutions.

 

[WUPM]

I don't think any state school gets one third of their students accepted to med school. Even at a flagship state school, probably only the top 10% get accepted. Meanwhile, at a school like MIT, the top 50% stand a good shot at getting into med school (based off the average GPA and MCAT for MIT). I doubt that people from the bottom 50% at MIT would be in the top 10% at a flagship state school. You may disagree, but based on my personal experience studying at a top 20 university, a sizable chunk of students (those in the bottom 60 - 70%) either weren't willing to put in the effort to do well, didn't know how to study for college exams, or didn't have good time management skills. These students probably would have done slightly better at a state school, but certainly not well enough to land in the top 10%.

IMO, prestige and difficulty largely cancel out. For all those high school seniors wondering if they should go to Harvard or U of State, I don't think it matters from a medical school admissions perspective.

Not a third of their students, the top third of the people trying to be premed. For most curved courses, being top third gets you an A-. People with 3.7 (A-) sGPA averages get into medical schools at very high rates, out of both state schools and top private.

People at the 25th percentile at MIT would be top 10% at an average state school, by the numbers. The fact that you could even get in to MIT (that is, even be 10th percentile) indicates you are way, way, way above typical state school range. I don't really have an opinion about it, it is a fact. The bottom end of their spectrum is still a deviation and a half above most state schools. Any stats class will teach you there is next to no overlap.

Odd, I've had the exact opposite experience. A lot of people dodge Ochem here because of its difficulty, and take it at other schools for the easy A. My room mate never scored below 95% for the summer Ochem 1 semester he took at Emory, and when he got back here for the second half he earned around C+/B-. Similarly, people taking it at University of Washington, UCSD, and UCDavis have told me it's the easiest STEM class experience they've had, despite everyone else taking it with them from that school thinking it was brutal.

But don't take my word for it. Look around online for opinions from people who transferred out of ivy to state, took summer classes at state, etc. Universally, competing in a curved course against 70th percentilers will be easier than against 99th.

 

[Ace-Co-A]

1) Yeah I was referring to the number of people who come in pre-med and end up not applying to medical schools.

I see. Sorry for misinterpreting what you said.

2) I'm saying that if you take the top fifth of a STEM course from an average public university, the majority of them would be below the 98th-ish percentile that is usually needed to clear "premed" course at top schools like I mentioned in my first point. For example, someone who is 90th percentile nationwide would easily be a top student at many state schools, but would be near the bottom of their classes at an ivy, where half the people at 98th+ can't even hack it. It's speculation, but based on reasonable assumptions. There will certainly be outliers so I'd never assume of an individual applicant but if you look at a large body of "top at my state school" and compare to "had to drop from Hopkins" the latter would likely still be more capable as a whole.

So, I'll try to elaborate on why your speculation is unsatisfying. Part of this, by the way, @Euxox has already discussed. Your principal 'reasonable assumption' is that dominating high school performance (98th percentile what, by the way? SAT scores? -- surely you're not referring to GPA here) correlates with excellent performance in college. On its face, this is not such an unreasonable thing to say: smart and highly motivated students from high school should go on to succeed in college. Maybe. As far as I know, the correlation between college success and (I'm presuming that you're using SAT scores here) SAT score is pretty modest. Why shouldn't we expect some (even many) students to not make the cut coming from Hopkins/WashU/Chicago/etc. while some from lower-ranked schools do? The connection between high school success and college success, I argue, is not perfect. That is, some good high schools (even many) are not very good college students. Some good high school students are great college students. Some above average high school students turn out to be very good college students. Why not? What is your reason for assuming that a large majority of the students who don't make the cut from Hopkins/WashU/Chicago/Brown/etc. would make the cut from a state school? If it is only based on SAT/ACT/etc. performance, then I would be very much obliged if you could make this argument a little more clearly (as opposed to just saying 98th percentile students vs. 70th percentile students - it's obvious).

By the way, I'm curious as to why you haven't mentioned the MCAT as an equalizer between applicants. This seems to me to be a straightforward (if flawed) way to distinguish between the large block of current state school students (you claim) wouldn't hack it at more prestigious schools and the students who are below average at these prestigious schools who would excel in a state school environment.

3) I meant of the undergrads. It's been posted before and then taken down, a lot of schools keep internal records but don't want to publish them, just like with GPA distributions. It's very hard to learn of outside of one's own school.

I see. This data has proven to be very elusive. I don't fault you for not having it on hand.

4) I think it is possible for adcoms to know there's a large gap in ability but not care all that much. A top student from any school will likely make a great doctor, and they only have to report MCATs and GPAs, not what schools those GPAs were earned at. If I were reviewing two apps, identical in every way except one was high GPA from state and another slightly lower GPA from ivy, I'd go with the first not because I thought they were actually more capable, but because my school could then publish more impressive numbers.

The bolded seems highly unlikely to me. Frankly, in this block of text, you've lost me a bit. You're claiming that AdComms don't care about the quality of the students they're taking? I'd be shocked if this wasn't the foremost concern of AdComm members -- and if they don't spend quite a bit of time thinking about the differences in academic environments of different students. Let's talk about medical schools applicants: I want no part of the guy who guys to random state school or small LAC and gets a 3.9 but puts up a 24 MCAT. On the other hand, the chick who goes to rigorous school (or - as we haven't yet discussed - takes up a very challenging major at an 'easy' school) and gets a 3.5 and puts up a 33 is a much more attractive candidate. Of course, things are rarely this simple, but it does seem to me that we can have a different - and more interesting - conversation if we talk about the MCAT as the equalizer between applicants.

I guess I'd sum it up as this: A lot of 98th+ percentilers are forced to drop from top school premed tracks. Chances are, if you plucked all the 90th percentilers killing it at state schools, and had them battle the same competition that beat the 98thers, it would be unexpected for them to survive. Viewed in reverse, it is incredibly unfair and ridiculous that half the people at top schools are made to drop, since compared to the rest of the nation they would have come out on top.

I'll conclude by sighing in recognizing that you have said 'all' 90th percentilers would fail at a bigger school. Surely you overstate your case here? I once again ask you what role the MCAT score plays in such discussions.

The final sentence in bold is an especially curious one. You think that all - or even many - of the students from Top schools who can't hack it would be top students at lower schools? I find this hard to believe, but perhaps this reflects my own prejudice.

People at the 25th percentile at MIT would be top 10% at an average state school, by the numbers. The fact that you could even get in to MIT (that is, even be 10th percentile) indicates you are way, way, way above typical state school range. I don't really have an opinion about it, it is a fact. The bottom end of their spectrum is still a deviation and a half above most state schools. Any stats class will teach you there is next to no overlap.

The first phrase in bold is hyperbole. I still don't know that below-average students at MIT/Princeton/Chicago/etc. would succeed in a college setting elsewhere.

In the second instance of bolded text, it is only a fact in as much as we can use SAT scores to compare students' success in college. I await your comment on this.

Hope all readers are having a pleasant evening.

Edit: spelling, etc.

 

[WUPM]

I am definitely referring to standardized test scores, I don't think there is any way to talk about GPA's in terms of comparing percentiles across schools. That opens up a whole new debate about whether students are helped or hindered by inflation.

I agree with you that there is not a perfect correlation between standardized test scores and collegiate performance, or even between std. scores and intelligence, for individuals. However, the fact that std. scores are (along with GPA) used as a primary metric for both undergraduate and graduate school admissions indicates that they can be used as I have been using them, to compare student body capabilities in broad strokes. I'd never claim that X standard score for an individual predicts Y performance well. I would, however, claim that even the lower quartile in a body of top 2% Xers would outperform the upper end of a body centered significantly lower (say 1.5 deviations like my example), with few outliers. This is pretty tough to contradict - its two normal distributions with very little overlap. To really counter this point and argue that test scores fail to represent academic ability (across bodies of students rather than individuals) would imply that colleges should toss test scores out the window next application cycle, because accepting mostly people with 31-35 ACT will not get them a significantly more capable student body than 22-26.

I think adcoms do care about the quality of their students, but also care a lot about the numbers they publish. Given two very high quality students, I think numbers can help one win out over the other, and that in some cases those numbers are not great reflections of student ability. For example, a 3.9 from University of Hawaii would probably be a lot more attractive than a 3.2 from MIT, but this is not very fair to the latter because of how much more difficult their competition was. Again, I am making the same assumptions that colleges and medical schools do, that test scores are a good enough metric to describe ability.

The reason I don't bring up the MCAT is that in my original post earlier up the thread I was talking about two applicants with similar MCATs and differing GPAs (middling at great school, or top at average), which can arise in individual cases. So I have been trying to limit my discussion to what can be inferred based only on GPA and school. I think that most of the time, the MCAT scores speak for themselves regarding all this - the MCAT scores across the student body at top schools will be much higher than at midlevel state schools. But that data is elusive indeed.

I really hope I'm wrong about all this. The way I see things now, it's broken. But maybe I'm wrong, test scores are meaningless and do not describe ability level necessary to survive the premed weedout, etc. It just seems that there is no error in the statements: 1) The bottom half premeds at Top School will not make it through 2) Most of them are top of the nation in academic ability, but not top enough to beat their classmates 3) Had they been at a school where the competition was dropped a deviation, they'd have not only survived but ended up near the top.

"The first phrase in bold is hyperbole. I still don't know that below-average students at MIT/Princeton/Chicago/etc. would succeed in a college setting elsewhere." See the back-of-envelope calcs and logic in my prior post. You are below average with a 32 ACT at WUSTL, while the same score at a midlevel school like UHawaii would place you a full deviation above their 75th percentile (approx 96th percentile at the school). So we can at least agree, that if test scores are a valid way to compare student bodies, then the body of people dropping from premed track at schools like WUSTL would have composed the top handful of students at a typical school.

 

[WUPM]

I absolutely do admit, that if test scores for groups are poor metrics (that is, a student body of 32 ACT is not more academically capable than 24 ACT) then everything I have ever said on this subject is wrong.

 

[knv2u]

Bottom line: Undergraduate prestige won't make up for mediocre grades. All of the adcoms are unified on that front. With that said, the answer to your question depends on your school and and can even differ among members of the same admission committee. Adcoms have posted here that it doesn't matter at all (GynGyn - MD), it matters (LizzyM - MD, research), and it doesn't matter to him but other committee members sometimes consider it (Goro - DO). This is where committee letters are very helpful IMHO. A committee letter can comment on the rigor of the program, rigor of specific classes or curricular tracks, and possibly even specific classes with specific professors. And this isn't limited to just top tier schools, but also honors or more rigorous tracks at larger state schools. If schools don't have access to committee letters, having a professor who can write something similar can also be effective. Medical school admissions success can depend on how well you market yourself.

On another note, this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, even in the last two weeks. Perhaps SDN should consider creating a thread "sticky note" at the top of this sub forum and ask all willing adcoms and admissions staff to post a brief statement of their personal views, those of individual co-members of the adcom, and perhaps even institutional policies based on the type of institution. @gettheleadout

 

[knv2u]

You are assuming that a high school GPA and the SAT actually measures how well they do in college courses. There is a correlation, but that doesn't mean much. You will be surprised how many 99th percentilers struggle in state schools. Yes, in general, state universities will be easier, but to say that the top students at state schools will be at the bottom at top schools is just arrogant and presumptuous.

There are exceptions to every rule, and yes, people can turn things around. And yes, there are some people who have become masters at gaming multiple choice tests and fail miserably in a rigorous academic environment. These are all reasons why I despise standardized testing although I admit it is a necessary evil. But, these problems and test bias, while significant or problematic at the individual level, are minor background noise and statistically cancel out when you are looking at much larger populations such as college class. And generally, at the larger population level, the quality of the student entering the program is reflective of the quality of the student leaving the program. To be sure, there will be exceptions, but that doesn't undermine the general trend. Remember, in most college classes, there will be someone who will get an A, and usually multiple.

And I won't try to split hairs between the 70th and 90th percentiles, but in many cases the differences are more profound. For instance, at a college where the 75th percentile SAT/ACT Math scores are well below the national average (think where the mean might be less than 500), it is (in my opinion) naive to think that those students are going to be taught a physics class at the level of an Ivy/MIT/Stanford or other Top 50 school for that matter. Let the flame war against me begin.


Edited to add: Also, of the actual premed population, I would love to see what the undergraduate pre-med MCAT score ends up being for each school.

 

[Ace Khalifa]

I just want to add that meaningful extracurricular activities and leadership positions also count toward getting accepted into medical school. Grades aren't everything. @WUPM, you should know this because everyone at our school gets told this ad nauseum. I think that prestige only matters at schools that are aware of certain undergraduate schools' prestige. It certainly isn't the dominating aspect of a candidate's application. WUSTL is tough as sh**, no doubt about that. But I have friends who are applying or going to apply with sub 3.7 GPAs because we all know in the end, numbers aren't everything.

 

[Aerus]

People at the 25th percentile at MIT would be top 10% at an average state school, by the numbers. The fact that you could even get in to MIT (that is, even be 10th percentile) indicates you are way, way, way above typical state school range. I don't really have an opinion about it, it is a fact. The bottom end of their spectrum is still a deviation and a half above most state schools. Any stats class will teach you there is next to no overlap.

High school, as I've said again and again, is a joke. Many people who get into top schools do so with talent and not hard work. When put into a rigorous academic environment, many of them just flail and fall flat. But since many top schools avoid giving failing grades, it is hard to determine whether those students will actually do well in an easier environment or still do mediocre at a state school.

In college, hard work becomes a lot more important than "talent". In med school, it becomes even more so. There's a reason why in med school, the top students in pre-clinicals are not consistently the Harvards, MITs, and Stanfords. It's usually the people who put in the most time.

There are exceptions to every rule, and yes, people can turn things around. And yes, there are some people who have become masters at gaming multiple choice tests and fail miserably in a rigorous academic environment. These are all reasons why I despise standardized testing although I admit it is a necessary evil. But, these problems and test bias, while significant or problematic at the individual level, are minor background noise and statistically cancel out when you are looking at much larger populations such as college class. And generally, at the larger population level, the quality of the student entering the program is reflective of the quality of the student leaving the program. To be sure, there will be exceptions, but that doesn't undermine the general trend. Remember, in most college classes, there will be someone who will get an A, and usually multiple.

And I won't try to split hairs between the 70th and 90th percentiles, but in many cases the differences are more profound. For instance, at a college where the 75th percentile SAT/ACT Math scores are well below the national average (think where the mean might be less than 500), it is (in my opinion) naive to think that those students are going to be taught a physics class at the level of an Ivy/MIT/Stanford or other Top 50 school for that matter. Let the flame war against me begin.


Edited to add: Also, of the actual premed population, I would love to see what the undergraduate pre-med MCAT score ends up being for each school.

As I said in a previous post, I don't disagree. State schools are definitely easier than top schools by some amount. I'm just claiming that assumptions such as what I quoted in that previous quote are untrue. I'm also saying that the difference in difficulty won't be as large as some people make it out to be.

 

[WUPM]

@Euxox No, just plain no. 25th at MIT is not comparable to 70th at state schools. This is like saying the slower end of Olympic sprinters are comparable to the slightly above average sprinters at your college track club. They are worlds apart. Everyone has their personal experience with that genius who never studied and did poorly, I'm talking groups of hundreds to thousands of students. Out of the over 1,000 students at MIT with 31-33 ACT (placing them bottom quartile), yeah there will be a few who do poorly no matter where they are, but the vast majority would be top performers if their peers suddenly averaged around 25 instead of 34. You cannot make this argument, at all, unless you want to start claiming the entire bottom two thirds who get cut from premed are all slackers who failed for their work ethic rather than for the 99th percentile competition they were up against. Many of the people who drop premed at top schools do so after trying really friggin hard, and being forced out by other people trying just as hard who are even better. Being top third at a state school is nowhere near the level of competition as breaking into middle 50% at MIT when you compare the student bodies.

Your statement that only the top 10% at state get A's is just patently false. For example, U Wisconsin, ranking quite a bit above average for state schools, gave almost 30% of students A/A- in organic chemistry. The curves are very standard (about a third A/A-, B/B-, C/C-, and a smaller group of failing) across schools.

Absolutely numbers are not everything. Honestly I can't believe so much focus is put on stuff like GPA and MCAT in the first place; personally I'd rather have the much more caring and communicative doctor rather than the one who was slightly better at organic chemistry.

/end rant, I'm sorry if I ever seem hostile about all this. It's just that after seeing multiple friends, who are hard workers with brains at the top of the national distribution, get forced out of their initial choice of career path, I've gotten very cynical about fairness in the premed weedout system. I have yet to encounter evidence to disprove the statement: many of you who will drop, could have not only succeeded, but been top of your school, had you thrown yourself in against a regular crowd instead of all these other geniuses.

 

[acquiescing]

@WUPM the problem is that your statements imply that (almost) everyone at MIT is above everyone at state schools which is simply not true. I got into JHU as well as a non-Vandy SEC school, which I currently attend. We have an honors program there that consists of 50 people each year, where the average ACT is over 34 and 75% of the students were admitted to Ivys or the like. We chose to come here because we have a close-knit honors group, get intensive research opportunities, and we all have school paid for. We are not stupid and of the 6 of us applying to med school this year, at least 3 have a 35+ MCAT. To say that the bottom third of ANY school, no matter which one, could walk into our classrooms and top our pre-med class is disrespectful and condescending. I had better test scores than high school friends who are at Harvard, JHU, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, etc. You are 17 when you are being judged for undergrad. If I, having a 39 MCAT, am judged by a school as being academically subpar because of the name on my degree, I do not wish to spend the next four years of my life in their culture.

TL;DR - don't get too caught up in name brands. I know people at state schools that are much smarter than some people at prestigious schools, and AdComs do too. At the very least, if you want to flaunt prestige, don't completely disregard my education.

 

[WUPM]

You are in a group of 50 and are positive outliers. I have never claimed that everyone in X is above everyone in Y, only that taken as full groups, there is very little overlap (you being an example of said overlap). My statement is that the top 30% of a typical state school (a couple thousand people, drowning out you top 50 honors), does not in any way compete with the two thirds of a top school premed group that drop.

Come on people, really. Stop citing individual instances or small groups of people as counterpoints. Yes there are a lot of national merit earners who go to state schools for great financial aid and a small honors group. Yes there are a few people at any top school who don't belong in college at all. No there is not a reasonable overlap between the low middle of the distribution at ivy's vs the high middle at typical state schools. As I posted way earlier up, if you crunch the numbers, people low-middle at places like MIT end up 96th+ percentile when shifted to a midlevel state school.

 

[Lamel]

I posted this on the first page as well but might as well post it again: https://www.aamc.org/students/download/267622/data/mcatstudentselectionguide.pdf

Page 7 of the link puts undergrad selectivity in the same box as GPA and MCAT (for private schools). So it does indeed matter. LizzyM herself has stated this multiple times in her "AMA" threads, which fits because she is at a top private school.

And I'll admit, someone with a high GPA from a top school will always have that aura of impressive academic achievement, more so than someone who went to a state school (even thought hey have obviously worked hard for it), even if the effect is just subliminal.

Before someone jumps at me, I have experienced both state school and top school for undergrad, so I can understand the contexts in which many of the arguments are made in these threads. At top schools, you are competing much more fiercely with a student body that is more academically inclined (on average); to deny this is foolish.


My personal bottom line: school name isn't the most important thing at all, obviously grades/MCAT are more important. But if you can get good grades AND a strong MCAT AND go to a top school, you have the perfect academic package to support you in medical school admissions.

 

[acquiescing]

You are in a group of 50 and are positive outliers. I have never claimed that everyone in X is above everyone in Y, only that taken as full groups, there is very little overlap (you being an example of said overlap). My statement is that the top 30% of a typical state school (a couple thousand people, drowning out you top 50 honors), does not in any way compete with the two thirds of a top school premed group that drop.

Come on people, really. Stop citing individual instances or small groups of people as counterpoints. Yes there are a lot of national merit earners who go to state schools for great financial aid and a small honors group. Yes there are a few people at any top school who don't belong in college at all. No there is not a reasonable overlap between the low middle of the distribution at ivy's vs the high middle at typical state schools. As I posted way earlier up, if you crunch the numbers, people low-middle at places like MIT end up 96th+ percentile when shifted to a midlevel state school.

Of course there are outliers everywhere. This is why claiming that many people who had to drop pre-med at MIT could top the class at a state school is ridiculous. Your argument works both ways. It's obviously a compromise of the two. The top of the class students at any school are almost identical. It's just how many of them there are and where the drop off is that changes with prestige. So to say anyone bottom half at one school could of course top the class at any other school seems absurd in that regard.

 

[Ace-Co-A]

On another note, this topic has been discussed ad nauseam, even in the last two weeks. Perhaps SDN should consider creating a thread "sticky note" at the top of this sub forum and ask all willing adcoms and admissions staff to post a brief statement of their personal views, those of individual co-members of the adcom, and perhaps even institutional policies based on the type of institution. @gettheleadout

Why are you bringing him into this? haha.

 

[Ace-Co-A]

I absolutely do admit, that if test scores for groups are poor metrics (that is, a student body of 32 ACT is not more academically capable than 24 ACT) then everything I have ever said on this subject is wrong.

So basically, our argument comes to this: you're assuming that ACT/SAT performance correlates strongly with college performance, and that therefore we should take the students who go to more selective undergraduate schools (i.e., those whose average ACT/SAT scores are high) preferentially over students who go to less selective schools. I'm claiming that the correlation is not as strong as you seem to think. Do you have any data on this?

I found a few articles just by briefly googling it:

http://www.nacacnet.org/research/research-data/nacac-research/Documents/DefiningPromise.pdf

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=98373

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/18/277059528/college-applicants-sweat-the-sats-perhaps-they-shouldn-t

Frankly, after skimming these articles, I'm still on the fence about it. Shrug.

/end rant, I'm sorry if I ever seem hostile about all this. It's just that after seeing multiple friends, who are hard workers with brains at the top of the national distribution, get forced out of their initial choice of career path, I've gotten very cynical about fairness in the premed weedout system. I have yet to encounter evidence to disprove the statement: many of you who will drop, could have not only succeeded, but been top of your school, had you thrown yourself in against a regular crowd instead of all these other geniuses.

I think this part of this post interests me, as well. I'm not sure what to think about the bolded. I'd like to know about their struggles too. Apparently, these students weren't as good at studying / weren't as smart as / weren't as hard-working as their classmates who outperformed them. Could you expand a little more (on what will surely be a stereotyped) background on these folks?

On the other hand, the second-bolded portion reveals a level of arrogance that is cringe-worthy. Not everyone - not even most/many people - are 'geniuses' at top private schools. This is a silly thing to say. Honestly, people throw that word around way too often. I guess this is my opinion, but to credit people with 'genius' because of academic performance in high school is ridiculous. Are there geniuses at Harvard/MIT/Princeton/etc.? Yea definitely, but to say that all the people there are is crazy talk.

Come on people, really. Stop citing individual instances or small groups of people as counterpoints. Yes there are a lot of national merit earners who go to state schools for great financial aid and a small honors group. Yes there are a few people at any top school who don't belong in college at all. No there is not a reasonable overlap between the low middle of the distribution at ivy's vs the high middle at typical state schools. As I posted way earlier up, if you crunch the numbers, people low-middle at places like MIT end up 96th+ percentile when shifted to a midlevel state school.

Again, you're speculating here. You haven't addressed the possible problems with the underlying assumption that SAT performance correlates well with academic performance at the college level. (Indeed, you denied that hsGPA would correlate with college performance, as is apparently contradicted by one of the articles I posted above.)

Thanks again for continuing the discussion. I love talking about this stuff. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

 

[theseeker4]

" Regardless, a 3.9 from U of State is going to get in over 3.6 from Hopkins/Cornell, etc. "

I have a hard time believing this one. If two applicants have similar, average-ish MCATs I think the 3.6 from Hopkins would help out a lot and be treated as much more impressive than 3.9 UState. Many of the people who get straight A's at state schools would have a hard time even passing the courses at places like Hopkins, and adcoms know it. One GPA says "I'm in the top quarter out of a group of people in the 98th+ national percentile" while the other says "I'm at the top out of an average group".

The fact that so many students come into intensive programs, like medical school, from "U of State" and succeed/excel, even if they didn't have a 4.0, proves that your comment above is wholly inaccurate. Don't worry though, I am sure the name of your school will carry you into an acceptance, even if you have low grades.....

 

[WUPM]

I think people can excel as doctors from anywhere, very true, since I don't think a good GPA makes a good doctor. Like I said before, it makes little sense to me that STEM metrics are the primary way we select physicians anyway. I also think any school can hold top performers, albeit in greatly differing ratios. I'm mostly trying to describe the greatly increased difficulty of "making the cut" for people who surround themselves with purely the best of the best and must compete for the top third or so of slots.

I don't mean to really call everybody geniuses in any official sense, like some IQ threshold or that they're all the next Picasso of whatever they study. I mean to use it like "brilliant" or "hella friggin smart". Just trying to capture the idea that, if you are a very bright person, it is far easier to stand out among a typical sampling (like they do in high schools) than among a concentrated group of top performers. A lot of high schoolers are sold on the idea of having a brilliant peer group in college for the very valid pros it brings to class quality and discussions etc. But I don't see a lot of people ask the important question, "am I hurting my odds of making it into [very competitive field] by competing against the very top instead of the middle?" I say the answer is yes; a lot of people who work their ass off, get a 2.6 (B-) sGPA first couple semesters and have to drop at Big Name Top School, would have made it just fine elsewhere.

Regarding the validity of standard test scores:

Most articles challenging the worth of test scores miss a few points. 1) Correlating test scores with GPA makes no sense, because of what I've been describing, that a 3.6 here is not the same as a 3.6 there. Of course if you have a bunch of 2300 SAT takers getting 3.5s at Ivy, and then another bunch of 1800 getting 3.5s at State, you can conclude there is no predictive ability. Try correlating test scores with test scores, and see if high-SAT student bodies end up as high-MCAT student bodies. 2) They apply it to individuals, and say "don't let people tell you a score means anything, because you have high odds of performing beyond what it predicts". This is very true, and Stats 101 stuff. When you start comparing aggregates of thousands of 2300 takers against thousands of 1800s though, you no longer have such variation when you talk about big chunks like "top thirds". 3) If the worthlessness of test scores was actually established, then universities would stop caring about them. At the moment, the people whose job it is to select only the best weigh test scores very heavily in the equation, and so shall I.

Last point: arguing with rough numbers. Here's some back of the envelope ACT numbers for more detailed comparison between schools.

Sample Top School (MIT) - mean 34.0 (99th nationwide) - std.dev 1.54
Sample Mid State (UHawaii) - mean 23.5 (approx 70th nationwide) - std.dev 3.85

So, for anybody out there who does think test scores are a valid way to measure aggregate student ability like adcoms do, plot these two distributions and play around. For example, if you are 25th percentile at Top, you'd be over 98th at MidState. And, if you don't want to do calculations, just think about the difference that can be felt there. In one case, a group of 90th percentilers would be significantly below their peers, while in the other significantly above. Would they, as a group, have the same odds of earning the top grades in either case? And answering "it depends on each person" is a very poor dodge.

 

[WUPM]

Oh missed a point. "Could you expand a little more (on what will surely be a stereotyped) background on these folks?"

The Freshman General Chemistry class here cuts the number of premeds from over 900 down to about half that, and then second year Biology brings it down to about a third. So as you can imagine, nearly everybody is premed at the beginning, and most of them aren't towards the end. Talking about individual cases of "got weeded out" doesn't add much, but I can tell you that while there are for sure a few people who needed to get cut because they didn't want to study / partied too much etc, the vast majority worked very hard, including dorm floor group studying sessions, lots of TA office hours, doing every available problem set and practice exam, etc the whole shebang. A lot of this I know because I was right there along with them. Then come exam time, they'd end up on the wrong end of the median despite just as much or more studying than most people, and eventually have to switch out. I've been incredibly fortunate, because I don't see any difference between what they did and what I did. And, based on what people tell me about their experience taking classes at their local schools in summer (dodging Organic often), as well as the massively separated test score distributions, it doesn't seem like they should have been cut.

The reason I argue about this so much is that I really want to be wrong. I want to know they didn't make it because they shouldn't have, that the people getting into med school from the state campus next door are better, or smarter, or something, and that this isn't just a broken system where the half that got cut would have been setting the curves at other schools.

 

[Ace Khalifa]

Oh missed a point. "Could you expand a little more (on what will surely be a stereotyped) background on these folks?"

The Freshman General Chemistry class here cuts the number of premeds from over 900 down to about half that, and then second year Biology brings it down to about a third. So as you can imagine, nearly everybody is premed at the beginning, and most of them aren't towards the end. Talking about individual cases of "got weeded out" doesn't add much, but I can tell you that while there are for sure a few people who needed to get cut because they didn't want to study / partied too much etc, the vast majority worked very hard, including dorm floor group studying sessions, lots of TA office hours, doing every available problem set and practice exam, etc the whole shebang. A lot of this I know because I was right there along with them. Then come exam time, they'd end up on the wrong end of the median despite just as much or more studying than most people, and eventually have to switch out. I've been incredibly fortunate, because I don't see any difference between what they did and what I did. And, based on what people tell me about their experience taking classes at their local schools in summer (dodging Organic often), as well as the massively separated test score distributions, it doesn't seem like they should have been cut.

The reason I argue about this so much is that I really want to be wrong. I want to know they didn't make it because they shouldn't have, that the people getting into med school from the state campus next door are better, or smarter, or something, and that this isn't just a broken system where the half that got cut would have been setting the curves at other schools.

You probably are wrong. As much as you want to give your friends the benefit of the doubt, they probably didn't study as hard or effectively as you did, @WUPM. As a recently graduated alum of WUSTL, I know for a fact that some of my friends didn't do so well because they didn't study that well. Remember, freshman year of college is a whole new ballgame for everyone. That includes how to study effectively. It took me 3 semesters to find the best and most efficient study method for myself (and I managed to get A/A- in all my prereqs except both gen chem labs, which were still solid Bs). You have to realize and accept that most people aren't ready for the increased academic rigor that Wash U bitch slaps you with right away. And the ones that flunk out of premed either couldn't get with the program fast enough or they were too stubborn to adapt to the situation and change their study methods. 2 of the 15 AAMC core competencies that all premeds should have before applying to medical school are resilience and adaptability and capacity for improvement. Weedout classes are necessary to make sure those who don't have these skills won't become piss-poor doctors in the future. I'm grateful that I was able to survive WUSTL premed, and I'm glad you are too. You can feel sorry for your friends who didn't make the cut for as long as you want, but we all have to move on eventually.

 

[knv2u]

Why are you bringing him into this? haha.

I tagged him because he is a moderator and I thought maybe he had some control over whether a permanent link/thread could be created concerning the subject. I thought that such a thread would keep this issue from coming up in new threads over and over.

If it came off in any other way, I am sorry @gettheleadout

 

[Amba]

Your statement that only the top 10% at state get A's is just patently false. For example, U Wisconsin, ranking quite a bit above average for state schools, gave almost 30% of students A/A- in organic chemistry. The curves are very standard (about a third A/A-, B/B-, C/C-, and a smaller group of failing) across schools.

You are wrong. At Wisconsin, the following were the average % of "As" for the Spring 2014 semester for pre-reqs:

Biology 1: 16.9%
Biology 2: 16.4%
Physics 1: 22.2%
Physics 2: 29.4%
Chemistry 1: 24.3%
Chemistry 2: 22.6%
OChem 1: 20.8%
OChem 2: 21.6%

We also have "ABs", not "A-s", which are 3.5 rather than 3.7 in GPA calculations. Source: https://registrar.wisc.edu/documents/Stats_distribs_2013-2014Spring.pdf

 

[Ace-Co-A]

I tagged him because he is a moderator and I thought maybe he had some control over whether a permanent link/thread could be created concerning the subject. I thought that such a thread would keep this issue from coming up in new threads over and over.

If it came off in any other way, I am sorry @gettheleadout

Haha sorry man. I was just trying to be funny.

 

[WUPM]

@Ace Khalifa That's a really good point. I was only going off of how many hours I saw people with their textbooks, didn't think about whether people were really learning to study in the more effective ways. At the same time, I wonder if their study methods would have worked elsewhere, since they must have worked well in high school, and a lot of state schools more closely resemble the highschool system (such as multiple choice OChem exams).

@Amba My mistake, I guess 24% earning an A and another 10% earning AB is a good bit more competitive, but still nowhere near the claimed 10% get As. And that is still very standard across schools, I think, and sounds about right for our Gen Chem class.