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You select "School does not have AOA" on ERAS.
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Are All Medical Schools Really Equal?
Started by 2011MS1
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You select "School does not have AOA" on ERAS.
Personal experience is, well, personal. Someone's personal experience with a process does not automatically relegate it to a fact. It's kinda like eye witness testimony; In the court of law, it rarely holds up without corroborating evidence. Your family PD is one of many PDs in the country. Each with their own take and perception of the process. That is why SDN is here. Different views are gathered until a consensus is built.
You absolutely should. Every program, every PD is different, so unless you want to match into that PD's program then it does not matter at all. Plus what is his specialty? If it is IM or FP the selection criteria and emphasis is much more different than something like Dermatology or Plastic.
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Thats why i made the point of asking about other programs, and he told me straight up, that nearly every PD that he has spoken too, has echoed that where someone went to medical school is a negligible factor in getting that spot.
On a side note it is a competitive specialty, and again the statement he made was true not only for his specialty but other competitive residency programs that he had first hand knowledge about
On a side note it is a competitive specialty, and again the statement he made was true not only for his specialty but other competitive residency programs that he had first hand knowledge about
Look at the match list for some of the east coast schools, there is inbreeding like no other.
who cares about the consensus view in a forum populated by pre-meds, medical students and even residents, this is one of the people making the actual decisions, and deciding the criteria regarding residency placement.
Your argument is equivalent of saying that Premedical students and medical students know more about criteria for admission and the dean of admissions. note that admission committee members are often familiar with the admission criteria at other schools
Your argument is equivalent of saying that Premedical students and medical students know more about criteria for admission and the dean of admissions. note that admission committee members are often familiar with the admission criteria at other schools
Cool. Thanks.
I assume this is not held against an otherwise promising application, but please correct me if I am misled.
Well...I met one PD (competitive school; non-competitive specialty) who says he won't even interview someone if they are DO.
I know another PD (competitive specialty at my home school) who says he looks at three things when deciding whether to interview someone - board score, 3rd year grades, school name.
Anecdote'd!
And in other news, premeds are prestige ******.
exactly
Dang025 why dont you respond to this post instead?
And while you are at it read
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=676666
To see the possible implications.
I would point out that the OP in that thread was incorrect...according to aPD (sort of the "LizzyM" equivalent of the residency threads) programs cannot choose to not download your application. Any "screens" that they set up occur after your application has been downloaded (and would thus be invisible to you).
When the ERAS site shows that a program hasn't downloaded your application, it just means they haven't downloaded any applications in whatever time period (when the programs log-on/download it automatically downloads all apps and all updates available).
Basically the OP in that thread was being overly neurotic b/c programs hadn't started downloading/reviewing apps yet and they misconstrued that to mean their app was being filtered out.
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Yes but keep reading lol..
For your response to the thread read the response to your thread.
Again the response to my post was an anecdote. As for your response, I didn't discuss DO schools because that is an obvious disadvantage when applying to allopathic residencies. Secondly, it was one data point, I asked for a general assessment for getting competitive residencies from my PD family friend and that was the general rule he gave me. that wasn't an anecdote, that was an insiders assessment of the game.
Also i find that anecdote difficult to believe as if someone was a first author on a Nature paper, that wouldn't be factored in to a greater degree than their med school, i'm extremely skeptical of that statement.
look SPIKER, at the end of the day believe what you want, if you choose to believe that med school is a crucial factor in determining a residency it is up to you; but their are plenty examples that where you went to med school is a minor factor in determining residency placement.
Also the only examples you talk about is derm, their are other more competitive residencies than derm. stop taking super specific examples of derm residency placement and trying to extrapolate from there. its not an accurate barometer of what is true for the large majority of applicants.
Again the response to my post was an anecdote. As for your response, I didn't discuss DO schools because that is an obvious disadvantage when applying to allopathic residencies. Secondly, it was one data point, I asked for a general assessment for getting competitive residencies from my PD family friend and that was the general rule he gave me. that wasn't an anecdote, that was an insiders assessment of the game.
Also i find that anecdote difficult to believe as if someone was a first author on a Nature paper, that wouldn't be factored in to a greater degree than their med school, i'm extremely skeptical of that statement.
look SPIKER, at the end of the day believe what you want, if you choose to believe that med school is a crucial factor in determining a residency it is up to you; but their are plenty examples that where you went to med school is a minor factor in determining residency placement.
Also the only examples you talk about is derm, their are other more competitive residencies than derm. stop taking super specific examples of derm residency placement and trying to extrapolate from there. its not an accurate barometer of what is true for the large majority of applicants.
The plural of anecdote is not fact
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Dude what is your point? What you said is a......anecdote as well from 1 PD. Dont speak as if you got everything figured out. It is not nearly as clear as you believe. I dont give a **** what you believe just dont project your anecdote to other people so strongly as if they were facts. Dont you love it when premed thinks what they hear is universal truth?
And so what if I am only talk about derm? It exemplifies competitive residency and can be readily applied to plastic, ENT and a few more.
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I never claimed it was, but its a composite view, its impossible to give any facts about this process. all you can do is speak in generalities.
Your the one who talks definitively like where you went to medical school is the be all and end all and thats not the case. But choose to believe what you want, I just laugh at the people like you who think that where they went to school is the be all and end all in life.
Your the one who talks definitively like where you went to medical school is the be all and end all and thats not the case. But choose to believe what you want, I just laugh at the people like you who think that where they went to school is the be all and end all in life.
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Are you ******ed? Or did you not read? The main point I made is that it may be much harder to get top ranked in a high ranking school therefore harder to get AOA which may affect your chance. You are the one who butted in with your "fact". And condescending comments, implying that you with inside information knows much more than everyone else.
Then school rep usually plays a bigger factor, which is exactly why a lot of top schools don't have ranking or AOA. They play on the misconception of others that all of their students are baller because they come from a top school.
I think the general consensus is that if your school doesn't have rank/AOA, it isn't used against you.
I provided an example that didn't imply i had inside information. one of the main reasons it is harder to get top ranked at these schools is because there is rampant grade inflation at many of the top schools.
Also i don't appreciate being called a "******" by some snot nosed little ****, who thinks a he knows everything.
Also i don't appreciate being called a "******" by some snot nosed little ****, who thinks a he knows everything.
There is no evidence of that in any of your posts..so maybe you should read your own posts again.
But whatever floats your boat. You seemed to change your position rather quickly after SouthernIM's post.
Now I will just let the discussion get back to it's course
(1) Common stereotypes often exist because there is some truth to them. My experience and experience of colleagues from different ranked programs bears this out. Many of the bigshots at the prominent places feel they have better things to do than wasting time with med students. But sure, there will certainly be folks who get more personal attention at powerhouse schools, and folks who get ignored at smaller places. I'm just saying your odds are better otherwise.
(2) PDs are responsible first and foremost for staffing the hospital with residents who can do the job. If they can't do the job, it causes them headaches, no matter how academically gifted these folks are. Would they like to find academically gifted research studs who can also do the job well? Sure, but they need to emphasize residency skills first and foremost because it makes their life harder when the person gets complained about by attendings. Doesn't matter where you are, the resident provides a huge amount of labor to the hospital and that is their primary job. Research is icing on the cake, but you can have a cake without icing, but nobody wants icing without cake.
(3) The away rotation is also called an "audition" rotation because that's what you really are doing -- auditioning for a job. If you were going to hire someone, would you rather hire someone you worked with for a month and thought was sharp, or someone you met for a one hour interview on a busy interview day? In most cases the away rotation provides a huge ability to sell yourself as a hard worker who is enjoyable to work with. The interview provides such a short window that many folks can "fake it" and seem solid for an hour. but the longer window gives better insight. FWIW, I wouldn't bother with an away rotation that was only 2 weeks long (I've not seen any that short) -- do the month long ones or don't bother. The point is to give the program a good long look and have attendings and residents come away with the impression "yeah, I could see working with that guy/gal". That translates into a higher ranking than the dude they only see for an hour, assuming they both have adequate stats.
you are entitled to express your opinions, although they are often inaccurate and seem to serve an agenda to argue that students from average USMD school is equal to the top 20 students of USMD school on the average.
No agenda here -- I'm past all that, already in residency and set on a path I'm pleased with. I'm just passing on what I've learned having gone through the residency process, along with having heard the experiences of my classmates and of colleagues at other schools. You are entitled to your own opinion, which I dare say may change once you too have passed through to the other side. Good luck.
I think everyone has good points (well, almost everyone), and a lot of people are mis- or over-interpretating the opposing side.
Each of us only has experiences within the group of people we know. This includes Law2Doc, although by nature residents know larger groups of people and interact with them much more often.
However, even for Law2Doc, his experiences are heavily predicated on the field and location of his residency. For premeds, their experiences are heavily predicated on the dozen or so doctors that they know.
What we CAN conclude is that yes, MCAT and GPA have a correlation with your USMLE and first 2 years' performance (don't bring Duke up, you know what I mean). This has been demonstrated pretty thoroughly (since, if the normal distribution is valid, a 245 is rare at Morehouse and fairly common at Harvard and what we know of released average Med School board scores indicates a strong correlation) . There are lots of people who worked full time going into top-20 schools too, but in either case exceptions do not disprove a correlation.
Nevertheless, correlation does not imply causation. Furthermore, the correlation not super high, and the majority of the correlation can be explained by the average admitted student's mentality and academic prowess rather than school resources.
There may be causative factors like the mentality of the students you study with helping or hurting you, but at least 95% of your efforts are self-determined. Plus you should be self driven anyways. There may be factors like researchers thinking they're too badass, but I disagree with Law2Doc's assessment that it hurts because at top 20 schools the # of research labs far outnumbers the # of students. Nevertheless, these factors are small and within the first two years, and again, most of your efforts are your own.
It can also be fairly established that the correlation decreases is the third year. Outside of community service and undergraduate LOR, there is no way for medical schools to select for social skills or humility. The latter especially.
It is fair to say then, that since the majority of residencies in the United States care the most about your third year performance (self-determined) and USMLE score (self-determined), it does not hurt you much to go to a lower-ranked medical school.
However, that is different than saying it does not matter at all (not saying that anyone said this, just clarifying). It is well established that there are places where the prestige of your program matters, from people I have talked to and from people that others have talked to.
Therefore, while it may not matter in general, there do exist places which favor Harvard over Morehouse. There might be couple places which favor Morehouse over Harvard, but this # is << the former #.
Thus we can conclude that there is some limited opportunity cost in not going to the best school. Whether that cost affects you or not depends on what you're looking for.
"What we CAN conclude is that yes, MCAT and GPA have a correlation with your USMLE and first 2 years' performance (don't bring Duke up, you know what I mean). This has been demonstrated pretty thoroughly (since, if the normal distribution is valid, a 245 is rare at Morehouse and fairly common at Harvard and what we know of released average Med School board scores indicates a strong correlation) . There are lots of people who worked full time going into top-20 schools too, but in either case exceptions do not disprove a correlation."
Yeah I wouldn't base any conclusions on "released" board scores. That data is most likely doctored to serve as a propaganda piece for med school admissions.
Yeah I wouldn't base any conclusions on "released" board scores. That data is most likely doctored to serve as a propaganda piece for med school admissions.
Unless top 20 schools consistently doctor it up and other schools consistently doctor it down I don't see how that affects the correlation much.
Solid. This is the most reasonable, supported argument I've read. There's a lot of people who seem bent on interpreting information a certain way no matter what. On both sides.
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Some things never change. Some day, some of them will arrive at their residency interview at the program they've idolized their whole lives, and they find out it's a bunch of jerks.
Yeah and some of them will arrive at some residency program that didn't really idolize over and they'll think that one sucks. Or still, they'll arrive at one of the ones they've idolized over and they'll realize they love it. I don't understand why so many people think all premeds are the same or that they're all ranking-grubbing gunners? There's plenty of people that want to go to different schools for different reasons and I'm sick of seeing arrogant medical school students strutting around with this "holier than thou" attitude.
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Wow, server issues I guess.
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2010 is looking good already
If something is very low on the list of considerations, the import tends to be negligible. So rather than say it doesn't matter at all, I think it's probably fairer to say it matters very very little. So little that it probably shouldn't be a big factor in school selection. There are lots of things you ought to be focusing on in selecting a med school at which you will thrive. Prestige shouldn't be one of them, unless having a particular brand name school on your T-shirt makes longer hours in the library more tolerable, I suppose. It won't make or break you for any residency. How you do at the school and on the boards certainly will.
Agreed. Board scores are not public. As such most of us have seen some very funny questionable and likely false distribution of scores. Because they aren't released, all schools seem comfortable saying their scores are in the top half of US allo schools (obviously this can't be true). Many places state scores which don't include folks who failed and retook. Others pick and choose how they present -- saying "scores over the last X years" were above average. Or some simply outright lie, knowing there is no way to check. You have no ability to audit what is true and what isn't. The places that abide by the tacit agreement won't release them at all, so any place releasing them is already behaving unethically to start with (so probably more likely to lie).
But as mentioned above, board scores are a very individual thing and not really school dependent. All med schools cover basically the same material. Half the med students aren't going to attend classes anyhow. And everyone uses the same First Aid and Qbanks. So the amount of value added by schools toward board scores is pretty questionable to start with. The folks who do well at X school would have done well at Y school. Why? Because they probably didn't attend lectures anyhow, and studied from the same board review materials anyhow, and so would have scored the same regardless of where they were. The schools need you to give them a high board score, not vice versa, so to the point you are looking at this criteria, which, as mentioned, may be "made up" or statistically massaged to start with because schools aren't supposed to publish these, you are getting suckered. Perhaps the only thing med schools will do that can affect your board scores is how long you have off to study for the boards during the second year summer. I assure you that the amount of time off won't align with prestige, but if you really wanted to maximize board scores, this is probably what you ought to look at.
Well, threads like this, where premeds insist that they "know" prestige/school rank plays a big role in their future certainly doesn't help.
It's not all premeds. But there is an undercurrent on here of type A personalities who seem to think that since they scored high on the MCAT the race is won. In fact they've barely reached the starting point.
(Jim Carey voice) BING, BING, BING, We have a win-n-n-ner!
This does clarify your know-it-all -you-just-cant-understand-because-you-are-just-a-premed attitude doesnt it? To use this statement to bolster some cynical and myopic views you have been perpetuating for 20K posts is truly lame.
Do you also believe there is truth to such common stereotypes as:
- fat people are lazy?
- women cant work AND raise a family?
- blacks arent smart enough to be quarterbacks?
You are likely some white-guy who lives in a make believe construct where patronizing everyone helps preserve your ill gotten stature in society and protects your insecurities.
Stereotypes are dangerous in most hands, but in the over-educated they are just pathetic. If your only reason for being on this forum is to seek deification - get over it. Seriously how much of your life have you wasted with all that posting - get out of your room and join society, itll help you shed those common stereotypes that are holding you back.
Have a great day - smile more!
BURP
　
To make a jump from a discussion of access to research PIs to liken it to racial stereotyping as an attempt to cast aspersion toward a poster defies rationalization.
If you cannot post about the topic without attacking a poster, you are in violation of the terms of service of this board and should take your venom elsewhere.
Wow, Frustrated much?
I think it would be interesting to look back at all the arguements on this topic (since it has been thoroughly beaten to death) and see who supports which side. Because it seems to me that most med students/residents/attendings ie those with the most experience tend to say that going to a "prestigious" med school doesn't mean as much in the long run.
I learned on residency interviews that going to the highest ranked place is not the end all be all. There are factors involved in selecting a residency that are not accounted for in the rankings. The same is true for med schools. Acheivment is on an individual basis, and med school input is minimal. Just go where you think you'll be happy, and not where the internet/some magazine tells you to go. It's really not that hard of a concept.
Uh... there are truths to stereotypes in many cases. Sry.
I haven't heard that argument on this thread. No one said graduating from Harvard automatically allows you to become a neurosurgeondermatopathologist. You are picking the extreme of one side and building a strawman out of it. Some posters are saying that there are *some* benefits of attending a well-known school in terms of resources, research opportunities and network. You still have to work hard regardless of which school you attend. I don't think students at JHU are sitting idle drumming their fingers while those in podunk medical are burning the midnight oil. Everyone works hard in med school.
You've already made clear your view of premeds, so perhaps it's time to go back to sewing skin.
The point is that premeds put too much weight entirely on rankings.
I am not even asking about the "Benefits" I am talking about the potential harm in attending top ranked school namely harder to get class rank and AOA. And if that is true (which seems to be likely) I was wondering if there is some compensation mechanism for that-aka prestige factor (which also seems to be likely).
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You're not talking about a very broad range of acheivement when it comes to who med schools take. Everyone is a stud, even at the less well-regarded med schools. So if the questions is "does going to less highly regarded med school make it easier to be higher ranked in your class and get AOA?", the answer is no.
BTW, AOA is not entirely based on academics.
You got to get to top 15% at least for junior AOA though.
My school (unranked) didn't have jAOA.
Regardless, if you aren't top 15% at one school, you likely aren't going to at another.
That may be so but that doesn't mean that there is no argument for the benefit of attending some of the highly ranked schools. Like MegaP, I don't think anyone thinks that the school ranking is going to be a massive benefit. Your arguments don't respond to what the people on this forum are actually saying.
I'm not seeing where the confusion is coming from.
What I'm trying to say is basically the same thing as what other people have been saying all along. Where you go to school does not matter as much as other factors that are more student-dependent. Does it matter? Yes, but it's pretty neglegeble. There are other things that you should consider way before the name of the school.
