To boss3:
UltimateHombre basically said what I was going to say in response to your post, but I will add to it.
GPA is the only objective, quantifiable, measurable factor out there that can be used to make conclusions. Other factors (ECs, Entrance Exam Difficulty, Interview Skills, etc) are subjective and thus not quantifiable and measurable. I am basically making the conclusion that medical school is harder to get into based on GPA only and holding other factors (ECs, interviews, constant. It is essentially a model to predict which profession is more competitive to get into based on the available objective information available. However, this model may not hold true in the real world because the other factors (ECs, interview, etc) are obviously not constant, but we don't have a way to measure it. In the future, we might have a way to measure it and thus we will incorporate the new information into a current model. Most concepts (newton's laws or economic principles for example) are explained with assumptions and as new information comes in, people modify the model to incorporate the new information.
Basically I'm saying that if you are going to draw a conclusion on which profession is harder to get into, you have to create a model to keep certain factors constant. Otherwise, in the real world, the other factors (ECs, interviews, etc) are not measurable and thus you can't come up with a conclusion of which is harder. Now its my turn to hope you understand what I'm saying 🙂.
To johnnydrama:
I'm going to be try to be as nice as possible, but you are a really ignorant person. I find this statement below completely false.
"If you look at dental students and medical students at the same institution, thedental students are at least less intellectually curious if not outright less intelligent."
What evidence do you have to make this conclusion? I'm guessing anecdotal evidence? The world would be a better place if people didn't make conclusions to apply to all dentists based on their personal experiences lol.
The TOP dent applicants getting into "TOP" dental schools can get into top medical schools and vice versa. When your a TOP applicant, its a matter of choice of which profession you decide to pursue based on your personal goals. This goes for TOP engineering students and others as well. Just because your a TOP applicant that decided to go into medicine doesn't mean your more intellectually curious or smarter than other TOP applicants that go into different professions.
And your article is not new stuff. It's known that financial security is one of the reasons people decide to pursue dentistry. However, it's not right to conclude that most or all pre-dents pursue dentistry for that reason. In fact, the research acknowledges that fact that it can only be applied to students for that particular university because they used a small sample and only sampled from that school. I still don't get how the article applies to your argument that top medical students are intellectually superior to top dental students.
This article shows you are trying to prove that medical students are compassionate, white knights trying to save the world, while dentists are money-hungry evil monsters lol.
