Sorry, didn't have time to reply over the weekend. This post is going to be a massive quote-a-thon.
Do well in college, get a high MCAT and have sustained research experience and none of those programs are out of your reach
That seems to be the general consensus, especially the MCAT part, but I just can't get the fear out of my head that if faced with a choice between a person with similar stats at a prestigious school and me, the adcoms would choose them. It seems as if school prestige counts an EC that only those rich child prodigy types can have.
From what I've been told the MCAT is the great equalizer. A 500 MCAT at a prestigious school doesn't beat a 510 MCAT at a no name school.
To respond to your nothing of the correlation: I would imagine it's possible the most dedicated and brilliant HS students go to those schools and then turn into the most dedicated and brilliant MD/PhD candidates. That doesn't mean that they only accept from there, but I would imagine a lot of the people who get into MD/PhD were diligent HS students (not always, though). I'm sure the name of a great school helps in at least some minute way (bigger for top private schools), but that doesn't mean you don't have a chance with good stats.
I have to take issue with your "diligence/intelligence = good school admissions" assumption. I don't mean this a personal insult or anything, just a criticism, but that strikes me as a bit naively elitist of you. Just because someone or someplace has a good reputation doesn't mean they've really earned it. Also, I would guess that a lot more people go through drastic changes in work ethic during their college years than what you're saying. I mean, isn't change and growth the (at least as advertised) point of college? I've changed a heck of a lot just over the course of high school, I can't even imagine how different I'll be by the time I'm applying to med school. Hell, if I don't change and adapt during college, I think I'll be kind of disappointed in myself and the experience.
A few things:
- Going to a selective undergrad does matter for private MD admissions (see: AAMC survey of medical school admissions committees), but not for public MD admissions. This is especially pronounced at the most prestigious MD schools (Hopkins, Harvard, Penn, etc) that can be so choosy that they not only want to see a 3.9+ GPA and top 3% MCAT on most admits, but also want them to have earned those straight As at an Ivy-level college. Note that there are always exceptions to the rule though - my interview days were mostly full of Ivy type kids but there were also a handful from state schools or small liberal arts colleges as well.
- It matters even more for MSTP admissions, and most of all at the most selective MSTP programs. See: Great thread by Lucca a while back that looked at the data.
- The MCAT really is the "great equalizer." If you have good grades and score an MCAT up in the top few percent, you are not going to be ignored just because of your alma mater. You can still go anywhere from anywhere, you'll just need to be more of an outlier in your student body.
Thanks for the data, that's really helpful. It sounds like to get into the small ponds from a big one, you need to be a really huge fish. I'm glad to learn there is at least some sort of equalizer in this process, even if the bias does exist.
Something to think about over the next 5 years before you apply to med school: If the above quote is why you want to go MSTP, you should reconsider. Regular MDs are all of those things, and it all depends on your career goals and what specialty you want to go into. Some of the world's best oncologists, pathologists, nephrologists, etc. are MD-PhDs (but most aren't anyway), but few of the world's best surgeons are MD-PhDs. The PhD doesn't make you a better doctor ipso facto since it's relatively unrelated to the work of an MD. Only get excited about MSTP if you are extremely passionate about the basic sciences and want to spend your career primarily as a researcher.
Oh, don't worry, being the best isn't
why I want to be an MD/Ph.D., it's just a goal I want to accomplish
as an MD/Ph.D. Obviously, this might change later, but right now I'm really interested in psychiatry. I want to do basic and eventually maybe translational research on mood disorders and psychosis. They deserve more attention than they're getting. We need to find a cause and cure, and we need to do it soon. I think mental illness is the next great frontier of medicine and I want to be a part of that. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now, just grabbing the opportunity to gab about something I love, lol.