GPA at prestigious colleges

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kw18

kw18

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If you have a 3.5-3.6 at a prestigious college (Little Ivy or regular Ivy) compared to someone who has a 4.0 at a mediocre school, does the former outweigh the latter?
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kw18 said:
If you have a 3.5-3.6 at a prestigious college (Little Ivy or regular Ivy) compared to someone who has a 4.0 at a mediocre school, does the former outweigh the latter?
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Unfortunately no. Another flaw of many in medical school admissions. It makes absolutely no sense. Might as well just go to the easiest, lowly ranked college you can find so that you can get as many As as possible. In the end, they will still take you if you graduated from the University of Phoenix with a 3.95 gpa in arts and crafts over some mechanical engineering major with a 3.4 gpa from MIT.
 
Rhabdoviridae said:
Unfortunately no. Another flaw of many in medical school admissions. It makes absolutely no sense. Might as well just go to the easiest, lowly ranked college you can find so that you can get as many As as possible. In the end, they will still take you if you graduated from the University of Phoenix with a 3.95 gpa in arts and crafts over some mechanical engineering major with a 3.4 gpa from MIT.
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Actually you can go to university of Phoenix and do a combined BS/MD/Orthopaedic Surgery track in six years.
 
Rhabdoviridae said:
Unfortunately no. Another flaw of many in medical school admissions. It makes absolutely no sense. Might as well just go to the easiest, lowly ranked college you can find so that you can get as many As as possible. In the end, they will still take you if you graduated from the University of Phoenix with a 3.95 gpa in arts and crafts over some mechanical engineering major with a 3.4 gpa from MIT.
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It makes perfect sense. First, which school you go to depends on your performance in high school. Med schools do not care about your performance high school--college should be a blank slate. Second, you are expected to be successful. If you are less successful in a certain program, why wouldn't they take that into account? You should switch. And third, if you think the benefit of the Ivy League is that the name is supposed to get your opportunities on a silver platter, you are misusing Ivies. The real benefit of them is the network of well-connected professors/alumni that you should leverage to get exciting projects in undergrad. Someone who goes to an Ivy, goes to class, and nothing else isn't reaping the real reward of the Ivy. A name isn't everything.
 
AttemptingScholar said:
It makes perfect sense. First, which school you go to depends on your performance in high school. Med schools do not care about your performance high school--college should be a blank slate. Second, you are expected to be successful. If you are less successful in a certain program, why wouldn't they take that into account? You should switch. And third, if you think the benefit of the Ivy League is that the name is supposed to get your opportunities on a silver platter, you are misusing Ivies. The real benefit of them is the network of well-connected professors/alumni that you should leverage to get exciting projects in undergrad. Someone who goes to an Ivy, goes to class, and nothing else isn't reaping the real reward of the Ivy. A name isn't everything.
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I strongly disagree. People who work hard from the beginning deserve additional opportunities and benefits over someone who screwed around during their teens and matriculated into a no-name school.
 
AttemptingScholar said:
It makes perfect sense. First, which school you go to depends on your performance in high school. Med schools do not care about your performance high school--college should be a blank slate. Second, you are expected to be successful. If you are less successful in a certain program, why wouldn't they take that into account? You should switch. And third, if you think the benefit of the Ivy League is that the name is supposed to get your opportunities on a silver platter, you are misusing Ivies. The real benefit of them is the network of well-connected professors/alumni that you should leverage to get exciting projects in undergrad. Someone who goes to an Ivy, goes to class, and nothing else isn't reaping the real reward of the Ivy. A name isn't everything.
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I respectfully disagree with the first half of your statement. You should be expected to have a lower performance in a program that is significantly higher unless your a genius and the vast majority of the world is not - especially when many of the courses grade on a strict bell curve which intentionally lowers the grades of most. I have had courses where the average grade for a quiz was an 87 and in order to have a distribution of grades and based on the standard deviation an 84 and lower was a C, not a C+ a C. At Ivy league schools they distinguish the best from the best and it is absurd to me that a 3.6 from a school like MIT would not be seen at least as good as a 4.0 from a lower no rank state school that is distinguishing the mediocre from the decent a good amount of the time.

I agree that you should take advantage of the opportunities an Ivy league school can offer which are plentiful. But again even this is harder to do because the amount of work you need to put in to do well is so much higher and this all should be taken into account by medical school admissions offices.
 
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I always say admissions is a numbers-driven process, so having a high GPA and high MCAT pays off in the long run. But admissions is also partially driven by prestige, so having a high GPA + high MCAT + HYPSM background (or generally graduating from a top college) = decisive success for Top 20 MD schools.
 
Rhabdoviridae said:
Unfortunately no. Another flaw of many in medical school admissions. It makes absolutely no sense. Might as well just go to the easiest, lowly ranked college you can find so that you can get as many As as possible. In the end, they will still take you if you graduated from the University of Phoenix with a 3.95 gpa in arts and crafts over some mechanical engineering major with a 3.4 gpa from MIT.
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But you know that's not true.
1) schools look at more than GPA
2) schools still consider the rigors of your academic institution. Just may not as much as those at Ivies would want.
3) that MIT grad with a 3.4 may have gotten great grades in all his engineering classes but sucked it up in his BCPM classes
4) don't make crass oversimplifications
 
ITT: black or white oversimplifications, no grey area where the prestige of your institution matters to a certain extent alongside many other factors.
 
No. this question has been been asked before many times. Went to Penn (moderately grade deflating). Know individuals with 3.5-3.6ish GPAs at my school end up at lowtier-midtier med schools or none at all. The value of going to an Ivy is the resources and opportunities. Would be unfair to judge whether 3.5 at ivy >> 3.8 at state school. Only standardized MCAT could help judging in that regards

Those "rockstar" applicants from my school that are getting II from all the top 10 schools have high GPAs themselves.
 
but then they say community college is not recommended; irony is there are some good community colleges that are actually more rigorous than many universities

I think it's a product of the admission process being hard enough, let alone if they had to "scale" your GPA to your university. it's unfortunate if you ask me; a genius might struggle to hold B's at a school like MIT, especially in hard majors like neuro or engineering
 
Unfortunately, as others have already said, the answer is no.

This is a shame because the coursework at the Ivy I attended was much harder than anything I have seen at the "great" State U where I am now a grad student. I have TAd for the physics and molecular biology departments and can safely say that the classes offered at State U are considerably easier both in terms of concepts/material and grading.
 
Though the answer is no, I have found that a disproportionally large proportion of the interviewees I've met thus far were from Ivy/prestigious colleges. And despite how Ivy GPAs aren't looked at more favorably, there are probably some underlying factors here that aren't plain to see. For example, attending an Ivy college might immerse you in a culture that rewards doing well in school, having classmates that are supportive of academic success, and more. So while the GPA number itself isn't weighted proportional to your college's 'prestige', I think it's worth mentioning the cultural factors that propel you to succeed in that sort of college, factors that might not be inherent in other colleges.
 
The answer is "no" at public medical schools.
At elite private medical schools, undergraduate prestige IS a factor. (There's an AMCAS table that illustrates this -- search and ye shall find)

And while a 3.6 from State Flagship U. is about the same as a 3.7 from State Other U., if you get a 3.2 majoring in philosophy at Podunk College you're dead meat. A 3.2 in engineering physics from MIT is still very much alive.
 
bananafish94 said:
There are some seriously bitter Ivy league graduates in this thread! Of course, as a mere mortal from a state school, I should be honored that they descend from their higher intellectual plane of existence to interact with people like me.
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Fellow state school peasant here - what an honor it is to interact with Ivy league gods on this website! 🙄
You should go to a school where you'll succeed, whether it's at a state school or an Ivy league. I certainly wouldn't have been as successful at an Ivy league school as I have been at my school (which is a flagship, so not some podunk school) and that is putting me in a good position. Know thyself should be a premed law, lol. Also, a lot of Ivy schools inflate grades to begin with, so I have a harder time taking people seriously when they complain so heavily about this. State school peasants can be just as hard working and intelligent - especially those of us who maybe didn't want to be saddled with a lot of undergraduate debt.
 
I think it depends on the school. If we are strictly talking about medical school matriculation, then I believe it doesn't matter where you got to. However, when you are talking about the top tier schools, pedigree does factor in.
 
Some schools give bonus points to going to top 20 colleges. But for the most part you are not going to get leeway for a subpar gpa at most medical schools.
 
kw18 said:
If you have a 3.5-3.6 at a prestigious college (Little Ivy or regular Ivy) compared to someone who has a 4.0 at a mediocre school, does the former outweigh the latter?
Click to expand...
Nope, but there is inbreeding amongst the Ivies. Trailer park level.
 
Rhabdoviridae said:
I strongly disagree. People who work hard from the beginning deserve additional opportunities and benefits over someone who screwed around during their teens and matriculated into a no-name school.
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"People who are irresponsible as teenagers should be stuck with their terrible decisions for the rest of their lives"
Dude... c'mon. You really think that undergrads should be stuck in a sub-par school because their 16 year old self didn't do well? That seems like the mindset of a really crappy doctor... "you got yourself into this and now you have to ride it out with no hope of redemption".
 
tessellations said:
Fellow state school peasant here - what an honor it is to interact with Ivy league gods on this website! 🙄
You should go to a school where you'll succeed, whether it's at a state school or an Ivy league. I certainly wouldn't have been as successful at an Ivy league school as I have been at my school (which is a flagship, so not some podunk school) and that is putting me in a good position. Know thyself should be a premed law, lol. Also, a lot of Ivy schools inflate grades to begin with, so I have a harder time taking people seriously when they complain so heavily about this. State school peasants can be just as hard working and intelligent - especially those of us who maybe didn't want to be saddled with a lot of undergraduate debt.
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The fact of the matter is that I objectively did not deserve to get into any Ivy League school. I actually probably didn't deserve to get into my state school. Like many high school kids, I was an immature 14-16-year-old who didn't really care about school and did not have a good GPA at all until I pulled it together in my later years of high school. So kudos to the kids who worked hard from day 1 of high school and got into a really prestigious school, but that was not me. Despite my personal issues with the medical school application process, of which there are many, I'm glad that they don't penalize you for going to a lesser-known school. Because at the end of the day, where you go to college is usually a reflection of how well you did in high school, and nobody cares about what you did in high school.

Anyway, I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be for college and grew immensely intellectually and as a person as a whole. So I can't complain!
 
plantsandpremed said:
"People who are irresponsible as teenagers should be stuck with their terrible decisions for the rest of their lives"
Dude... c'mon. You really think that undergrads should be stuck in a sub-par school because their 16 year old self didn't do well? That seems like the mindset of a really crappy doctor... "you got yourself into this and now you have to ride it out with no hope of redemption".
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He said additional opportunities.... not they should be allowed to go to college/get a degree/become a doc - I'm not sure what you mean by "no hope of redemption" lol.

Another view at this - should those who had a higher GPA/MCAT in UG and matriculated into a higher tier med school be preferred over those who went to a lower tier med school and did not have that GPA/MCAT [for residency positions]?
 
Hkkhan said:
He said additional opportunities.... not they should be allowed to go to college/get a degree/become a doc - I'm not sure what you mean by "no hope of redemption" lol.

Another view at this - should those who had a higher GPA/MCAT in UG and matriculated into a higher tier med school be preferred over those who went to a lower tier med school and did not have that GPA/MCAT [for residency positions]?
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You haven't been on here long enough to see the garbage that poster has spouted on SDN. Notice that they've been banned since this afternoon. Bolded is exactly what he/she meant.
 
Coltuna said:
You haven't been on here long enough to see the garbage that poster has spouted on SDN. Notice that they've been banned since this afternoon. Bolded is exactly what he/she meant.
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Well yeah I know, I was saying that the bolded didn't make sense/wasn't true which I'm sure you agree with.
Oh ok, good to know they're banned, didn't notice that.
I've previously had an account but I made a new one because stuff happened on that one that I don't want displayed - I can share my previous profile [privately] with you if you want.
 
Hkkhan said:
Well yeah I know, I was saying that the bolded didn't make sense/wasn't true which I'm sure you agree with.
Oh ok, good to know they're banned, didn't notice that.
I've previously had an account but I made a new one because stuff happened on that one that I don't want displayed - I can share my previous profile [privately] with you if you want.
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It's okay, I believe you lol.
 
Dr. Meliodas said:
I respectfully disagree with the first half of your statement. You should be expected to have a lower performance in a program that is significantly higher unless your a genius and the vast majority of the world is not - especially when many of the courses grade on a strict bell curve which intentionally lowers the grades of most. I have had courses where the average grade for a quiz was an 87 and in order to have a distribution of grades and based on the standard deviation an 84 and lower was a C, not a C+ a C. At Ivy league schools they distinguish the best from the best and it is absurd to me that a 3.6 from a school like MIT would not be seen at least as good as a 4.0 from a lower no rank state school that is distinguishing the mediocre from the decent a good amount of the time.

I agree that you should take advantage of the opportunities an Ivy league school can offer which are plentiful. But again even this is harder to do because the amount of work you need to put in to do well is so much higher and this all should be taken into account by medical school admissions offices.
Click to expand...


The problem is that there isn't a way to quantify that a 4.0 GPA at x equals a 3.5 at y. If that is truly the case, then the MCAT scores for the student who got a 3.5 should match the student who got 4.0 at x. Furthermore, who's not to say the 4.0 student wouldn't get a 4.0 at the harder college? And who's to say that a 3.5 will become instantly better at a state college?

Also if 3.6 at an ivy is a 4.0 at a state college, what is a 3.8? Better than a 4.0? Isn't that unfair to the student who got a 4.0 at a state college? And if it's a 4.0 and a 3.6 is also a 4.0, the isn't that unfair to the student who got a 3.8 at the ivy?

What about different majors at different colleges?

At the end of the day, you put yourself in that situation. And because the MCAT is there to balance things out, it's too complicated and unfair to some to "adjust" GPA's.
 
The answer is no, as people here have repeatedly said. Medical school admissions (most often) really just considers the number. They also don’t take into account your major.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were humanities/arts majors at state schools with 3.7-3.8 gpa, got into MD schools.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were chem/physics/engineering majors at Ivy League or top schools with 3.4-3.5 gpas, all had to go DO.

The school thing I understand - I graduated from an Ivy League school, but I took classes at several colleges to graduate in 3 years. To be honest, the difference in class difficulty (between Ivy and state 4-year schools) was negligible.

I do wish they took major into account. It makes me mad that the art history majors with 3.8s always get preference over the students with 3.5s in the sciences.
 
Peach Newport said:
The answer is no, as people here have repeatedly said. Medical school admissions (most often) really just considers the number. They also don’t take into account your major.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were humanities/arts majors at state schools with 3.7-3.8 gpa, got into MD schools.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were chem/physics/engineering majors at Ivy League or top schools with 3.4-3.5 gpas, all had to go DO.

The school thing I understand - I graduated from an Ivy League school, but I took classes at several colleges to graduate in 3 years. To be honest, the difference in class difficulty (between Ivy and state 4-year schools) was negligible.

I do wish they took major into account. It makes me mad that the art history majors with 3.8s always get preference over the students with 3.5s in the sciences.
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I know right - I totally agree, however, assuming that all these people didn't just choose these majors because they [falsely] thought med schools would care/prefer them, its kind of like the argument about going to ivys vs. state schools - those who went to the Ivys [in this analogy, chose hard majors] put this upon themselves, and so whatever consequences, positive or negative they may receive, are their own to handle [high/low GPAs and potential MCAT improvement]. Also, eng/hard sci [who can get their MS in a year] majors have way better/higher paying job prospects than art history majors so maybe they [harder majors] were just hedging their bets if they didn't/couldn't get into med school.
 
Hkkhan said:
I know right - I totally agree, however, assuming that all these people didn't just choose these majors because they [falsely] thought med schools would care/prefer them, its kind of like the argument about going to ivys vs. state schools - those who went to the Ivys [i.e. chose hard majors] put this upon themselves, and so whatever consequences, positive or negative they may receive, are their own to handle [high/low GPAs and potential MCAT improvement]. Also, eng/hard sci [who can get their MS in a year] majors have way better/higher paying job prospects than art history majors so maybe they [harder majors] were just hedging their bets if they didn't/couldn't get into med school.
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The argument “you should have known how to better game the system” is probably my least favorite argument ever when discussing what is ostensibly a meritocracy.
 
Peach Newport said:
The argument “you should have known how to better game the system” is probably my least favorite argument ever when discussing what is ostensibly a meritocracy.
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What - that's not what I'm saying; I'm simply saying that one must accept the results of their actions.
 
Hkkhan said:
What - that's not what I'm saying; I'm simply saying that one must accept the results of their actions.
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Sorry dude, I wasn’t trying to argue with you - I didn’t mean to put it that way. I was going more for an agreeing, “sigh, I guess that’s the way it is” vibe
 
Peach Newport said:
Sorry dude, I wasn’t trying to argue with you - I didn’t mean to put it that way. I was going more for an agreeing, “sigh, I guess that’s the way it is” vibe
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oh ok sorry - I wasn't sure how to interpret your statement and [what I said] is what I finally came up - with my B.
 
Furthermore....if you're going to look at college choice, then should major also matter? Should a 3.8 Chemical Engineering, Math, or Physics major from State Flagship be more impressive than the 3.8 Psych major from U Chicago?
 
Best way into medical school is to be an Art Major at a state school. You'll have a lot of free time, use it to make the rest of your application amazing, study for the MCAT for 3 years and get a 520+ and you are golden.
 
Dr. Meliodas said:
Best way into medical school is to be an Art Major at a state school. You'll have a lot of free time, use it to make the rest of your application amazing, study for the MCAT for 3 years and get a 520+ and you are golden.
Click to expand...

What do you think art majors do that you think that they have so much free time. Being an art major (Art History, Studio Art, BFA) isn't as simple as that.
 
bananafish94 said:
The fact of the matter is that I objectively did not deserve to get into any Ivy League school. I actually probably didn't deserve to get into my state school. Like many high school kids, I was an immature 14-16-year-old who didn't really care about school and did not have a good GPA at all until I pulled it together in my later years of high school. So kudos to the kids who worked hard from day 1 of high school and got into a really prestigious school, but that was not me. Despite my personal issues with the medical school application process, of which there are many, I'm glad that they don't penalize you for going to a lesser-known school. Because at the end of the day, where you go to college is usually a reflection of how well you did in high school, and nobody cares about what you did in high school.

Anyway, I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be for college and grew immensely intellectually and as a person as a whole. So I can't complain!
Click to expand...

Everybody has their own reasons for why they end up where they are. I feel blessed to live in a country where the system is forgiving for indiscretions from our youth. I was a good student in high school, but struggled with anxiety due to going to a very competitive high school. I was sort of at the ~25th percentile for some of the Ivy schools but would have been miserable there. I was also just not one of those amazing students who had everything going for me. Quite frankly, it's going to be easier to get into schools when you come from money, which didn't apply to me. My state school was the perfect place for me, academic level wise and financially and was the place where I could really prove myself. I find it rather disheartening how condescending some people are being regarding this topic.

PreMedMissteps said:
What do you think art majors do that you think that they have so much free time. Being an art major (Art History, Studio Art, BFA) isn't as simple as that.
Click to expand...

One of my friends is a studio art major and holy crap, the amount of work she has to do is staggering! I remember her pulling multiple all nighters freshman year in order to get art pieces done.
 
Peach Newport said:
The answer is no, as people here have repeatedly said. Medical school admissions (most often) really just considers the number. They also don’t take into account your major.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were humanities/arts majors at state schools with 3.7-3.8 gpa, got into MD schools.

My friends with 30-33 mcats, who were chem/physics/engineering majors at Ivy League or top schools with 3.4-3.5 gpas, all had to go DO.

The school thing I understand - I graduated from an Ivy League school, but I took classes at several colleges to graduate in 3 years. To be honest, the difference in class difficulty (between Ivy and state 4-year schools) was negligible.

I do wish they took major into account. It makes me mad that the art history majors with 3.8s always get preference over the students with 3.5s in the sciences.
Click to expand...
Do not think for a second that being an Art Major is easier than being a science major. You try writing an essay every two weeks on subjects like:
Review of the Monet exhibition at the Met
Influence of the Hudson River School on Modern American Painting
The art of Picasso's Blue Period
Cross-cultural frameworks in Byzantine art
Why are the Impressionists so popular?

and on top of this have the regular pre-med pre-reqs.
 
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