I see so much variation from school to school. I have people in my class that went to smaller private schools, all (or the majority) took some form of a class that we take in our 1st year here at DMU and they said they never learned half of what we were taught at DMU whereas the people who went to larger public universities (most that had allopathic medical, pharmacy, PA, Dentistry, nursing schools) struggled less. I'm not saying it's 100% because I know people that went to small private schools and are pretty much 4.0 every class, but the consensus is that the larger, public schools prepare the students for the rigors of a graduate level health professions education. Example of this would be that I had a friend who went to a super small (~1000 total student body) private university, graduated w/ a 4.0 37 MCAT, great LORs, applied to 12 schools, got interviewed only at 3 (applied to a wide range ~1/3 top tier, ~1/3 middle, ~1/3 low tier), got in at only 1 of those schools where I had another friend who graduated from a big public university (my alma mater), substantially lower gpa (3.25) w/ a 34 MCAT, got IN at 5/14 schools applied too, mainly top tier schools too. Yeah, that's just one example and there's many to backup this story and many to refute this story-I'm just saying is all.
I think in part it has to do w/ reputation, bigger schools have their name known across the country more, the bigger schools can recruit and keep top notch researchers, they usually have a more competitive undergraduate science curriculum-EVERY one of my science classes was a weed out class regardless if it was a prereq course or a major course, and in general, the bigger universities produce more money (due to government funding, grants, research, more students paying tuition, graduate schools, etc.) than smaller universities (where they may have all of those same properties as a big university, but they generally pay their faculty more/year than the bigger schools). Anyways, just wanted to "hear myself talk." I'm out.
Dens