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Is it harder to do well in higher ranked med. schools?
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8744
It may be widely accepted but it's not true.
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How do you know?
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This depends on what your goal is. Is it to learn the same amount at both schools, or is it grade or is it ranking? Or is it to get to a highly ranked medical school? For the last one, you probably do have to prove yourself more at the lower ranked school.
Many schools are pass/fail with no curve, so your ability to pass doesn't depend on the competition of other students. Maybe smarter, more organized classmates would help you more by sharing notes or being generally helpful in study groups, etc. What matters most is how well the curriculum matches your learning style as well as the resources the school provides to help you learn the material. Do highly ranked schools tend to have more resources for teaching? maybe, but I'm not sure. Not sure about the clinical years either.
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No. there will be very good students no matter where you go--I don't mean they're deep thinkers or intellectual or anything like that, the kind you might associate with a top undergrad--I'm just talking about fast-learners and people good at brute memorization, which is the type of student best-suited for med school.
If anything, it should be easier at a top school b/c the teaching should be better. I say this coming from a top-notch undergrad with excellent teaching, and now I'm at a lowly state school--well, it's actually top 20, but still, the teaching sucks and you can tell it's a state school, and I'm not quited used to such sucky teaching yet. Then again, I'm really bitter because i'm in the midst of exams from hell...
If anything, it should be easier at a top school b/c the teaching should be better. I say this coming from a top-notch undergrad with excellent teaching, and now I'm at a lowly state school--well, it's actually top 20, but still, the teaching sucks and you can tell it's a state school, and I'm not quited used to such sucky teaching yet. Then again, I'm really bitter because i'm in the midst of exams from hell...
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Hmmm...I'd really have to doubt the collective wisdom you're referencing here. I've taken classes at both a top-25 school and one of my state schools. My undergraduate degree is from a middle tier private school. There was not an appreciable difference in the amount of work given or the quality expected between any of these schools. The only real difference I could discern was that at both my state U and the top-25 school I had a class or two taught by TAs. If you're talking about having to work harder because your competition is greater, I'd dispute that as well, owing to the fact that grade inflation in the top tier is rampant. I would assume that all things being equal med school is the same way. However, I have no real factual basis for my opinion on med school, as I'm just a lowely post-bacc🙁
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45408
Um, how do you know if you're at a state school just based on the teaching?
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sorry, I just meant the classes are much bigger than I'm used to and you don't get as much individual attention from the faculty. And I will make a dig at my own school now and say the faculty here just aren't that great. Of course, I realize not all private schools have small classes and quality teaching.
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Ah. I think small classes are overrated. I was in the honors program at my undergrad, and the small classes (the honors seminars) weren't necessarily any better than the big ones (all the sciences).
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Unlikely, IMHO. The range of grades of accepted matriculants between the top and bottom allo med schools is not nearly as big a spread as you would see in those admitted from high school to comparably distantly ranked colleges -- with med schools often you would be comparing a class with an average of A to a class with an average of B+/A-. Additionally, the skills required to get A's in college often don't get you A's in med school, so you will see a lot of smart people with poor organizational or memorization skills sinking lower in the class in med school than they did in college.
Med school is going to be hard no matter where you go, and you cannot expect to rise to the top of one school just because you could have attended a higher ranked school. It just doesn't work that way. Everyone who gets into med school is capable of doing well there, and nobody who shows up to med school expects to be below average. Lots and lots of people get shocked and a wake up call by the grades they get in med school.
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Unlike undergrad, where various curricula and majors (liberal arts vs bio vs engineering) are very different in what's expected of you, getting an MD is a fairly standardized education, where everybody prepares for and takes the exact same board exam. Sure, there's some variation in teaching, what order you learn everything, and grading scales, but you basically have to learn the same stuff no matter which med school you attend.
So, no, the logic doesn't transfer to med school.
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I am at a state school. Last time I checked it was the overall highest ranked medical school in the nation.
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I agree that we are all going for the the same board test. But I have friends at different medical schools and the differences are tremendous. I didn't really learn about the different "teaching styles" during my interviews, but I wish I would have. And unfortunately, the school I'm in is probably not the best for me. Of my undergraduate friends, I had the highest GPA, best MCAT and got into the best school. Somehow my friends are partying more than me, and somehow doing better than me at their lower tier school. Realizing the name of my school is not going to do it for me, I just hope my board scores are decent. I've never been in the bottom of a class in test scores in my life, but I'm getting used to it.
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Oh please lets stop with the PC nonsense "all hte med schools are the same" BS
You honestly telling me that its just as easy to make AOA at East Tennessee State Univ School of Medicine as it is at Harvard or Hopkins? NO freakin way. The #1 graduate at ETSU wouldnt have a prayer of making the top grad at those schools.
You honestly telling me that its just as easy to make AOA at East Tennessee State Univ School of Medicine as it is at Harvard or Hopkins? NO freakin way. The #1 graduate at ETSU wouldnt have a prayer of making the top grad at those schools.
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zimmie256
For those of us who may be making decisions about schools in the next few months, do you have any words of wisdom? Questions you wish you'd asked, etc? Thanks.
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At ever state medical school you have people who were completely capable of gaining an acceptance at a top-10, they chose to be at the state school instead for many reasons (fiancial probably being the highest on the list of reasons). Assuming that the top student at a state medical schools couldn't have been the top of his class at a top-10 is ridiculous, because there was probably no difference between him as an applicant and the kid at the top ten except that he couldn't afford/chose not to pay the exorbitant tuition at said top 10. Also you can't precisely measure a students potential success in medical school based on their undergraduate grades, which is the only thing that would indicate that a medstudent at a top-10 would be better at medschool than a state school medstudent (since top-10s usually have higher admissions sats). Good undergraduate scores predict the ability to pass medschool, but not really who is going to be the rockstar, as medschool focuses heavily on some skillsets that aren't really tested until you get there. Medschool is about academic endurance (its day ten since you've done anything other than sleep or study . . . are you going to be focused or are you going to be too burnt out to accomplish much) . . and about the ability to memorize huge quantities of information with great speed. Someone who rocked out in undergrad may find that he/she just can't put the time necessary into honoring medschool classes, or that even when he/she does put in all the time that is possible, they just don't memorize quick enough to get an honors. Then you have people who maybe didn't give undergrad their all for the first year or two, but when they get to medschool they have the endurance and the speed to bypass mr. undergrad 4.0 and pull AOA. There are so many intangibles that make a medschool rockstar or a C=MD medstudent that you can't definitively say "a student with higher undergrad stats will be the better medstudent, therefore the school with the highest matriculation stats will be the most compeititive for AOA".
All the medical schools aren't the same. They all have different curriculum, teaching approaches, faculty, student body cohesiveness, locations, teaching hospitals etc. The top 10 ranking is based mostly on research funding, not on these other things that are what you should be looking at when choosing a medschool. Top 10 ranking should really only come into play if you are heavy into research. For all the other stuff you have to figure out whats going to work best for you as an individual, and it will be different for each individual. Every school is going to provide the same quality of education, but they are going to go about it in different ways. I think a student reaching their full potential in medschool is most influenced on weather they chose the best fit for them, not how much grant money their institution recieves, or competitive/uncompetitive (if this could ever even truely be quantified anyway) of their classmates.
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LOL. If all people thought like you did, the top students at the lower ranked schools wouldn't be getting some of the competitive residencies they do.
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Sure, at every state school there are a couple of students that could have gained an acceptance at a top 10 school. But, at a top 10 school EVERYONE is like that. Regardless of what some people claim, the overall quality of the students at top 10 schools is much higher than at typical state schools. So, yeah, assuming that the school gives out grades, it is harder to be at the top of your class at a top 10 school.
And the person that claimed that it's not harder to get good grades at a top 10 school than at an average school is completely wrong. Pre-med classes are WAY harder at top schools because a lot of them are curved and you are competing with a lot higher quality students
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I'm not clear from your last sentence as to whether you are talking about med school or college.
Med school admissions does a nice job of cutting away all the average and below students -- the one's who made you an A student in undergrad in the first place by anchoring the curve. These folks are gone now. Some schools pretty far down the US News list post average undergrad GPA's of matriculants over 3.5. Thus the average matriculants at even a lot of these "non-top-tier" state schools got mostly A's in college. Thus while the average credential at the top 10 school is better than further down the list, the difference is really pretty small. Certanly it would be a stretch to assume that because you got into a top school you would be at the top of the class in a lower ranked one. An A college student put into a class full of B+/A- college students does not always end up at the top.
However any premeds who truly think this is inaccurate should choose the lower ranked school, and try to get the benefit of AOA and high rank you seem to think is a slam dunk.
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I really don't think you will do better at a "top school". Medical school material isn't really intellectually challenging. A very intellectual person might get bored with some of the material. That being said, the volume of the material is ridiculous. This is where people either do well or fall off the wargon.
Medical school (at least in pre-clinics) is highly rewarding to hardworking people. The top students are usually hardworking and persistent. Anyone with these features (combined with efficiency) can be in the top (or near) the top of their class.
These argument is especially convincing when you realize that intellectually, there isn't much of a different between classmates. In my school, the average is usually close to 90. You really can't do much better than average.
There is no such thing as class rank preclinically. All the ranking stuff starts during clinics.
Medical school (at least in pre-clinics) is highly rewarding to hardworking people. The top students are usually hardworking and persistent. Anyone with these features (combined with efficiency) can be in the top (or near) the top of their class.
These argument is especially convincing when you realize that intellectually, there isn't much of a different between classmates. In my school, the average is usually close to 90. You really can't do much better than average.
There is no such thing as class rank preclinically. All the ranking stuff starts during clinics.
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This is dead on (at least from my experience at my school...this is all anecdotal anyway...). Class averages are around 90 at my "top 10 school" (whatever that means), and we have a P/F curriculum. When it comes down to it, not one single bit of material we have covered this semester in any way resembles an intellectual challenge. If you're a hard worker, you do well. If you're not, it doesn't matter how brilliant you are or whether or not you got a 43 on the MCAT or had a 4.0 GPA; you're going to do poorly.
I can't imagine this would be any different at a school of lower ranking. As med students, we've demonstrated that we're hard workers, and while there may be a difference in mean intellectual capacity (whatever that is) between schools, it means very little in the grand scheme of things.
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45408
You have nothing factual to base this statement on, and you know it.
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45408
Depends on what you mean by "better." The students at top research schools have better research credentials than most other applicants, obviously, and the top 20 schools have higher MCAT averages than the other schools, but the average GPA is pretty similar all the way across the board, judging from the MSAR. I'm at MCW, and our matriculated class has an average GPA of just over a 3.8. Of course the students in Harvard's HST program have better research credentials than me - but you have to clarify what "better student" means to you.
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Who cares how well one would do at one school versus another. If you are using this as criteria for picking a school you need to rethink your approach. Based on different goals (residencies, location, academics, private practrice) people will adjust accordingly. Go where you will do the best, work hard and you will be aces. There are just too many individual-dependent variables to look at this and try to apply any findings.
Macgyver-I guarantee there are more than a few individuals at top tier places who work hard but aren't going to really kill themselves to be at the top of the class. P=MD is a phrase pretty common at all med schools.
Macgyver-I guarantee there are more than a few individuals at top tier places who work hard but aren't going to really kill themselves to be at the top of the class. P=MD is a phrase pretty common at all med schools.
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Macgyver-I guarantee there are more than a few individuals at top tier places who work hard but aren't going to really kill themselves to be at the top of the class. P=MD is a phrase pretty common at all med schools.[/QUOTE]
agreed, alot of people who wont kill themselves out. but also there are no consistent slackers so if you ease up a little too much for an exam you will find yourself easily in the lower bracket of the class. 😀
agreed, alot of people who wont kill themselves out. but also there are no consistent slackers so if you ease up a little too much for an exam you will find yourself easily in the lower bracket of the class. 😀
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This is starting to sound like the good old DO vs. MD, even the island vs. mainland debate. No one who is at a lower tier school will admit that there is anything inferior about their schools. And who are people at high ranking schools to criticize them? Certainly there are smart people everywhere. I am at a top ten school, and I will have to say that I have met more than a couple people that I think are, errr, well you know. In all reality, med school is tough, but it's not that tough. We have more than a few liberal arts majors who are doing just fine, all in all I would say that most of the hard science courses I took in college my senior year had an overall smarter population than my med school class. There is a great deal more that goes into deciding who gets in where than how smart you are, I think that is what sets schools apart. Does that stuff determine how good a doctor anyone is going to be, I strongly suspect not. But hey, they have to pick who to let in some how. Still, I don't think that I would want someone from the haitian medical school, or where ever people go, operating on my brain. I don't imagine that even the people in the U.S. medical school in Haiti would, but that is the extreme, ya?
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The answer to your first question, as to whether it is easier to do well is no. This is because the material is pretty standardized, and usually not curved, so to get a 90% you need to know 90% of the material no matter where you go to school. It's not like the material is harder at the top schools, or that somehow the class averages are going to be hugely different. If anything, since some of the top schools are less willing to fail students and make them retake things than some of the lower ranked schools, the folks at the bottom of the class at the lower ranked schools may tend to work a bit harder, out of self preservation.
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You are talking about differences in schools and who they admit-which exist- i.e. I will bet a great deal of your class has published at least one if not more scientific papares, also I would bet your class has a higher % of higher level degrees, in comparison to my no tier med school (Of which I am not bashing and happy (usually) that I attend)
What lab slave said is the truth-hard workers, that are organized and have good memorization skills will do well because the material is pretty standard. Anyways OP what exactly do you wanna know. There are alot of people who are smart diligent workers and do OK I would assume at all schools. Then you have the masochists who are smart and more driven who do better. GO where you will be happy, listen to advice but make up your mind what place suits you best
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It's also worth noting that some 'lower tier schools' can have some of the highest average board scores because, for better or worse, they teach more to the test...At some schools, everything starting from day one of m1 year is geared towards boards, other places, not so much...
Is this good or bad? I dunno, thats a whole debate on the philosophy of testing itself, and way more has been written and argued about it than I'd like to get into here...
But I will say this -- I felt I interviewed at a pretty diverse set of schools...And if a school made a point of how well prepared their students were for boards, and how its a major focus of the preclinical curriculum, personally I was fine with that...What I did not like was interviewing at higher ranked schools and hearing things along the line of residency programs know how great we are, so our school doesn't even worry about our board scores, it doesn't matter if were the best prepared cuz we're the best school and even people who don't do great on the test match well...a misguided (and arrogant) approach if there ever was one.
Anyway the point is, is it harder to honor biochem at a prestige school than a no name school? I dunno, probably...But hard workers from all med schools can get good grades, rock the boards, match well, and become great doctors...Anyone not totally awestruck and hypnotized by the aura of elite schools knows this.
Is this good or bad? I dunno, thats a whole debate on the philosophy of testing itself, and way more has been written and argued about it than I'd like to get into here...
But I will say this -- I felt I interviewed at a pretty diverse set of schools...And if a school made a point of how well prepared their students were for boards, and how its a major focus of the preclinical curriculum, personally I was fine with that...What I did not like was interviewing at higher ranked schools and hearing things along the line of residency programs know how great we are, so our school doesn't even worry about our board scores, it doesn't matter if were the best prepared cuz we're the best school and even people who don't do great on the test match well...a misguided (and arrogant) approach if there ever was one.
Anyway the point is, is it harder to honor biochem at a prestige school than a no name school? I dunno, probably...But hard workers from all med schools can get good grades, rock the boards, match well, and become great doctors...Anyone not totally awestruck and hypnotized by the aura of elite schools knows this.
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Name does play a factor in getting good residency spots. I do not mean the name of the school alone, but the reputation of the students that preceded you. Residency directors get a feel for how students from certain schools are, what they will know, how prepared they will be, etc. So in a way you can ride the coattails of the students that came before you at a top school.
The reality is that this thread is pointless. Is there an advantage of going to a "top" school? Yes. Do "top" schools admit students with "higher" credentials? Yes. Do "top" schools have better match lists? Most likely, but that all depends on your definition of "better." This does not mean that students at top schools are better people or necessarily inherently smarter than students at other schools. When picking a school, it comes down to individual preference. And when matching, it comes down to individual performance. Other factors definitely come into play. Going to a "top" school does influence some of those factors. Others it won't. But having this discussion centered around just the "top" school factor is very limiting.
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The top schools don't work their students as hard as the lower ranked schools. From what I've heard, I'd rather have someone who went to a lower ranked school taking care of me than some Harvard-educated kid who rode the school name to a top residency. The only thing that's different at the top schools is the number of crazy gunner students and the fact that faculty will do their best to have you memorize obscure details about their almost-Nobel-worthy research.
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My experience at a "top" school is very different than you just described. I cannot point out a single gunner in my class. Seriously. People are always sending out review files, etc., to help each other out. I was thinking about how weird it is being in med school and not having to experience the "gunner" phenomenon. Of course, our grading scale and school setup facilitate cooperation, not competition. And if there are gunners, I don't know who they are.
Also, I have never once had to memorize details about any of my professors' research.
And most of the kids at Harvard will be great docs. Saying that going to Harvard will somehow make them inferior to their state-school counterparts is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
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Um, anyone who has actually compared match lists of "prestigious" schools to a lower tier school should know this.
There are benefits to going to a top 10 school that the lower tier schools don't have. The teaching can be pretty atrocious at my 'low tier school', we can pretty much chalk that one up to the caliber of faculty that the school attracts. Given that fact, the burden of learning the material is placed almost directly upon the shoulders of us students, versus learning directly from the captivating lectures given at the top tier schools. That arguably makes it harder for us lower tier students to succeed. Nevertheless, we still perform above average on the boards and have about 10% of our class matching into radiology and many matches into competitive specialties in excellent hospitals in NYC, Boston, Chicago and LA. And the averages on the tests are still in the high 80's.
I don't know if this thread was a dig at the lower ranked schools, or us inferior low tier students, but we learn the same things, we take the same tests and we match into the same residencies. I know it's almost inconceivable for you, but holy crap, someday you're probably going to have an attending that went to a low-ranked school embarrassing you on rounds. You might even have a few of us in your residency program.
I hope you feel really good about yourself because you did well on the MCAT and rocked your undergrad courses, and got into a top 10 school. That does not automatically make you a good doctor or get you into a top residency. Working your butt off is the only thing that can put you ahead now.
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Gotta also say that you must define what "doing well" means.
AOA? Then you have to be in the top "X"% in your class. AOA is AOA to me.
Honors? Completely subjective - this will vary school to school and even class to class. I'd guess there's grade inflation at some medical schools, just like you see at undergrad.
Step I score? Where the best standardized test takers are is most likely where you find the best Step I score (I know that this can vary, however). Those with very high MCAT are often at "top" schools, so "top" schools may have higher Step I scores. But every student at every school has to take a test with the same fund of tested information.
dc
AOA? Then you have to be in the top "X"% in your class. AOA is AOA to me.
Honors? Completely subjective - this will vary school to school and even class to class. I'd guess there's grade inflation at some medical schools, just like you see at undergrad.
Step I score? Where the best standardized test takers are is most likely where you find the best Step I score (I know that this can vary, however). Those with very high MCAT are often at "top" schools, so "top" schools may have higher Step I scores. But every student at every school has to take a test with the same fund of tested information.
dc
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I don't think this is borne out by the various schools that choose to report their scores.
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No? I have to admit I was guessing. I haven't seen numbers. There is some random thread that suggests that the folks at Duke and Wash U are doing very well on Step I, but I don't know the validity of that thread.
dc
dc
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Duke's average step 1 in the past has been in the low to mid 230s. However, the school suggests that that's because we have our clinical rotations second year, before we take step 1.
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do you know how hard it is to get into harvard? do you think those kids would just automatically stop working hard and allow themselves to get a bad education even if it was true that their school "didn't work them as hard"? i agree to an extent about harvard kids having to memorize a couple different things that their faculty might have researched, but overall i'd be comfortable relying on kids with the ability to get into harvard to learn the basics that are required to be a good doctor.
edit: and none of this is to say anything bad about lower ranked schools, i just find it ridiculous (as someone else who posted above me) that you would infer that people from lower ranked schools will turn out better docs because they "were worked harder" in med school (which in and of itself is a ridiculous statement to make).
Is there any school that comes out and states this in a public place where people who have access to this information can see it? Every school I have ever heard claims to be above average because there is no way for applicants to know if they're telling the truth or just fudging numbers.
Is there any school that comes out and states this in a public place where people who have access to this information can see it? Every school I have ever heard claims to be above average because there is no way for applicants to know if they're telling the truth or just fudging numbers.
That doesn't make it any less of a dumb comment. First "the top schools work their students less than the lower schools" and then "the only thing different about the top schools is that they have more competitive students and they make the students learn about faculty research". Umm, okay. That's logically consistent.
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It would be hard to know one way of the other. But medicine is a career about what you have done lately, not what you did previously.
I can tell you from my previous career that certain top law schools, who you would assume selected the best folks in the country with a long track record of excellence and hard work, frequently cranked out folks who regularly got creamed in professional settings because they talked a big game but really couldn't perform. Many people seemed to have rested on their laurels onced they reached such places. It may be so in med school as well -- who knows. At any rate, I'm not sure you can give folks a blanket benefit of doubt -- this is a career where you have to constantly prove yourself.
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not doubting this at all, of course med students all have to keep working. i was just saying that it's very flawed logic that because people got into harvard and the school treated them well that they'd automatically work less hard and thus become worse docs than people from lower ranked schools. its like saying that people who go to harvard don't work hard once they get there, and that people in lower ranked schools all work really hard.
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🙄 as someone above me has already said, does his being in a high ranked med school make his comment any less stupid? i see from your sig you are going (or might go) to vandy - that is a pretty well-ranked med school. if your school treats you well, do you think you will automatically stop working as hard as you've had to work to get in? my contention is that you won't, and that you will likely turn out a good doc. his contention is that you will, and people from state schools all will, and that they will be better docs than you.
i saw that he goes to upenn, and chose not to mention it in the post. maybe he really doesn't like his experience and thus thinks that all top-ranked schools suck. who knows. but i'd bet that a ton of people coming out of upenn and harvard will be good docs and will continue to work hard throughout their careers.
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That's exactly what I saw happen in law, actually.
In terms of med school, If you consider the negligible risk of getting an F at some of the top 10 schools compared to some of the other schools out there which regularly do make people retake things, you will see that there is much greater incentive to work and not relax at some of those places.
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deleted77919
I may have read prior posts incorrectly, but I don't think anyone was actually trying to make such a sweeping statement. It is an entirely reasonable theory that the student populations are overlapping bell curves in which case the bottom kid at the top school isn't performing as well in his/her classes as the top kid from the "lesser" school.
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i agree with you that the bottom of the class at a "top" school is likely worse than the top of the class at a "lesser school. my only issue with any posts in this thread was when the guy said he'd in general rather have a doctor from a lower ranked school because they worked harder than kids who went to, say, harvard. i wasn't trying to say that there are not any kids from lower ranked schools that turn out better than plenty of kids from higher ranked schools, i was just taking issue with his generalization.
and to law2doc, i think its a shame that people in your top tier law school took it easy once they got there. i guess its just my experience at my "top 10" med school that people work insanely hard, and did even first year when we were pass/fail. i don't see anyone slacking off now that they are here - most people seem to have either continued the undergrad work ethic that got them here or have stepped their effort up compared to undergrad. i am sure there are people here who will not be as good at doctoring than some from "lower ranked" schools, i just take issue with assuming that people at a school like mine aren't working as hard, because its just not true.
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