Ivy League vs. State School (pre-med)

[efle]

Bing, really? A 36 is 97th percentile.

Very misleading to try and cast public seats as the majority of an applicant's options like that. In reality most people have their own state school(s) to apply to, a few that are friendly to out of state applicants, and then mostly private schools filling out their list. An Ivy applicant with a 3.5 / 35 can make a fine list using only private schools. Regardless of alma mater, a 3.5 / 35 that gets in nowhere likely has problems other than their numbers that explain their outcomes.

I don't understand your bit about that source earlier - saying that high SAT scores predict high earnings regardless of alma mater does not establish anything about whether premeds get a boost in med admissions from attending top private schools.

Note I'm mostly in your camp on this issue (with exceptions for cases I listed earlier), I think students have to be very cautious before enrolling at a lot of elite colleges because of the stiff competition and high weedout.

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[Obnoxious Dad]

Bing, really? A 36 is 97th percentile.

Very misleading to try and cast public seats as the majority of an applicant's options like that. In reality most people have their own state school(s) to apply to, a few that are friendly to out of state applicants, and then mostly private schools filling out their list. An Ivy applicant with a 3.5 / 35 can make a fine list using only private schools. Regardless of alma mater, a 3.5 / 35 that gets in nowhere likely has problems other than their numbers that explain their outcomes.

I don't understand your bit about that source earlier - saying that high SAT scores predict high earnings regardless of alma mater does not establish anything about whether premeds get a boost in med admissions from attending top private schools.

Note I'm mostly in your camp on this issue (with exceptions for cases I listed earlier), I think students have to be very cautious before enrolling at a lot of elite colleges because of the stiff competition and high weedout.

I never said that an applicant's state school accounts for the majority of an applicant's options. My point is that the local state school is the option that provides an applicant with his or her best chance of getting into medical school. Furthermore, who says this kid is going to get an MCAT score that is at the 95th percentile? He might choke his guts up and merely score at the 85th percentile.

My point about success at schools other than Ivys is simply this: A kid with enough brain power to get into an Ivy league school who turns it down to go to Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Madison, Ann Arbor, Austin and a bunch of other top state schools will probably be as successful in life if as he or she would have been if they had gone to an Ivy League school. Several studies support that statement. I provided a link above.

The problem for many of the people on these message boards is that they come from the east coast and don't have a clue about anything more than 200 miles from the Atlantic. Most state schools on the east coast are poorly funded teachers colleges. I once had a seemingly intelligent east coast yokel tell me that the University of Connecticut and the University of Wisconsin Madison were academically equivalent. That was a good one. He probably thinks that UMass Lowell and the University of Texas at Austin are equivalent.

 

[efle]

I never said that an applicant's state school accounts for the majority of an applicant's options. My point is that the local state school is the option that provides an applicant with his or her best chance of getting into medical school. Furthermore, who says this kid is going to get an MCAT score that is at the 95th percentile? He might choke his guts up and merely score at the 85th percentile.

My point about success at schools other than Ivys is simply this: A kid with enough brain power to get into an Ivy league school who turns it down to go to Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, Madison, Ann Arbor, Austin and a bunch of other top state schools will probably be as successful in life if as he or she would have been if they had gone to an Ivy League school. Several studies support that statement. I provided a link above.

The problem for many of the people on these message boards is that they come from the east coast and don't have a clue about anything more than 200 miles from the Atlantic. Most state schools on the east coast are poorly funded teachers colleges. I once had a seemingly intelligent east coast yokel tell me that the University of Connecticut and the University of Wisconsin Madison were academically equivalent. That was a good one. He probably thinks that UMass Lowell and the University of Texas at Austin are equivalent.

I agree with you that the kid who turns down Yale for Madison is very likely going to have no trouble getting into a med school. This is not at all in conflict with the statement that private med schools would be impressed by the HYP name or that they provide especially excellent advising and opportunities.

 

[WedgeDawg]

@Obnoxious Dad I don't have access to MSAR anymore and I'm not going to purchase another copy, so I can't fulfill your request and for that I apologize.

I also agreed that that someone going to UVA or Michigan etc over Cornell or Brown or Penn etc is going to do fine as long as they do well, but a 3.5/35 coming out of Penn is going to look better than a 3.5/35 coming out of UVA, at least to private schools. However, if you're saying that someone with the brainpower to get into Columbia and UVA will be as successful at both, why chose UVA over Columbia unless the person happens to really like UVA? UVA is still a very very hard school to do well at, as are most of the strong state schools we've been talking about (Madison, Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley, UVA, UNC, etc). These are an entirely different beast than schools like, if we're keeping with the Virginia example, GMU. UVA is a much much harder school than GMU is. If we're talking about how hard it is to get a good GPA, we might as well be lumping in these schools with the Ivies.

A 36 is a good score. Maybe even great. But it's not a stellar one. Remember that you have to score at the ~81th percentile to be "average" in this game (which is a 31 on the old scale) if you're planning on actually getting in. Many top schools have medians higher than 36 (Vanderbilt, NYU, Harvard, WashU, Penn, Northwestern, Chicago, etc etc etc), which means that 36 is, in my book, not a stellar score (this is coming from someone who scored a 36).

 

[BraveNewWorld]

Update: I also got into Stanford (not an Ivy, but yeah XD ) which has a way better FA package than Columbia...

Stanford perhaps?

 

[Symphonies]

Update: I also got into Stanford (not an Ivy, but yeah XD ) which has a way better FA package than Columbia...

Stanford perhaps?

I think I read a thread in the MD forums about certain schools having more recognition than others, but the end result was fairly ambiguous so take that with a grain of salt.

Just curious, on a side note, Columbia releases decisions on March 31st, don't they? In that case did you by chance do Columbia ED?

 

[BraveNewWorld]

Nope, I got a likely letter from Columbia!

 

[efle]

Isn't stanford decision April 1st...

 

[BraveNewWorld]

Nope, they just released their decisions today!

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/march/admit-admission-announce-032516.html

 

[efle]

I'd say Stanford 100%

 

[mspeedwagon]

Go to the most elite school you can for the cheapest price. If Stanford is cheaper than Columbia, then go there. Even though Stanford is not technically Ivy, no one is going to say... "you went to Stanford. Couldn't get into an Ivy I see." Same goes for a school like MIT.

Given your options, you'd be insane to pay more than Columbia or Stanford to go to your state school (imho).

Update: I also got into Stanford (not an Ivy, but yeah XD ) which has a way better FA package than Columbia...

Stanford perhaps?

 

[WedgeDawg]

Stanford is the best choice here all other things being equal.

 

[efle]

Stanford is the best choice here all other things being equal.

And it's BY FAR the best choice when it's cheapest.

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

@Obnoxious Dad I don't have access to MSAR anymore and I'm not going to purchase another copy, so I can't fulfill your request and for that I apologize.

I also agreed that that someone going to UVA or Michigan etc over Cornell or Brown or Penn etc is going to do fine as long as they do well, but a 3.5/35 coming out of Penn is going to look better than a 3.5/35 coming out of UVA, at least to private schools. However, if you're saying that someone with the brainpower to get into Columbia and UVA will be as successful at both, why chose UVA over Columbia unless the person happens to really like UVA? UVA is still a very very hard school to do well at, as are most of the strong state schools we've been talking about (Madison, Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley, UVA, UNC, etc). These are an entirely different beast than schools like, if we're keeping with the Virginia example, GMU. UVA is a much much harder school than GMU is. If we're talking about how hard it is to get a good GPA, we might as well be lumping in these schools with the Ivies.

A 36 is a good score. Maybe even great. But it's not a stellar one. Remember that you have to score at the ~81th percentile to be "average" in this game (which is a 31 on the old scale) if you're planning on actually getting in. Many top schools have medians higher than 36 (Vanderbilt, NYU, Harvard, WashU, Penn, Northwestern, Chicago, etc etc etc), which means that 36 is, in my book, not a stellar score (this is coming from someone who scored a 36).

I just couldn't resist getting back into this jolly little thread. It appears the friendly folks at Dartmouth's premed advising office have compiled the data for us with respect to med schools requiring calculus. Here's the link to their spiel:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nss/nav/pages/advice/MedSchlMathReq08rev.pdf

According to this page, which seems to be drawn from MSAR, 17 MD schools require calculus and another 21 recommend it. Oddly enough, Columbia is among the 100 or so allopathic schools that don't require calculus. Columbia requires calc for physics, but not med school. Go figure. In all honesty I'm surprised that as many as 17 still require calculus. I would bet that most of them would let you slide with calculus for bozos.

OP, you must be one smart kid. Figure out your priorities. If you want to impress non-medical people, go to Stanford. I still say, however, if you aren't from California and you want to make getting into med school a slam dunk, go to your state university if it has a med school attached . Good luck

 

[justadream]

Unless you also got into Harvard or Yale, go to Stanford.

If you got into Harvard or Yale, then just pick one of the two/three and it's pretty much a wash.

 

[BraveNewWorld]

Thanks guys! Very late update, but I ended up choosing Stanford in the end after getting into other schools (Yale, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, etc)