- Joined
- Jan 2, 2014
- Messages
- 11,384
- Reaction score
- 24,027
I think that prestige is important and good to have but not as important in the grand scheme of things. Who you are, what you did and who you know matter a lot. What premeds seem to do is to try to rank things like "gpa vs mcat?" That's not how you look at it, they're totally different things. One is a relative measure of how you did in college while the other is a standardized way to compare you to other applicants and make up for differences in major, school, coursework difficulty, etc. But people like to think of things and try to compare them against one another in a way that usually doesn't make sense.
When you have top schools, you will have top students gravitating to top schools. People at top schools will generally be smarter, have higher step 1s, better and more pubs, better connections for LORs, etc. These top students will do well and go on to populating the top residencies but they're not the only ones who will go to those residencies. From what I've seen (just started M3 so not much), the school you attend won't close doors. A dearth of honors in third year, a lower step 1 score, poor interpersonal skills, etc. are what closes doors. I am at a middle of the road school and we had a bunch of people matching into competitive specialties at top hospitals, including one guy at a top IM program despite an unimpressive usnews rank for our school.
When you have top schools, you will have top students gravitating to top schools. People at top schools will generally be smarter, have higher step 1s, better and more pubs, better connections for LORs, etc. These top students will do well and go on to populating the top residencies but they're not the only ones who will go to those residencies. From what I've seen (just started M3 so not much), the school you attend won't close doors. A dearth of honors in third year, a lower step 1 score, poor interpersonal skills, etc. are what closes doors. I am at a middle of the road school and we had a bunch of people matching into competitive specialties at top hospitals, including one guy at a top IM program despite an unimpressive usnews rank for our school.