Undergrad Schools

[collegefreak12]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I know I asked a similar question once in the pre- med forum, but I thought people would know a little better here.

Do med schools take your undergrad school into consideration? I mean, a 3.5 GPA in MechE from, lets say, Carnegie Mellon is NOT the same thing as a 3.5 GPA in MechE from UConn (just examples). Carnegie Mellon is much harder (one of the hardest for engineering)...So I was wondering if they take the school of undergrad into consideration. If not, wouldn't it be wise for people set on medical school to go to a slightly easier undergrad school?

 

[Robizzle]

Duplicate post in pre-allo. Closing.

Just kidding, but someone's gonna do it soon!

 

[deleted77919]

Short answer, maybe. From what I've heard med schools do take into account your school and degree, but not to a large degree. A 4.0 in english with a good BCPM will look more attractive than the 3.3 in ChemE from a top engineering school.

But the rest of the application is obviously important as well.

 

[BellyDancingDoc]

Short answer, maybe. From what I've heard med schools do take into account your school and degree, but not to a large degree. A 4.0 in english with a good BCPM will look more attractive than the 3.3 in ChemE from a top engineering school.

But the rest of the application is obviously important as well.

👍

Yup, maybe is right. It seems to depend on the school. For example, I'm from a very famous East Coast University and my grades are ... eh... ok. I do have good ECs and research, though.

My application journey has been really eye opening regarding this issue. For example, someone from Wake Forest told me point blank that I had been declined a secondary because my grades weren't high enough. However, top schools like Yale and Stanford interviewed me! I can't tell you how weird it is to be rejected immediately from Wake, but to be interviewed at the big boys.

Anyway, it's clear that some schools made adjustments for me, but others... not so much.

Honestly, based on my experience, you'd be better off with high grades from a somewhat competitive school than with mediocre grades from a very competitive one. I suspect that if I had gotten high grades from my state school, I could have interviewed at Wake Forest as well as at Yale, etc.

 

[TexPre-Med]

Everything else being equal, the hardness of your degree will not matter. However, everything else is never equal.

 

[nockamura]

Yes, at least at some schools. They use a ranking of the difficulty of schools (Barron's?) and this is partly used to determine your academic abilities.

 

[beefballs]

That is why the MCAT is key. One of my classmates has a lower GPA difficult major-smoked the MCAT. Wait why is this in allo, that phase is done, and there are possibly 3 billion threads about it elsewhere.

 

[Dr.Watson]

👍

Yup, maybe is right. It seems to depend on the school. For example, I'm from a very famous East Coast University and my grades are ... eh... ok. I do have good ECs and research, though.

My application journey has been really eye opening regarding this issue. For example, someone from Wake Forest told me point blank that I had been declined a secondary because my grades weren't high enough. However, top schools like Yale and Stanford interviewed me! I can't tell you how weird it is to be rejected immediately from Wake, but to be interviewed at the big boys.

Anyway, it's clear that some schools made adjustments for me, but others... not so much.

Honestly, based on my experience, you'd be better off with high grades from a somewhat competitive school than with mediocre grades from a very competitive one. I suspect that if I had gotten high grades from my state school, I could have interviewed at Wake Forest as well as at Yale, etc.

Wake is just screwy about the GPA stuff. I got immediately rejected from there (seriously, less than 24 hrs, no secondary) and kinda freaked out - it was end of July and my first school response/decision. However, as the application cycle progressed, things definitely went my way. I recently got into Baylor, a top 10, and I'm in 2 other top 20s.

So basically, some schools - especially "mid-level" schools and some top ones too - will screen you out and never read your application. But, quite a few will read your app, see your high MCAT and EC's etc, and will invite you for an interview. It's kinda a crapshoot as to exactly what will happen at a particular school unless you know their prelim screen policy. But it should work out in the end - if you apply EARLY and broadly.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

Adcoms start with MCAT and how well you did against your own peers (GPA). Once you get past that step, they'll start to look at other stuff, but oftentimes they've already started interviewing everybody before they get to the other stuff.

 

[cwb]

Kind of to echo what everyone else has said - do well on the MCAT... I don't think it's possible to get in with a hard major/hard undergrad and not have done well on the MCAT and just say "really I'm smart its just that my major was so hard". I was an engineering undergrad at a UMich (good engineering school not unbelievable I guess) and was below average GPA but above average MCAT at most of the schools I applied to. I really think it depends on the school's philosophy - at WashU for instance *I think* they're all about the numbers so you might be at a disadvantage, at other schools going the harder route might be better. Again, the whole process is pretty much a crapshoot so to ask - if im at such and such will I get in? - is kind of an arbitrary question. If you're the whole package you'll probably get into the top schools, if not you probably won't but that's all the more exact you can be.

 

[soeagerun2or]

Many medical school schools, private more so than public, have a predilection for particular colleges and thus you will find a disproportionate amount of their alumni making up each class. Also, if you're outside a school's particular demographic net and show a keen interest in attending it may help.

 

[helpfuldoc2b]

Many medical school schools, private more so than public, have a predilection for particular colleges and thus you will find a disproportionate amount of their alumni making up each class. Also, if you're outside a school's particular demographic net and show a keen interest in attending it may help.

Thread violates rule 314.B of SDN, Closing Thread...