Which is tougher to get into, Ivy League (or top 20) UG or med school?

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Green Apple

Green Apple

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What do you think?
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Green Apple said:
What do you think?
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Ivy college. This isnt even close. The majority of medical students didn't or couldn't get accepted to any ivys for college. Remember, as difficult as med school admissions is, ultimately, around 50% of applicants are accepted.

This isn't to say that everyone at ivy colleges can get accepted to med school, as we know, many cant. But this is usually result of the student plateauing in highschool, or just otherwise ****ing up in college.
 
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i would say more difficult to get into med school.

from high school, are you competing with a much more diverse pool of applicants to get into college. Once you are in college and applying to medical school, you are generally applying against the top performing students that made it into college and so the pool is much smaller and much more skewed towards the more competitive students.

You can't just compare acceptance rates to determine difficulty for acceptances. Most med applicants apply to many schools whereas it's not uncommon for high school students to apply to one or two schools. Rejections per med school applicant is probably higher then rejections per high school applicant.

Also, to the previous poster, I would say MIT is not that easy to get into as you state. The valedictorian in three high schools in my county were not admitted to MIT with perfect and near perfect SAT scores. MIT isn't as number hungry as ivy leagues, you need good numbers to indicate ability to succeed in their curriculum, as well as a major hook. Many of MIT students participated in science fares, have impressive technology/science backgrounds (started companies, did research, won robotics competitions, etc.); this is why the middle 50% stats of MIT isn't as high as ivy leagues, even though it's so competitive. They're more human in admissions and consider your EC's that distinguish you a lot in high importance.
 
another thing to consider, i don't think a lot of people who are from other parts of the country (ie midwest, westcost) apply to a lot of the ivy league and top eastcoast schools.

I know a lot of people from around my area with great stats only applied to my state's state school (one of the best states schools, however).
 
Well med school admissions are a lot more work intensive and nerve wracking that is for sure.

I think undergraduate admissions are a bit more of a craps shoot than med school admissions though.
 
I guess I would have to say med school is easier to get into than the very top tier UG schools, simply because it is completely obvious what you need to do to get into medical school. If you work hard enough to get the great grades and MCAT, you will get in somewhere. UG admissions are a lot more subjective, and there are a ton more applicants with identical stats. There are thousands of applicants who are valedictorians with perfect SATs, and tens of thousands who are close.

What up doc said:
i would think (harvard, princeton, yale,)>>med skool>>(brown, columbia, penn)>>stanford, mit, duke>>(darthmouth, cornell)>>evertthing else
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Where did you come up with this? Ridiculous.
 
What up doc said:
i would think (harvard, princeton, yale,)>>med skool>>(brown, columbia, penn)>>stanford, mit, duke>>(darthmouth, cornell)>>evertthing else
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I'd definitely say Stanford MIT and Duke are all harder to get into than Brown or Penn, and probably med school overall too.
 
Wylde said:
another thing to consider, i don't think a lot of people who are from other parts of the country (ie midwest, westcost) apply to a lot of the ivy league and top eastcoast schools.

I know a lot of people from around my area with great stats only applied to my state's state school (one of the best states schools, however).
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This is how I feel. Most people in California just apply to UC's and dont even consider other schools. I figure its the same for other west coast and mid west places. However, for medical school the applicants are older and are willing to move to the other side of the US for medical school.

So people on the east coast looking to go to an Ivy undergrads dont have as many competitive students to compete with whereas when applying to medical school these students have to start competing with cali students from all the UC's and other mid west schools.
 
al112987 said:
I'd definitely say Stanford MIT and Duke are all harder to get into than Brown or Penn, and probably med school overall too.
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And that from a guy with a UNC avatar! (Go to Hell Carolina, Go to Hell!)

But yeh, I'd agree. I think just the uniqueness of their regions for Stanford and Duke would be a reason that they are harder to get into than Brown or Penn. (and MIT has a rather unique factor of being mainly known for science and engineering and such)
 
I was accepted to 2 "Top 20" universities for undergrad, we shall see what happens with med school. I would say getting accepted at a med school is more difficult just because of the foresight you must have and the sheer amount of work it requires you to go through to even be considered for admission.
 
I say getting into med school is more difficult. I was accepted to a couple top 20s in HS (I'm counting UC Berkeley as a top 20 dammit) and I thought that was much easier to do than med school. But I was a much stronger applicant, numbers wise, in HS than I was for med school, so who knows. I just REALLY had to work for the med school acceptances. The college acceptances came naturally.
 
parto123 said:
Ivy college. This isnt even close. The majority of medical students didn't or couldn't get accepted to any ivys for college. Remember, as difficult as med school admissions is, ultimately, around 50% of applicants are accepted.

This isn't to say that everyone at ivy colleges can get accepted to med school, as we know, many cant. But this is usually result of the student plateauing in highschool, or just otherwise ****ing up in college.
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An old roomate once used that reasoning to get a nonsense conclusion. He maintained that it was harder to get into vet school because the vet school acceptance rate was lower :laugh:. I showed him the average matriculate MCAT score and GPA, and mentioned "self-selection." He didn't get it.
 
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For me, getting into med school has been significantly harder than getting into an IVY for undergrad.

They're two different beasts though, and very difficult to compare. Additionally, if you have a supported opinion on this, then you obviously went to or got into an IVY. Going to a IVY can than make getting into med school harder...for me that was the case.
 
harposnarpo said:
An old roomate once used that reasoning to get a nonsense conclusion. He maintained that it was harder to get into vet school because the vet school acceptance rate was lower :laugh:. I showed him the average matriculate MCAT score and GPA, and mentioned "self-selection." He didn't get it.
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You misunderstand me. Im not comparing med school acceptance rate to ivy ug acceptance rate, what im doing is comparing med school applicants when they applied to college vs when they applied to med school. Among this pool of applicants, a higher percentage of them were accepted to med school (50%) than were accepted, or had the numbers to be accepted to ivy colleges. To put another way, medical school applicants have a lower average SAT, then the average SAT for any IVY or other top 10-15 college.

Another interesting stat is that the overwhelming majority of ivy students, who apply, get accepted to medical school.
 
What up doc said:
i would think (harvard, princeton, yale,)>>med skool>>(brown, columbia, penn)>>stanford, mit, duke>>(darthmouth, cornell)>>evertthing else
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Dear god. You think Penn and Brown are harder to get into than MIT? What are you on?

At the end of the day all of the schools you've listed are good schools, who cares about slight differences in admit rates?
 
Different populations entirely applying to med school and UG. Different sizes, stats, interests, etc. No comparison.
 
For me, definitely med school. I got into 4 Top 20 UG schools (2 in Top 10), and this is my 2nd time applying to med school.

If you got into a top UG, did a tough major like engineering and got your a** whooped, then going to med school is tough.

It would have been much easier had I gone to an easy UG, rocked everyone else and gone to med school.
 
CoolSpot7Up said:
For me, definitely med school. I got into 4 Top 20 UG schools (2 in Top 10), and this is my 2nd time applying to med school.

If you got into a top UG, did a tough major like engineering and got your a** whooped, then going to med school is tough.

It would have been much easier had I gone to an easy UG, rocked everyone else and gone to med school.
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You may be right, but if you google it you will find that around 85%- 90% of all ivy applicants who apply get accepted to med school. For Harvard, Yale Princeton and Brown (? yes brown), it ranges from 90-96% and for the rest its in the 80s%. Also, ivy college students applying to med school have higher average MCATs than the average medical students.
 
Last I checked you didn't need to take the MCAT to get into an IVY leauge. I would love to see what a high school senior that rocked the SAT could get for an MCAT score. Do you think they could break 30? I doubt it.
 
i would think harvard med is harder to get into than harvard undergrad (and the % acceptance rates for both tend to supporr that). I could probably make a similar statement about every top undergrad school that also has a great med school.

in general, i think med school is probably easier to get into than like a top five undergrad but both types are still incredibly competitive.
 
A school's medical school is always harder to get into than their respective undergrads.

And a school's medical school is also harder to get into than undergrads of schools a tier above them.
 
med school is definately harder to get into, but you can apply to several dozen med schools while you could only apply to one Harvard.
 
Haha, then you have the horror stories of 4.0, 40+, good extracurriculars getting into nowhere. Personality plays a big role in medical school admissions. You can be a jackass, look good on paper, and be accepted into a top undergrad.
 
FeralisExtremum said:
For admission to med school I would say a 4.0 gpa, 40+ mcat, and decent amount of volunteering/research would almost guarantee you admission somewhere
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No it will not. You also need 3 really good letters of recommendation from your professors, amongst other things.

seraph524 said:
Haha, then you have the horror stories of 4.0, 40+, good extracurriculars getting into nowhere. Personality plays a big role in medical school admissions. You can be a jackass, look good on paper, and be accepted into a top undergrad.
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Exactly, these stories are too common.
 
A good LOR is usually from someone who knows you very well, preferably 2+ years, either in a research or a volunteering setting. If you have to get one from a class, make sure its a small class, and you have done exceptionally well. Don't even bother trying to get a LOR from a 500+ person class. The professors at my school won't even write one in those instances.
 
FeralisExtremum said:
hmm...how does one acquire a "really good" LOR? most of my professors seem interested in bailing out of class as soon as lecture's over...
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you have to know them on a personal basis, as well as ace their course (although there can be exceptions). go to the professor's office and talk about stuff relating to the course with genuine interest, ask them questions about their research, why they picked their field, talk about your own career aspirations, etc.

After the course, TA for them or do research for them. Be a Great Student. You'll get an amazing LOR from them when the time comes. Whereas, a lukewarm LOR can kill you.
 
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seraph524 said:
A good LOR is usually from someone who knows you very well, preferably 2+ years, either in a research or a volunteering setting. If you have to get one from a class, make sure its a small class, and you have done exceptionally well. Don't even bother trying to get a LOR from a 500+ person class. The professors at my school won't even write one in those instances.
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You have to get at least two from classes.
 
From what my premed advisers say most people might want to look into getting more than that though. They say that you should have at least three letters from graded experiences and at least two of those from science or engineering professors. (and they recomend that either all three are from classes you have taken or one of them can be from a graded reasearch position)

I think that these aren't hard an fast rules for all med schools but from what I understand schools really want them to be from graded experiences.

Again this is just what my undergraduate school says.
 
I hear ya, thats what I originally thought too, that I needed letters from classes, like a couple of science classes and at least one nonscience class. However, I ended up sending 5 letters, of which only one was a graded class, and it was a science at that. I had 2 research letters, 1 volunteer letter, and 1 TA letter. I think they are more suggestions than explicit rules.

However, I do know that some schools do require at least 1 class letter. University of Michigan comes to mind...
 
JSB235 said:
Last I checked you didn't need to take the MCAT to get into an IVY leauge. I would love to see what a high school senior that rocked the SAT could get for an MCAT score. Do you think they could break 30? I doubt it.
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What about the fact that on average ivy college students applying to medical school do better on the MCAT than the average actual med students.
 
Actually, there are two Harvard med schools...NP and HST 😉
 
I personally think getting into the top 20 undergrad would be easier with the work ethic that you develop over the years in undergrad (for med school).

Basically: I have to work extremely hard to get the grades in college required for med school.

If I had that work ethic in high school, I would be top of my class, no doubt. College is a whole 'nother level compared to high school.

That being said: I goofed off my high school years and didnt make it into any ivy- suprisingly, but I wouldn't have it otherwise. Your teens are about having fun, not sitting inside and studying away your teen years. =)
 
.
 
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Green Apple said:
What do you think?
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am i the only one who initially thought the OP meant ivy league undergrad or ivy league med school?? lol

at any rate, you really cant compare the two (ivy or top 20 UG to medical school in general). you are comparing two vastly different applicant pools.
 
Most of you people are absolutely ****ing ******ed.
 
what is the point of this thread? what useful information could you possibly get out of it?
 
I think medical school is a lot tougher because I got into med school and didn't even apply to an ivy UG. Therefore, since med school is harder I would've easily been accepted to Harvard. In light of that fact, I am placing Harvard graduate on all my resumes.
 
Dulcina said:
what is the point of this thread? what useful information could you possibly get out of it?
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Uhh, not every thread has to have useful information. I personally find the discussion pretty interesting. You knew exactly what the thread was about from the title, so why click on it and read the posts if you think its worthless?
 
Comparing a few schools to an entire class of schools? That's not comparing apples to oranges. It's comparing apples to orange groves.
 
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