Comments on: What Do Schools Sell?

By: cwillu

cwillu — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:24:37 +0000

Wrong right/write, second sentence of the last paragraph.

By: retired urologist

retired urologist — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:00:31 +0000

@diogenes:

Here are the stats for all USA med schools for 2007. The numbers are by state of residency, rather than by school, but almost half of the applicants get in somewhere. I think the confusion about the high applicant to matriculant ratio is based on an average of over 13 applications per student. Since each can only go to one school, that means that an average of 12 applications per student go for naught, even if the student is accepted.

USA: 42,315 applied, 17,759 matriculated (42% got in somewhere)

Residents of West Virginia had highest rate of matriculation: 58%
Residents of New Hampshire had lowest rate of matriculation:33%

National ratio of applicants to matriculations: 1.4:1
LA (my current state of residence) ratio of applicants to matriculations: 0.95:1 (more likely to get in than not)

Here’s the Web site.

There are no published statistics that I could find that allow us to say how many applicants actually are accepted at the “top” medical schools in order to reach their capacity. We only know how many applied and how many matriculated at that school. In top undergraduate schools, it is not unusual for only 10% of the accepted applicants to attend that school. With the tuition at state medical schools typically being 10% -15% that of top private schools (for essentially the same education and certainly the same union card), I suspect many of the qualified applicants to the top schools don’t actually plan to attend even if they are accepted.

Note: Medical College of Georgia $4334; Harvard $39,800 (although actual students tell me their obligation is closer to $60,000).

By: diogenes

diogenes — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:27:25 +0000

@retired urologist: Medicine has defintiely lost its prestige, but I don’t think its due to lack of competition to get into medical school. US News still reports low single digit admission rates to top medical schools (< 5%), and I can’t somehow seeing it magically being 50% even for the bottom 25 programs, just because many people do wind up going to the Carribean. In my limited experience, at least part of the problem is due to health care economists who devised the lovely reimbursement scheme that devalues physician time (and hence the physician-patient relationship) and over-values marginally useful procedures. Of course that’s only part of the problem. Then on top of things, those brilliant economists placed well thought out incentives to make sure the proceduralist doesn’t follow the patient he/she intervened on because it isn’t “economic”.

By: retired urologist

retired urologist — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:24:32 +0000

The public knows that “prestige” schools have far more applicants per available positions. The admissions departments at some top schools claim that their entire entering class could be chosen from applicants with perfect SAT scores, if they so desired, or with valedictorians only. Consequently, attending such a school tells everyone that you are smart. Medical school was this way during the Viet Nam war era, when most schools had hundreds of applicants for each spot, down to the military deferment that accompanied admission. Today, many medical schools accept over half their applicants, so this is another reason that medicine’s prestige factor is dropping.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:15:51 +0000

Emotional intelligence is an even better indicator of success in school.

By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:42:49 +0000

In the U.S., at least, use of IQ testing as a hiring criterion was found by courts to be illegal discrimination against minorities and thus a violation of the Civil Rights Act. (Or so I heard; I could be wrong.)

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:37:00 +0000

However, given the historical use of culturally-biased “intelligence” metrics to prop up pseudo-scientific racism, the touchiness is understandable, if regrettable.
Was that actually the case? I know there was supposed to be some question on an SAT about regattas and oarsmen, but I don’t know if I’ve yet heard of a test that was found to have poor predictive validity for certain cultures it was intended to test. The Nazis actually prohibited intelligence testing, so I think racism can hold its own quite well without such tests.

By: a soulless automaton

a soulless automaton — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:02:55 +0000

To expand on what Jayson Virissimo said…

IQ, and the assumptions the concept (it is assumed) carries of inborn “general intelligence” are not so much academically unfashionable as politically radioactive, largely because of issues surrounding correlations between racial background and measured intelligence–African folks score poorly while Asians and Jews (hi, Eliezer!) score well and really, nobody wants to even consider dealing with it to the point that they will aggressively ignore the entire concept of IQ and anything that sounds like it. However, given the historical use of culturally-biased “intelligence” metrics to prop up pseudo-scientific racism, the touchiness is understandable, if regrettable.

Therefore, any highly g-loaded test that doesn’t look like it’s measuring intelligence is much, much safer.

By: Jayson Virissimo

Jayson Virissimo — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:29:03 +0000

“I am given to understand that IQ is the strongest predictor of academic and career performance, and yet IQ Tests are usually *not* required or even accepted by Universities/grad programs. Is there a good reason for this? Or is caring about native intelligence academically unfashionable?” -Anon

The GRE is highly correlated with IQ test scores, but doesn’t have the same stigma.

By: diogenese

diogenese — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:26:56 +0000

I agree that there really is a threshold effect for school — if you attend a major research university — and there are probably at least 100 good ones in the U.S. — you are going to get a decent education if you want one. What you are buying by going to MIT or Stanford is prestige, networking with other high status people, and the possibility to start a career in academia. The latter is the only real contribution to education. The other are more just resume filtering features.
Gladwell makes this same point in Outliers.