> I would occasionally bump into them when they were about to graduate and I was frequently shocked when they told me stuff like, "Yeah. I'm going to Harvard Med" (or some other illustrious program) and I would think to myself, "You were a good student, but I knew undergrads at my state school who were just as good. And Harvard Med didn't even given them an _interview_."
1. I am not sure what you taught and how much access you had to their application/portfolio, but you are probably not seeing some significant part of the picture. “Being a good student” is table stakes for Harvard Med, not an endearing application quality.
2. The student in question almost certainly has some serious research under their belt — Harvard Med can be somewhat snobby about this. Can you say the same about the applicants from your undergrad school who didn’t get an interview?
3. The goal of admitting someone to Harvard Med isn’t having them excel at Harvard Med — it’s having them succeed as significant researchers in the medical field after they graduate from Harvard Med. Do you think that the students from your undergrad could do this? Do you think that they aim to? FWIW, one weakness of a lot of applicants to places like Harvard Med is that they aim too low. If they just want to be a great general physician, Harvard Med is not the place for them.
Fwiw, I do think that there are some students at state schools (esp. good large ones like Texas and Michigan) who would would excel at an elite school doctoral program, MD program, etc. Many of them self-select out for a number of reason (e.g., geography, anti-elitism, path of least resistance, career goals not aligned with elite education, etc.), but some do go and succeed.
That said, the number who think they could succeed is much greater than the number who could and the number who actually do. There are often entire elements of their field that they don’t even comprehend.
