Are there any school/GPA equivalencies? E.g. it is tempting to suspect that a 2.5 GPA at MIT might be equivalent to a 3.8 GPA from DeVry in terms of the necessary knowledge, skills, and effort to achieve it once one is already in a program. Has anyone done any sort of formal equivalency mapping? Is this sort of comparison even meaningful?
What you want is someone who: 1) does the procedure regularly and 2) has a good recovery rate. Surgery is an area where familiarity counts, where range of experience counts - and where survival rates, rates of complications, and completeness of recovery really matter. If those numbers were good, for the procedure that I needed, I would not give a damn about class standing.
Well I know of one law firm here in Kansas City where they will only look to hire the top 10% of Podunk U while they will accept any graduate of Harvard or Yale law school.
2nd place is the first loser.
“I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”
As long as we’re using analogies from sport, let’s look at bicycle racers: …The first 3 guys to cross the finish line get special awards , but the rest of the pack (called the peleton) is recognized as one single unit— in which everyone is equal.
That is all logical and all and how one should look at it (hey, at least you made it there). But down deep that person still knows they lost the race. ad actually the Olympics is worse because your whole country sees you coming in last behind several other countries, some whom they hate.
Its like going to the Super Bowl, but still losing. Like the Buffalo Bills that made it to the SB I think for 4 years but still never won.
Yes, but what I was getting at is that there are only maybe ten schools with the reputation of Harvard or Yale where the degree will get you in the door almost anywhere - regardless of class ranking. Somewhere below that it becomes much more regional. In the Twin Cities, you don’t want to have gone to Hamline, but St. Thomas is pretty good. If you want to get a JD in the Twin Cities and then look for work outside the Twin Cities, you want the University of Minnesota (top 50 nationally) - not St. Thomas.
Within the Twin Cities, someone who graduates from the top of their class from Billy Mitchell could conceivably be better positioned than someone at the bottom from St. Thomas, even though St. Thomas has a better ranked law school.
(Or, if your kid gets accepted to Stanford or MIT, do what you need to do to get him there, but with the exception of a handful of schools - the school itself isn’t enough to make up for being lousy at what you do).
I don’t know about Wharton, but I do about Harvard. A colleague of mine had a Peirce instructorship there around 1990 and the chair told him that life would be much easier if he gave no mark below B+ and that any lower mark would require a report on the reasons. I guess that explains how W has degrees from Yale and Harvard.
If by “probably more commonly” you mean “absolutely always is,” then you are correct.
I don’t know whether to love you or hate you, Mr. Nylock!
I have played many video games in my misspent youth (in the midwest). The only one I could play so well, that I could get bored or simply run out of time to play wa Spy Hunter (the original top down view game). It was My Game; after a few weeks, I never saw anybody play better than me. But still, I hardly ever cracked the top ten.
I could never understand this! But now I know the truth! It was you, Mr. Nylock, roaming the country, posting high scores in the dark of night, then leaving the rest of us rubes to puzzle this out!
Congratulations to you, Mr. Nylock, for enjoying and beating such a wonderful game! 
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
As many have stated before, in every group, someone will be best and someone will be worst. It may be difficult to distinguish between the strengths of the very best, especially in complex abilities that have many facets, like brain surgery and rocket science, and like much of the other stuff everyone else does.
Many good doctors are under-valued and many poor doctors are over-valued, especially in the judgements of patients (who overvalue bedside manner) and administrators (who value revenue generation).
And it is unfortunately true that some poor performers can slip through to graduation- they may not even be on the bottom of their class, if they are sufficiently charming or well connected.
There was a ***rumor ***at my school of a well connected student who was graduated on the explicit promise that they would not actually practice medicine.
Principal Skinner: Mmmm, Brown. Heckuva school. Weren’t you at Brown, Otto?
Otto: Yup. Almost got tenure, too.