No. I don't know where you came up with this, but both GPA and standardized scores are important for any decently competitive college. However, public institutions do tend to place a greater emphasis on objective scores than extracurriculars.
There are certain things that are implied. I apologize for assuming people would pick up on what I was too lazy to flesh out. I'm assuming the person applying didn't fail out of high school and did a little more than just pass. Exceptions are made to the rules all of the time. Having absolutely stellar grades and a low standardized test score is a lot worse than having low grades and a stellar standardized test score. I've heard stories of people and had friends that have gotten acceptance letters that fall under both categories, but the handful of the former is overshadowed by the mountain of the latter. I'm also assuming that the vast majority of people aren't the geniuses you find going to Harvard and winning Nobel prizes. My post was catering to the normal/average person, and I did acknowledge exceptions regarding knowing when different programs were exceptional in the possible advantages for the students that chose to undergo them. Individual majors are also very different from each other even within the same institution. Some of them are much better than others (better funding and/or teachers) or they just have a good track record of getting people into places.
Private institutions tend to be a lot more expensive... UNLESS you get enough scholarships to help you out. Obviously, it will ultimately depend on the individual professor and their personalities, but I've been told by my friends that went to the larger schools as undergrads that some of their professors just didn't care about anyone other than themselves or their research. Some of my friends were supposed to do research with their professors as undergrads and would end up doing nothing but cleaning glassware as the graduate/doctorate students got to do everything... or the little work they did do wasn't anything worth doing. They've also had the experience of going to get advised and being told "My time is too important for undergraduates (and masters students!!!)... get out of my office and go somewhere else"
The smaller'ish private institutions tend to provide more opportunities to get to know your professors, and you get more time to spend more time actually using their resources as opposed to being on the bottom of the list. Being able to get close to your professors in undergrad can be almost as important as doing well on the respective standardized exams. If they don't know you very well it becomes difficult to write a rec letter that's actually worth reading.... and those are really important (especially if those teachers personally know the people you'll be applying to).
I'm not saying that gpa and where you go aren't important. I'm saying that the first thing and the most important thing that most places will look at are your standardized test scores and possibly rec letters. Admissions committees for graduate level education do rank the undergraduate schools that the applicants went to, and they do look at gpa, but those two things only usually hurt you. The admissions committees aren't always intimately familiar with every single class in every single program. They just see trends in which graduates from different schools tend to do better than graduates from others. That being said the things would be tiered (maybe switching one or more)
Standardized Test scores (if you have a 4.0 from Harvard, but have an average test score while someone has a 3.5 but rocked the exam and they're from a no named school.... they really do have a better chance of getting it than you do (often times...unless the people doing the accepting are biased towards Harvard) > interview (you have to have a good test score to get an interview, but the interview may be what wins the fight for you) > rec letters (getting bad letters can and most likely will ruin your chances, but unless they're familiar with letters from that writer they may not win it for you) > GPA > School you got your degree from
I can tell one or more people may disagree with my opinion, but that has been my personal experience and the experience of people I know. My med school teachers now (one went to Harvard! (he was in the next room over when they developed the fluid mosaic model of the cell!!!)) who have been interviewers at multiple schools have also said that's how they went about it at most of the different places. They've also told me that's how residency directors for the majority of specialties here in the US go about filling their slots. There's a reason you'll find a lot of "Just pass" parody songs joking about medical school performance on youtube. Here's where something is supposed to be understood. I'm just assuming you know the hyper competitive specialties like ortho and derm are more competitive and GPA can play a big role in choosing between applicants. I know you probably didn't understand it was supposed to be understood, but hopefully now you understand.
bottom line... Awesome test scores + crappy everything else will, much more often than not, get you what you want than average test score + Awesome everything. (especially when it comes to medical school... it's mostly mcat. I've had friends with 5 years nursing experience, perfect 4.0 after coming back and taking upper level biology courses (3 years worth(a whole BS worth)), making 85th percentile(out of all of the M 1's that took it that year(my undergrad has the ability to give the test to whoever took the class)) on the gross anatomy shelf exam (just isn't the standardized exam they want to see), a crap ton of volunteer work, and they still were told that they couldn't get in b/c their MCAT was too low. (he then made a few points higher and they accepted him)... I've known several people that have made C's and even failed classes that made high on the MCAT that would get in without those grades even being mentioned to them in the interviews or subsequent conversations.
I admit most of what I've said is an over simplification and that not every admissions person/group/committee functions the way I've discussed... but what I have expressed is the general trend. They acknowledge that the same class taught different places or even at the same place by different teachers aren't equivalent. GPA is seen as less reliable, and therefore there can be and often are exceptions made for some people who have relatively low gpa's (as far as general admissions is concerned)...
also, it doesn't have to be popular or prestigious to be a good college. You will often times get just as good or nearly as good an education from professors at junior colleges that are teaching some of the same first and second year classes (not forgetting the lesser known 4 year colleges)
Depends on what you want to do. If you want to go into finance, for example, it certainly helps if your school is a top-ranked feeder to Wall Street.
too lazy to go back and re read everything I've said... but I think I made an exception somewhere for those that just have great success feeding into certain areas... plus, it was another one of those things that was supposed to just be understood. I don't like using absolutes. There are almost always exceptions to almost everything, and I assume people know that. Maybe I'll just stop assuming. I'm just saying that the extent of a lot of people's research into a school doesn't go passed knowing it is difficult to get into. Difficult to get into doesn't always mean it'll help you after you graduate. There are lots of videos on youtube of people supposedly burning their Harvard law degrees... which could be a hoax, but according to the saturation of the law market nowadays it might just not be.
...I apologize... I ramble when I procrastinate histology. IT'S SO BORING!!!!!
