2010-2011 Med school applicants and their parents

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
441

<p>Really interesting conversation you guys have going on, Kristin and BDM. I think this is somewhat applicable to me as well.</p>

<p>I’m with you, Kristin, in that I don’t really have a nuanced way to apply. To me, the schools where pre-meds have the greatest chance to get in by far are their state schools, unless they have some kind of unique hook elsewhere (parents are faculty at the school, etc.). Other schools outside of that, top privates and OOS publics, all seem to have abysmal acceptance rates for OOS students. So, I applied mostly top privates and schools where I think I have a unique hook at, such as MCG, WUSTL, and Emory.</p>

<p>Since my original list, I added some schools which I think could be good fitting my profile. I am a 3.9+GPA, 37 Mcat male applicant from Georgia with extensive research but no pubs, extensive volunteering and leadership, and a semester of shadowing.</p>

<p>How do these schools I recently added look: U of Alabama at Birmingham, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Southern California.</p>

<p>I applied to UNC because it is close to the South. Their OOS numbers are low, but I hope being from Georgia could help me out a bit. I applied to UAB because it is a solid school, is 2/3 hours away from where I live, and I heard they are trying to be a more nationally recognized research institute and are thus accepting more OOS applicants. I applied to USC because I think my stats are competitive, and they seem to accept a lot of OOS applicants. I think being from the east coast might hurt me though.</p>

<p>So the final list of “real applications” according to BDM’s terminology is MCG, Emory, WUSTL, UAB, USC (maybe), Wake Forrest (maybe). Is this a good list?</p>

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<p>I like UA-B as a med school. My D visited on research trips and was impressed. I don’t know OOS numbers but if they are in play for an OOS student, certainly apply. </p>

<p>I think more mid to low tier privates for kristin and lollybo and then those few OOS publics that take a decent number of applicants at your stat level. </p>

<p>lollybo, UVa and Pitt need to be on your list IMO.</p>

<p>kristin, is Creighton on your list?</p>

<p>Both could add Tulane. Maybe Miami.</p>

<p>BTW, I’m just thinking out loud. I haven’t researched these “suggestions”. Just throwing them out there.</p>

443

<p>mcat2

</p>

<p>Clinical experience is perhaps one of the most important (the most?) aspects of an application. Schools seek students who have been exposed to the reality of medicine and who are familiar with the commitment that is required. Any experience that involves direct patient care (like working in a hospital) is ideal. We need to be prepared to discuss the experience during interviews, etc. </p>

<p>The lack of any shadowing whatsoever may be noticed by adcoms, but if your son has “played” the hospital experience well in the apps, that will definitely help him.</p>

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<p>curm, </p>

<p>Miami is partially subsidized by the state and Florida residents are given preference in admissions decisions. U of Florida and Miami are the two top med schools in the state (ranked at 48-50 USNews) and in addition they are very popular. Florida because is cheaper and Miami because, well… it is Miami :)</p>

445

<p>What about the Chicago schools? Rush? Rosalind Franklin? If Loyola is on kristin’s list, there may be something there to look at.</p>

446

<p>D. is bombarded by emails from various Med. schools after being verified. She is happy to see that one of them is on her list, gives her more hope, although it is probably just computer generated email.</p>

447

<p>lollybo, curm once posted that USC requires a lot of humanity hours. Since you went to a school that requires many core education courses (I would guess so, as most top private colleges would use AP/IB courses for the placement purpose only), instead of allowing their students to AP out many of their core education requirements, I think you may have met USC’s special humanity course hours requirements. But I just bring it up here so you can double-check it. DS did not apply there as he is allergic to any california schools. (“There are already too many California applicants. Give myself and them a break!” – Why did he apply to tufts which has way too many applicants also? It is just because some one he knows went there. Not a very logical decision to me.)</p>

<p>I also notice that many medical schools in the midwest require psychology courses, or can take one semester of orgo and then need to supplement it with one semester of biochem. (It is OK to take two semesters of orgo without taking biochem.) This is a big no-no for medical schools elsewhere.</p>

<p>Hmm…I am thinking of asking DS to add U. of Alabama. But he may not listen to me as there are already too many secondaries.</p>

448

<p>I have a ton of humanities courses under my belt, I think meeting USC’s requirement will be no problem. Thanks for the heads up.</p>

449

<p>Basically, to count as what I call a “legitimate” application, a school needs to be approximately in range numbers-wise and not have a uniquely abysmal admissions percentage.</p>

<p>OOS publics never count – the sole exception is if you’re on track for Michigan’s auto-invite.</p>

450

<p>Okay, Mike et. al., would you be up for critiquing this group as “legitimate” schools? All numbers are from the 2010-2011 AMCAS which uses 2008 accepted class numbers. </p>

<p>As a reminder, my MCAT=30S (9/11/10) & both GPAs=3.8 (and some change…3.82? 3.84? depends on AMCAS). Would be happy to elaborate on ECs etc, but that information is already available on this thread, probably 10+ pages back.</p>

<p>Mizzou: MCAT=31 (28-36) and GPA=3.8 (3.4-4.0); 447 applicants, 215 interviews, 80 acceptances from Missouri. </p>

<p>SLU: MCAT=32 (28-36) and GPA=3.7 (3.4-4.0); 370 applicants, 110 interviews, 45 acceptances from Missouri.</p>

<p>Loyola: MCAT=31 (28-36) and GPA=3.6 (3.2-3.9); 8700 applicants (!!), 400 interviews, 80 acceptances from non-Illinois applicants.</p>

<p>Creighton: MCAT=31 (28-34) and GPA=3.7 (3.4-3.9); 5300 applicants, 530 interviews, 110 acceptances from non-Nebraska applicants. </p>

<p>Right now, this would only mean adding Creighton to my list, bringing it to 12, which is still manageable in my opinion. Assuming these types of schools are more what you meant, any other thoughts on what to add? (Curm, I’ll check into Rush & Franklin)</p>

<p>I bet I could handle 2 more–bringing my total to 13 (will likely remove Yale)–which is a number I’m still comfortable with. That would mean my finalized list would be:</p>

<p>Boston, Creighton, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Iowa, Loyola, Mayo, Mizzou, Northwestern, SLU, ???, ???.</p>

<p>I would perhaps break them down like this:</p>

<p>Legitimate=Mizzou, SLU, Loyola, Creighton, ???, ???
Reaches=Georgetown, Boston, Iowa
Super reaches=Harvard, Duke, Northwestern, Mayo</p>

<p>If pressed for a prediction, I bet I could pick up a couple of acceptances from legitimate pile and perhaps one from the reach/super reach pile. </p>

<p>Feedback is more than appreciated!</p>

451

<p>Mizzou (~20%) and SLU (~12%), as always, look like good choices. And you’re doing a good job of picking schools that are numerically in range.</p>

<p>The problem, as always, remains these admissions percentages. Creighton is 2%, and Loyola is less than 1%. If you’re an amazing candidate, then your odds will be… 5x? For 10% and 5% – that’s just not going to be enough, at the end of the day, to generate a reliable spread for you.</p>

<p>Like I said, all of my school-specific information is a little outdated by now, but you have to chase strong percentages. (1) Apply to every single medical school in Missouri other than WUSTL. (2) Chase the percentages: I’m sure there are bunches of private schools that are good matches for your statistics and have strong admissions percentages – or at least better than 2%.</p>

<p>Maybe somebody with a USN or MSAR can help me out here – Tufts? Wake Forest? Tulane? NYMS? NYU? UMiami? I don’t know much about these programs, but surely we can find three or four with an OOS admissions percentage above 6% and an MCAT score around 30.</p>

452

<p>Are the “optional” secondary questions truly optional?</p>

453

<p>

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<p>Yes! Don’t answer them if they don’t apply or you don’t have anything good to put down - I guarantee you it won’t work against you if you don’t answer them. No one wants to read more of those essays.</p>

454

<p>This is what U Miami says on their secondary:
"The Miller School of Medicine has a new policy of sending secondary applications to all US citizens and permanent residents who submit an AMCAS application. It will be the applicant’s decision whether to fill out the secondary application and submit it. In this regard, all applicants should remember that our last three entering classes had an average undergraduate cumulative **GPA of 3.7, a science GPA of 3.6, and an average MCAT composite score between 31 and 32. To be truly competitive potential applicants should have credentials comparable to those of our most recent classes. **</p>

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<p>

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<p>Why wouldn’t they be? I do not think that admission committees would be that machiavellian to list an “optional” essay to see who answers it and who doesn’t, and take that into consideration for admissions.</p>

<p>If they really wanted something extra, they would list it as Essay # 5 Open Topic Essay. Don’t you think?</p>

456

<p>Kristin</p>

<p>Without reading back through 10+ pages to look for your ECs, I’m going to agree with BDM and posture that your chances at Harvard, Duke, Georgetown and Mayo are not worth the effort and that you should be focusing more on true matches. Keep Northwestern as a reach and maybe add Pitt as well. I agree with BDM and others who have suggested more privates and/or state schools with better OOS chances like UVA or the Texas schools that have 10% OOS.</p>

<p>Georgetown has far too many applicants and one well guarded fact is that a good many of their acceptances are “connected” leaving the remaining pool of available spots extraordinarily competitive. The 30 MCAT will work against you at Harvard, Duke and Mayo (unless you are a URM) despite your very high GPAs. </p>

<p>The process is long and tedious…work and apply smartly it will payoff in the end.</p>

457

<p>Alrighty guys, I need some help crunching numbers. After doing some calculations by going through the MSAR, things just look absolutely dismal, with most schools at <2% acceptances. THEN I realized that I was looking at “matriculants” not “acceptances” and figured that perhaps that was negatively impacting my calculations (fingers crossed!) If that’s the case, and the number of acceptances is actually greater than the number of matriculants, is there anywhere out there I can find data about acceptances?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

458

<p>Another question about numbers in the MSAR: does anyone know if the number of applicants is the number of people who submitted primaries or secondaries? My thought here is that if I only have numbers of matriculants and primary applicants, then I might be artificially making my chances much worse than they are in actuality.</p>

<p>Edit: found a partial answer to this question. AMCAS writes that the number of applicants is the number of verified applicants, not initiated applications. I don’t exactly know what that means in terms of “Did the number of people reflected here fill out and submit a secondary, along with all other information, to have files opened and thoroughly considered?”</p>

<p>To eadad: a quick recap of my extracurriculars.
400+ hr shadowing (70% split between 2 doctors for 2 yr each, the rest split between 4 doctors)
100+ hr setting up and running primary care clinics in Costa Rica
500+ hr research at 1 lab (publication in the works)
300+ hr clinical breast cancer research with a doctor I’ve been shadowing for 2 yr
200+ hr volunteering with various organizations
more high quality leadership positions than I have space to list them on my resume
started a health-related non-profit organization (main goal is to improve health literacy of people with low health literacy by attending doctors appointments with them so they aren’t so intimidated in healthcare settings, plus working individually with all agencies that refer patients to us. presented at national and state levels, never heard a negative word about it, all professionals I’ve told about it are thrilled and most want to become a part of it too)
merit scholarships, honor societies, etc, you know the drill. If you’re familiar with it, I’m also a member of MortarBoard–a big honor at my school.
5 out of 8 of my recommenders assure me that mine is one of the strongest letters they’ve written in decades; pre-med committee loves me.</p>

459

<p>bdm:</p>

<p>I can understand the attractiveness of DC (Georgetown) and Boston (BU), but what makes Omaha (Creighton @2%) so attractive? I’ve heard its a really nice town, but…</p>

460

<p>kristin, USNews online is 15 bucks. It gives acceptance data and actual matriculant data for MCAT scores. Also, please remember that MCAT scores for females are more than a full point below males. It will make stat crunching much more bearable (and more accurate) for you. </p>

<p>MSAR data is for accepted students and for many schools is much higher than for matriculants. IMO, it gives a skewed and depressing view of an applicants chances.</p>