81% of pre-med students accepted to med school

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Of the 319 applicants to medical schools over the past eight years, an average of 81% were accepted.

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<p>This is from a letter from the University of Scranton that i received in the mail with an application. Is anyone else surprised by this number? I did the math and approximately 40 would apply to med school and 32 would be accepted. I know Scranton is a good school, but I'm still very surprised by this fact. Is anyone familiar with other schools' pre-med accepted to med school stats?</p>

<p>Comments?</p>

<p>Med school acceptance rate statistics are not the best way to judge a school's premed program. I'm not saying Scranton does this, but some schools are known to screen applicants and only send their school's premed committe recomendation letter for studetns who stand a good chance at gaining acceptances to med schools. What it also doesn't tell you is how nice Scranton is towards premeds. It might have had over a thousand students enter the school in the past 8 years thinking they were premed but dropped due to low grades or difficulty of the program. It might also have had only 400 students enter in the past 8 years who thought they were premed and less than 100 dropped which would make the school very conducive to those wishing to go on to med school. Another thing that is not clear from your post is how many students applied directly after undergrad and how many took a year or two off to do research or other things to supplement their applications.</p>

<p>the thread should have been titled "81% of med school applicants..." </p>

<p>I don't attend Scranton nor do I know much about it. I was just surprised by the fact on the letter. I wasn't trying to advertise Scranton or anything lmao. I was just trying to find some explanation for the stat and you gave a good response, thanks.</p>

<p>Some schools pre-select candidates to apply to med school, to keep their numbers up. Maybe Scranton only allowed certain candidates to apply, knowing that any more would be likely rejected.</p>

<p>Maybe they're doing something magical down there at Scranton, flying under the radar but churning out an impressive number of med school admits. Or maybe they're tilting the field so only the strongest apply. I'll bet on the latter.</p>

<p>To nobody's surprise, Scranton has a Health Professions Evaluation Committee which supplies a letter to the med schools for each applicant who requests one. See The</a> University of Scranton Programs of Study: Pre-Medical Program Many large publics don't offer the committee letter, but if it is available med schools require you to submit it. </p>

<p>So its easy to understand how Scranton can do so well. At the application stage you need to get the letter, and for many kids I'm sure it results into a chat with a sad-faced advisor who says the college is going to put them down as "recommended with reservations" or even worse as "not recommended". With either of those, if you're smart enough to be premed you're smart enough to know that applying is futile. It's interesting to note that nowhere on their website do they list the number of kids applying to med school specifically so you can't gauge how many Scranton kids apply compared to kids at similarly sized schools. And being a small college with advisors and personal attention, it would be easy to head off aspiring premeds at a much earlier stage; a poor grade or two in a required premed class and your advisor will probably "help" you refocus your career goals. </p>

<p>In short, too many colleges nobody has ever heard of but with amazing admit rates use them to lure students in with the implied promise the school knows how to do something special to get kids into med school. I think Amherst (a school with an legitimately impressive admit rate, mainly because just to get into Amherst you got to be pretty top-notch to begin with) says it best in their FAQ
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Amherst College has no magic touch that automatically elevates a student's chances of entering medical school simply by virtue of the student's coming to Amherst; no college or university has that kind of magic touch. What does elevate a student's chances is to go to an institution (1) that energizes and challenges that particular student academically, while providing good teaching and academic support so the student can meet the challenge satisfactorily; and (2) that provides opportunities for accomplishment and leadership in extracurricular areas. Of course the student must take advantage of these educational and extracurricular opportunities - in the end it's the student's accomplishments that count, not the name of the institution.
Amherst</a> College Premedical Guide

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I'd recommend anyone thinking of premed read thru the FAQ, its loaded with great advice.</p>

<p>Good link, mikemac. I've seem some schools tell you the acceptance rates of "committee supported current UG students" (usually very high) and "un-supported current undergraduates". Not so high. I've seen some break it down further segregating out alumni apps. Know what you're reading. Look for the tricks (that's what they are IMO). Remember, it's been proven time and again that 89% of all statistics are a lie more than 50% of the time. ;)</p>

<p>There is probably some sort of selection/bottlenecking going on. Scranton has around 1000 students per graduating class. Schools like Harvard, JHU, etc. are a bit larger (at around 1500 students). Harvard and JHU produce around 300 med school applicants per year while Scranton averages 40 med school applicants, a very low number.</p>

<p>also, schools like harvard and jhu would have stats like 95% of students are accepted to one of their top 3 choices for med school. Scranton says 81% of their students get accepted to at least 1 school. But yeah, 40 apps a year for a school that size sounds really low.</p>

<p>^Nobody has stats like that. Harvard College doesn't even get 95% of its kids into med school at all.</p>

<p>bdm, you must have misunderstood. The poster said HARVARD. The one in Cambridge. ;)</p>

<p>? harvard college IS in Cambridge, MA...are you thinking he said haverford college instead of harvard, or did i just mistakenly point out what i thought was a mistake in pointing out another mistake?</p>

<p>Actually Harvard pretty much does have 95% who went to undergrad and apply for med school succeed. Well, okay, not exactly 95%; it was 93% last year.

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Recently, I was at a meeting for Boston-area health professions advisors, and a couple folks from the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) were discussing med school applicant data. I don't think any of this should necessarily inform an individual student's decision-making around medicine but it is interesting nonetheless.</p>

<p>What pleasantly surprised me is the data on re-applicants (meaning students who apply but are not admitted the first time). Of those applicants who applied only once, 48% were admitted (this is the national average; Harvard's was 93% last year).
harvardocs</a> blog

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<p>Yeah, there's no doubt Harvard does very, very well. It's full of very smart kids, after all. But when 93% are getting into medical school, it's not the case that 95% of them are getting into one of their top-three choices.</p>

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Harvard College doesn't even get 95% of its kids into med school at all

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On other comment I'd like to make about this. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is on shaky grounds these days. But I still believe there's a grain of truth in it, that the language we use to describe things affects how we think about them.</p>

<p>And so to say "Harvard gets" implies at some level that its Harvard doing the getting. Which leads to posts like the one that started this thread; when you see some unknown school with an amazing success record, have you found a gem the rest of the world has overlooked? </p>

<p>I think the truth is that the competition for admission to the undergrad programs of the top schools is so tough that you have to be a sharp cookie who's also involved and an achiever outside of the classroom. These kids just have to keep doing what they've been doing and they'll be the top applicants to grad schoools. As Harvard itself says
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How many Harvard students does Harvard get into medical school each year?</p>

<p>The real answer is:....zero. Harvard does not get anyone into medical school; students are accepted to medical school based on their personal qualities, academic skills, experience, and motivation.
OCS-Students:</a> Career Areas / Health and Medicine / FAQ

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<p>While you're being a little finicky, you're of course correct.</p>

<p>Talk about being finicky... </p>

<p>The point is that Harvard is among the top universities in the country that place their premeds in their TOP 3 choices. That makes the exact percentage irrelevant.</p>

<p>Also, 93% accepted total vs 95%....What's the big difference there?..Top five in the country in admissions... and that's the point to take home.</p>

<p>Of course Harvard is an excellent place, partly because it's full of excellent students. But to say that 95% of their kids get a top-three choice makes the medical school application process seem like less of a challenge than it actually is. The difference between 93 and 95% is trivial; the difference between at-all and top-three-choices is not.</p>

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And so to say "Harvard gets" implies at some level that its Harvard doing the getting. Which leads to posts like the one that started this thread; when you see some unknown school with an amazing success record, have you found a gem the rest of the world has overlooked? </p>

<p>I think the truth is that the competition for admission to the undergrad programs of the top schools is so tough that you have to be a sharp cookie who's also involved and an achiever outside of the classroom. These kids just have to keep doing what they've been doing and they'll be the top applicants to grad schoools.

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<p>Exactly right. In other words, if you take the 93% who get accepted, reverse-engineer time and take away their Harvard acceptances and send them all to the local state school instead, these are people who would get into medical school anyway.</p>

<p>I think a lot of people on CC really, really underestimate the fact that med schools pull from all different kinds of backgrounds, and that the kid from Local State College and the kid from Harvard Undergrad are going to sit together in med school and be equal from day one anyway.</p>

<p>jesus christ, did someone honestly critique the fact that I put 95 instead of 93? That's absurd.</p>

<p>Also, I'm not saying they get into a top 3 school, just one of THEIR top 3 schools. At a lot of schools, the pre-med advisers stress that you don't rank your schools until you get decisions. At that point, it's pretty easy to make your top ranking schools only the ones you've got into (i.e. 5/20 schools you applied to are scattered in the top 10, but you can't really decide which 3 are your top 3. If you get into 2 of the 5, those two could become "your top two choices"), and then at the end of the year, when the advisers give out the survey asking "are you attending one of your top 3 medical schools?" the kids can answer yes.</p>

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At a lot of schools, the pre-med advisers stress that you don't rank your schools until you get decisions. At that point, it's pretty easy to make your top ranking schools only the ones you've got into (i.e. 5/20 schools you applied to are scattered in the top 10, but you can't really decide which 3 are your top 3. If you get into 2 of the 5, those two could become "your top two choices"), and then at the end of the year, when the advisers give out the survey asking "are you attending one of your top 3 medical schools?" the kids can answer yes.

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If that's how you are reading the question, then I think you are low on the percentage. The number would be 100%. But it would be that same number at South Dakota State. The number would be meaningless marketing drivel.</p>