<p>They’re re-applicants who haven’t remedied their deficiencies; lack sufficient medical experience/clinical exposure (didn’t shadow); haven’t demonstrated a strong commitment to medicine (did internships in business of other strongly vocational/career-oriented fields instead of doing medical volunteering); have turned down medical school acceptances previously and so are deemed likely to do so again; they have personality issues (e.g. poor interviewing or other poor interpersonal communication skills); have mediocre, indifferent, weak or just plain bad LORs; lack community service; applied to all reach schools; have physical or mental issues that make them poor candidates (e.g. morbid obesity or illnesses/conditions that may prevent them from fulfilling their clinical duties); have ethical/legal violations (e.g. MIP on their record or academic dishonesty violations); applied to schools which were a mismatch to their career interests; applied to too few schools; applied too late in the cycle; can’t articulate why they want to pursue medicine or are in it for the money and the prestige; wrote just plain ungrammatical or ill-though out Personal Statements…I can think of lots of other things that can go wrong.</p>
<p>Every year you hear about some 4.0 GPA/40 MCAT applicant who gets rejected everywhere. The stories aren’t always apocryphal. </p>
<p>Numbers are important, but they’re not everything…</p>
<p>Perhaps that supports the null hypothesis of your gpa-focus?</p>
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<p>That would be auto-reject; or, more realistically, such high stat students would not even receive an interview at a low-ranked safety school. They won’t waste their time (the med school version of the Tufts syndrome.)</p>
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<p>I have a fact-free theory that med schools do not like engineering types. And another guess is that MIT/Caltech students also tend to apply to MD/PhD programs, which are much more competitive.</p>
<p>A neighbor was a 3.975/44 from one of the afore-mentioned tech schools, and was WL’ed at H.</p>
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<p>Perhaps both studious and responsible, but also politically naive. I know of a California resident, who is graduating from an Ivy this year with a 3.7/39 who is applying to several state public Unis where she will be an auto-reject since they just don’t accept OOS ORMs. Period. A total waste of money for the apps.</p>
<p>I said it before and I’ll say it again: how many of them are out there? I agree that there are some of the rejectees can be explained by naivete or other clear deficiencies in their application. But come on - 20%? Really? That’s a lot. </p>
<p>And besides, while this particular candidate you cite may indeed be wasting money on those particular apps that you cite, I highly doubt that those are the only med-schools she is applying to. Surely she is applying to a number of UC med-schools along with a bevy of private schools as well. And that might even include a number of ‘safeties’ (if such a concept indeed exists with med-schools). Hence, it seems highly likely that she would get in somewhere. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, what is undeniable is that there are still a significant chunk of premeds with solid credentials who are nevertheless not admitted anywhere for entirely mysterious reasons. </p>
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<p>And how many of them do you honest think are out there? Like I said - somebody with top grades and MCAT’s is likely to be a studious and responsible person. Such a person is therefore unlikely to exhibit any of the deficiencies that you cite. Of the 20% of the rejectees within kristin’s category (3.8/30), I would guesstimate that perhaps half of them could be explained by the factors that you cited. But that still leaves a whopping 10% who are rejected for which no readily comprehensible explanation is available. </p>
<p>Now, even if you want to adjust that ‘deficiency rate’ upwards: say, to 75% or even 90% of those rejectees - which I would consider to be an extreme position - that still leaves at the very least 2% of the entire subpopulation who are rejected for no obvious reason. 2%, or 1 out of 50, is still a breathtakingly high rate. If I got into a car accident once out of every 50 times that I drove, even if I was driving responsibly (i.e. no drinking, fully awake, car is well maintained), I would quit driving, for the risk would simply be too high.</p>
ace550, I think you have read it correctly. To make you feel better, if MCAT is bumped up by 5+ points, and GPA stays the same, that is, those who belong to the top 427 applicants club in terms of stats (1280 divided by 3 years), the percentage is increased by only 5%, still having 9% chances to fall through the crack.</p>
<p>med school admission is definitely more than a “GPA/MCAT” game. Lack of any of these can sink you; but having both of these could still sink you if you do not know how to play other parts of the game. How to play these other parts is a million dollar question. Maybe med schools really prefer to take the students who have the stomach to take this level of risk. Just like in investment, no risk, no gain.</p>
Are most med schools in California (esp. the public ones) really like this? If this is true, this is a useful piece of information for many premeds. After all, at some top research med schools (possibly with the exception of those in the heart land), ORMs are likely about 33% to 40% of matriculants. So there must be many ORM premeds also. They may be interested in know this fact for sure so that they will not waste their time and money on this “brutal” state. I thought many med schools in California advertise that even IS applicants are not favored as compared to OOS applicants.</p>
<p>At least I found one counter example: The wife of Facebook’s CEO is an ORM and she was not from California (from MA, I think.) She was just graduated from ucsf. It was reported that she did one year “volunteering type” work in California after she had been graduated from H though. This could be a lesson to those premeds who even try to graduate early from college and get into med school early and think their achievement in academics alone could get them into the med schools. Many top students from top colleges will not make such a “mistake.”</p>
<p>Agree. This became clear during my interview cycle last year. During a panel interview at a top 20 med school, the interviewer asked my student partner point blank: "It is known that engineers do not make good doctors. Why do you think you qualify? (She was from MIT)</p>
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<p>Also agree. I saw it happening very frequently. Definitely the medical school version of the Tufts Syndrome as well.</p>
<p>Interesting to see this discussion about engineers not being liked.</p>
<p>Is this applicable to engineering as a whole? It is generally accepted practice that biomed engineers are studying that as a stepping stone to medicine.</p>
<p>Throwing in some contrarian input to broaden this discussion:</p>
<ol>
<li> Caltech has six reserved seats at UCSD for incoming freshmen.<br></li>
<li> UT Austin started a brand new program this year to allocate 60 seats to UT southwest and UT Houston for incoming freshmen. They break out the seats, allocating some for engineering or may be just for biomed. A reasonable chunk of biomed engineering people go to UT southwest each year as of now.</li>
<li> Northwestern HPME program defines their biomed eng honors program as one of the programs an HPME applicant applies for.</li>
<li> Pitt invites people to apply for combined program if they qualify and are admitted to biomed engineering.</li>
</ol>
<p>I highly doubt any California med school would have Tufts Syndrome. If anything, they have “you (the applicant) ain’t that special” Syndrome, no matter how high your stats are.</p>
<p>BTW, DS recently heard from some sources that even some top California public med school is quite poor (financially) in recent years. I think he learned it from one of their students. I wonder whether it is true though. (many california applicants need to go out of state to attend med school any way. So this is not a concern for these students. Whether they can go back for their residency may be a bigger concern for them.) BTW, ucsf may try to explore the possibility that whether the billionaire husband of one of its MS4 students who just graduated this year could donate some money to them. (Hint: Facebook) LOL.</p>
<p>texaspg
5. There is at least one combined bs/md that has engineering only (no choice) in UG portion. We have been thru info section when D. applied (she has chosen a different program later) and one of Med. School deans indicated that in general they love their students with biomed eng. degrees. He said that they have deeper understanding of body workings. I do not know beyond that and I do not have experience with this program.</p>
<p>The student is a California resident who went east (Ancient Eight) for undergrad. She is applying to some publics outside of California, which accept near-zero OOS students in any given year. However, I fully expect that she will obtain interviews at a couple of UCs.</p>
<p>“Honors Program in Medical Education: Indicate a major (or undecided) in Weinberg College, a major (or undecided) in the McCormick School, or the human communication sciences major in the School of Communication above. You must submit your HPME application request by December 1.”</p>
<p>McCormack is the engineering school at Northwestern. There are 9 schools available for undergrad but sounds like you can choose only 3.</p>
<p>Hey everyone.
Would a grade of UW (in computer science-- a course not related to my major and not BCMP…?) be an F to AMCAS? Sorry for asking out of the blue-- I haven’t found an answer searching around google/CC.
UW = Unofficial Withdrawal from a course. An instructor can choose to give an unofficial withdraw instead of a letter grade.
My college doesn’t count it into my GPA. I missed the official withdrawal period by a week and I appealed to turn the unofficial to an official… but no cigar. My college adviser really thought it could be a one-time exception, but the college apparently didn’t think so.
Thanks! Hopefully someone has an idea? Sorry if my question isn’t entirely relevant-- I thought it’d be better not to spam the board, anyway.</p>
<p>This conversation has gone on very long and I’m in step 1 study mode so I don’t have time to retrace steps and so I apologize if I have misconstrued your points but I fail to see what the problem is exactly that you’re pointing out. Medical school seats are a limited resource distributed in a somewhat but not completely predictable way and therefore there is a chance that one gets left out. As someone said before, name the better system. The only possible solution to your problem as I understand it is to expand the number of medical school seats but then all you’ll do is delay the problem until residency. What then? Increase residency slots? What then? Increase job opportunities? Life isn’t fair, hard work doesn’t always = success.</p>
<p>Your analogies are too sensationalistic to be taken seriously. More importantly though is that just like med school admission, medicine is not 100% either. Honestly, if the sheer fact that you might not get in is enough to deter you from the field completely, how do you expect to handle the fact that people die for unexplained and sometimes explained but uncontrollable reasons every day? Doctors follow the recommended treatment every day and still have patients die. Does the field of medicine abandon all hope because people die even with the best performance possible by a physician? No. We do our best to put ourselves in the best position to succeed and hope for the best. If a pre-med can’t handle that, he can’t handle medicine.</p>
<p>Actually yes to all of the above, for doing so would indeed dramatically improve the overall performance of the system. We live in a country where physicians are paid far more relative to the average wage than virtually any country in the world, The United States is one of the few countries where medicine is viewed as an (admittedly long and grueling) road to wealth. Medical school faculty - who are usually practicing physicians - are usually among the the highest paid employees at many universities - sometimes paid more than even the University President himself. The 2010 median salary for an anesthesiologist was a whopping $400k+. Such high salaries are only sustainable through strong barriers to entry that prevents plenty of otherwise qualified people from entering the profession.</p>
<p>Yet at the same time, millions of Americans lack access to affordable health care. Perhaps that explains our conspicuously low health-care system quality assessments, being ranked a pitiful 37th in the world compared to France’s pole position. Obamacare will surely increase the demand for medical services from the newly insured, but will likely do very little (at least in the short run) to increase the supply of doctors to provide those services. </p>
<p>Now granted, an increase in the number of doctors probably would result in an overall ‘decline’ in average quality of medical services delivered. But hey, that’s surely still better than not receiving any services at all. If I’m sick/injured, I’d rather be treated by a less qualified doctor than no doctor at all. </p>
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<p>Then perhaps it would be more helpful to view the situation from the standpoint of not the doctor or the premed, but rather from the prospective patient. Millions of Americans have no medical services at all because they can’t afford them. Even many poor people who should otherwise be able to procure medical services through Medicaid find that many doctors refuse to accept Medicaid. Yet at the same time, plenty of otherwise highly qualified med-school applicants - those such as kristin with 3.8/30’s - can’t even get into medical school at all. </p>
<p>Indeed, many currently practicing physicians probably couldn’t get into medical school today if they were to reapply with their old qualifications. They were admitted when the competition was less fierce, and since they were lucky enough to be fully educated and trained, they’re still allowed to practice. Indeed, some of them surely sit on med-school adcoms today and choose to reject their own modern-day dopplegangers. </p>
<p>That only serves to highlight the notion that med-school admissions is a nothing more than just a game. If the medical profession was truly so worried about preserving physician quality through its admissions practice, then they would decertify all of the currently practicing physicians who lack the necessary GPA/MCAT stats to be admitted today (after scaling for grade inflation). Seems to me that the medical profession is more interested in maintaining artificial barriers to entry in order to inflate salaries, regardless of its implications to the overall quality of medical care delivered to the nation.</p>
<p>And I would then ask: how do they know that engineers don’t make for good doctors? Has this actually been empirically established? </p>
<p>Heck, I would argue that, if anything, engineers may actually be more likely to make for good doctors - at least, relative to many other potential premeds out there. Let’s face it, if nothing else, at least the engineering students have proven the capability to work very long hours, a trait of vital importance during the legendarily grueling residency years. I have grave doubts about whether somebody benefiting from Brown University’s helium-inflated grading scale can say the same. </p>
<p>And besides, I’ve never restricted this discussion only to engineers. It is well understood that Caltech is also not an optimal launch pad for a prospective premeds, despite the fact that Caltech is not actually a majority-engineering school, the majority of students actually being natural science or math majors.</p>
sakky, I think there may be some truth in this.</p>
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I think you may give the merit as measured by the academic institution too much credit. After a student leaves the school, how he did as a student might have little to do with their achievement unless they happen to be in a small subset of careers. An example: the “oops” presidential candidate. the governor from Texas, Rick Perry, was a C or even D student when he was in college (not in a really very competitive college), yet he was a 2-term governor. He might have some power to influence how the medicine industry should be and direct the direction of med education. (There are indeed some policy in Texas that helps med doctors at the expense of the pocket of lawyers. Also, the size of the class of most med schools in Texas is, well, “Texas-sized.” which is good according to your opinion.) To put it bluntly, in many career paths, how good you are at networking in many fields are more important than how much you have learned from school days. (e.g. those in med industry are better at networking to advance their own interests than those in the law-related industry. This is the key reason why the former did better. Actually, the latter are hurt by the practice of the very education institution which produce them.)</p>
<p>It is said that there are tons of failures in the MENSA association. It is joked that, for many people, the highest point of their lives were when they just graduated from their last educational institute, after that, they continuously go downhill. (while some others start to go up, like Rick Perry.) I have seen many 2300+ (or 1500+ in the old days) SAT scorers really did not break into a good career many years after college.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Rick Perry is a great example for this discussion. Guy was trying to study to be a pre-vet and did not do well at all in organic chemistry or anatomy. That really does not make him dumb, it just makes him unsuited to the profession he was trying to pursue. If he studied what should have been appropriate for him and all other politicians including the current president, a B.A. in Bu<em>ll&</em>it aka political science, I am sure he would have passed with flying colors.</p>
<p>Btw, he completed Bush’s term for 2 years and reelected three times thus far.</p>
<p>…yey. and what about pres?
Must be really bad as nobody can even see his.
OK, conclusion: all really bad college students should pursue political careers to make us all well and happy. Is not my conclusion in the same zone as most of our government - “logic free” zone? I had tried very hard…</p>
<p>To be clear, it is not I who am guilty of according the merit by the academic institution too much credit. Rather it is the med-school adcoms themselves. After all, like I said, every year, they decide that certain people will be barred from becoming physicians, at least at their particular med-school, based purely on the strength of their applications. Many of the rejectees - especially those of the same qualifications of kristin or better (30+/3.8+) - would have successfully graduated from the med-school in question and become perfectly competent physicians. </p>
<p>The med-schools would then surely retort that they must reject numerous applicants in order to maintain high standards to enforce quality. That’s why I proposed my ‘time-shifted’ reapplication experiment to test that notion. Take the old med-school applications from some currently-practicing physicians, scale those applications for any grade inflation between their college years vs. nowadays, and then resubmit those applications to the very same med-schools that those physicians had graduated from. I strongly suspect that many of those (re)applications would be rejected. The implication then is that the med-school would consider many of their own graduates who are currently practicing physicians to be ‘unqualified’. If the med-schools were then so concerned about the quality of medical care being provided by such ‘unqualified’ physicians, then they should then revoke their medical degrees.</p>
<p>But obviously that won’t happen. And that puts the lie to the notion that med-schools really care about quality at all. After all, current physicians who would never be admitted under the current admissions regime are nevertheless still allowed to practice. What that demonstrates is that med-school admissions is nothing more than a game. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it’s a game with real consequences. Adcoms are playing with people’s lives by deciding who is allowed to be a physician and who isn’t. Perhaps more importantly, millions of Americans lack reasonable access to any physician at all, while at the same time, physicians in the US enjoy the highest pay of any physicians in the world.</p>