Attrition Tate for Pre-Med's at Duke

Colleges & Universities A-Z Duke University
1

<p>My son has been admitted to Pratt at Duke and interested in BME.</p>

<p>I read where 45% of the freshmen going to Duke are "pre-med".</p>

<p>Then 75% of these drop the idea of going to med-school in the next two years.</p>

<p>What is the attrition rate for pre-med and is BME a good approach to med school?</p>

2

<p>I don’t know the exact attrition rate, but I have heard that it is very high at Duke, but if you get passed that and you are motivated, Duke’s medical school acceptance rate is 80%, so you have a really good shot at medical school. I think it is more a matter of surviving the weed-out classes. I have heard that BME is a challenge, but it prepares you well for MCAT and medical school.</p>

3

<p>BME is a challenge but it actually does very little for your preparations for the MCAT or medical school in terms of coursework. Virtually all pre-med courses are trinity courses. </p>

<p>BME is actually composed of a variety of specialized fields each with their own goals. It’s not a tack on to a medical education or merely a side route to medical school. If you are interested in purely medicine, then I would say take a good, hard look at BME, especially the curriculum and see if you would be interested in what they teach. If you like electronics, material science, physics, medical instrumentation, then BME is for you. But if you just want to be a physician, then knowing how to select op-amps for an ECG would probably not be very helpful and you might be better off doing a bio or chem major. BME requires both interest in the subjects taught and a dedication to see it through.</p>

4

<p>Here’s a lot of good data on Duke pre-meds.</p>

<p><a href=“http://premed.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007-annual-report.pdf[/url]”>http://premed.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007-annual-report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It’ll tell you about the success of each major and much more information. </p>

<p>From what I’ve heard, going in the class is about ~50% pre-med, which translates into about 800 people. You have to keep in mind a lot of those people aren’t that serious about it, though. Then it says 129 actually apply. This would make the attrition rate around 85%. However, a lot of people take gap years, too. Therefore, your 75% is a pretty good guess.</p>