Berkeley's placement into top medical schools

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
21

<p>
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Yes, Berkeley has a lower acceptance rate than Northwestern and other top privates. However, these statistics are misleading in that it convinces people that is it easier to get into med school if they go to a specific school over one in similar caliber. The main point here is that, the deciding factor in medical school admission is the effort you are willing to put into the MCATs and premed courses. So if you do have the motivation and are willing to commit, you will get into med school.

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Also, the reason why Berkeley has a lower acceptance rate is because they have more "less qualified" students applying with hundreds of other highly qualified students compared to top privates. It is up to you whether or not you want to be highly qualified or "less qualified" by the amount of effort you put into your classes and the MCATs; the school you come from is not the deciding factor.

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<p>Nobody is denying that commitment and effort are key ingredients to getting you into med school. Of course that's true.</p>

<p>But it is also undeniably true that certain schools do make it * easier * for you to get into med school. One reason has been stated above - certain schools are located in states that have relatively less selective state medical schools (compared to the number of applicants from that state), and so attending one of those colleges may allow you to establish state residency and thus take advantage of easier in-state admissions. It's not fair, but that doesn't matter. As a premed, you want to take advantage of the unfairness. </p>

<p>Another reason is that, frankly, some schools just grade harder than others do. Consider the following quote. It is regarding Stanford's premed program, but it is equally applicable (and in fact, probably more so) to Berkeley's premed program, as Stanford is well known for grade inflation, whereas Berkeley is not:</p>

<p>*
"Myth #10.
I SHOULD TAKE ALL OF MY PRE-MED
CLASSES AT STANFORD BECAUSE IT WILL
LOOK BETTER TO THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS.</p>

<p>This is not true either. Many successful medical
school applicants at the nation’s best medical
schools took many of their pre-med requirements at
community college in the summer or other local
schools. By taking some of the basics elsewhere, you
can create more academic freedom to take some of the
truly amazing courses that Stanford offers both in the
sciences and non-sciences. The introductory classes
are taught very well here, but they can also be learned
elsewhere. Many upper division classes in all departments
are uniquely taught well at Stanford.</p>

<p>The only caveat to this is that it might look
strange if you did poorly in all of your science classes
at Stanford and then did well in an ‘easier’ school.
However, if you do fairly well at Stanford, it will not
appear strange that you took some basic coursework
elsewhere to save academic time and/or money.</p>

<p>Take home point: You will not be penalized
for taking some of your introductory pre-med classes
elsewhere and this can free you up to take classes
which are uniquely taught well at Stanford.</p>

<p>Myth #11.
I AM ALWAYS BEST OFF TAKING ALL MY
INTRODUCTORY PRE-MED CLASSES AT
STANFORD.</p>

<p>False. It is true that it is more difficult to get
an A in a Stanford pre-med class than it is at most other
schools. This is easier to understand since you are
graded on a curve with some of America’s best students.
Consequently, an ‘A’ at Stanford can mean a lot,
particularly in science classes with a ‘C’ mean.</p>

<p>However, most of you won’t get A’s in every
class. And because of this, some of you certainly
would have had higher GPA’s elsewhere. It is also true
that medical school know this and will take it into account.
However, this ‘forgiveness factor’ is not infinite.
Getting a 4.0 in your pre-med requirements at a
junior college will certainly make you a stronger applicant
than a 3.5 in your pre-med requirements at Stanford.
One admissions officer I spoke with estimated
the bump factor of attending a school like Harvard or
Stanford to be between 0.3 and 0.5 of a grade point.
For some of you, an ‘A’ in high school could
be achieved through hard work and determination.
This is not necessarily true of the pre-med classes at
Stanford. Everyone is trying hard. They are all smart.
And the classes can be very difficult.</p>

<p>The upshot of all of this is that some of you
may be more successful applying to medical school by
taking most of your pre-med classes elsewhere. And I
have certainly known many applicants who would have
been more successful applying to medical school if they
had pursued their academic passions at Stanford and
took their pre-med classes elsewhere, either in summers
or in a year off. I have also known students at Stanford—
who would have been fantastic physicians—who
quit the pre-med process in frustration without exploring
this option. If you want to be a doctor and are
struggling at Stanford, this option is worth exploring.
I say this with some hesitancy because I know
it may cause controversy and it is difficult to know who
would be statistically better off focusing their pre-med
energies at a less competitive institution. I should also
add, however, that all such ‘core’ classes cover the material
required both for the MCAT and to be a good
doctor.</p>

<p>This in no way is meant to imply you made the
wrong choice by coming to Stanford if you are a premed.
Quite the contrary, Stanford may be the best
place in the country for pre-meds to attend college.
You can attain a first-rate education in any field and
simultaneously approach your pre-med curriculum with
more flexibility and more creativity than at nearly any
other university.</p>

<p>Take home point: Consider taking some of
your pre-med classes elsewhere if you are hitting a wall
here. Many successful medical school applicants have
done this" *</p>

<p><a href="http://questscholars.stanford.edu/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://questscholars.stanford.edu/oldstuff/activities/professional/pre-med_letter/premed-letter-2001-2-pdf.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>The truth of the matter is, commitment and effort, while obviously necessary, are not sufficient to make you competitive to getting into med school. You can work extremely hard in your premed classes, and get poor grades anyway, simply because of the nature of the forced-curve grading policies in premed classes at Berkeley. When only a certain set and small percentage of the class can get an A, and everybody else in the class is working hard to get one of those A's, your chances of getting one are relatively slim. </p>

<p>The other factor I see is that Berkeley does not have a nearby large hospital/medical center to provide easy clinical volunteer experience. UCSF is 45 minutes away by public transit, and while there are some decent-sized hospitals in Oakland, and Alta Bates does have a facility in Berkeley, they're clearly not enough to easily accomodate all of the Berkeley premeds that want to get volunteer experience. In contrast, other schools have quite large medical centers very nearby (often times right on campus), and not that many undergrads competing for volunteer spots. </p>

<p>Don't get me wrong. Berkeley has some strengths as well. In particular, Berkeley does have top-notch research projects which enterprising undergrads can access (providing they're willing to fight through all the other undergrads who are trying to do the same thing), and which many other schools don't have. </p>

<p>But the takehome point is that your choice of undergrad program does affect your chances of getting into med school. Obviously hard work matters also. They're all important factors that determine your chances.</p>

22

<p>"Now, in the sense that those particular applicants are not included in the data, I agree with you that the Berkeley data is 'incomplete'. In fact, I have never disputed this. But I am saying that, if anything, the "real" data would almost certainly display a lower rate of admission than what the Berkeley data is showing."</p>

<p>I definitely agree with you that the admission rate, if done with all applicant data, should be a lot lower. I've never made a point to state that it should be higher.</p>

<p>"Not all applicants are graduating seniors - in fact, a sizable chunk from any school tends to be former alumni who have either gone to the workforce or gone to graduate school (but in another area) and then later decided to apply to medical school."</p>

<p>How large is this sizable chunk? I'm quite interested in this since I'm considering a premed track right now.</p>

<p>Did you mean to post this as the third link?
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005oneyearout.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005oneyearout.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Notice that in 2005 there were actually more of these applicants than there were graduating senior applicants."</p>

<p>This isn't exactly a true statement. The data just show that there are more of these applicants who chose to release their information than graduating senior applicants.</p>

<p>"Because, let's face it, the more years out we're talking about, the lower the placement rate tends to be. A lot of 1-year-outs were former graduating seniors who had applied to med-school and didn't get in anywhere, so they decided to apply again the following year. Many of these applicants will get rejected everywhere again, and then apply again as a 2-year-out applicant, whereupon many will get rejected again, etc."</p>

<p>From the "one year out page" link, it seems that the placement rates are almost identical: 62% for graduating seniors and 61% for one year out students. Furthermore, looking at the same GPA and MCAT ranges, it seems that a higher percentage of applicants are accepted in the one year out applicant pool.</p>

23

<p>
[quote]
Did you mean to post this as the third link?
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005oneyearout.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005oneyearout.stm&lt;/a>

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This isn't exactly a true statement. The data just show that there are more of these applicants who chose to release their information than graduating senior applicants.

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<p>That's what I meant in both. </p>

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From the "one year out page" link, it seems that the placement rates are almost identical: 62% for graduating seniors and 61% for one year out students.

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<p>Look at all of the years in which data is available (2001-2005), and you will see that, on average, the one-year-outs tend to have lower placement rates. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Furthermore, looking at the same GPA and MCAT ranges, it seems that a higher percentage of applicants are accepted in the one year out applicant pool.

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<p>Yes, but that's not a fair comparison, is it? After all, I think we agree that the ones who had high GPA's and MCAT scores tend to be the ones who get in as graduating seniors. Hence, the one-year-outs tend to be shifted downwards with worse stats. I agree with you that somebody with equivalent stats but with 1 year's of work experience (perhaps in a research/medical setting) is probably an even better candidate than that same person with the same stats without that experience. But, like I said, somebody with good enough stats to have gotten into med school will probably have gotten in as a graduating senior.</p>

24

<p>Ugh...so much argumentation based on bad stats here. Guys, none of the stats used are very good. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions.</p>

25

<p>This thread is very misleading, and I do have to agree with UCLAri that too many conclusions are drawn from these statistics. It's just sad that some people make UC Berkeley seem like a not so great school to attend, when in reality, its a excellent school. UC Berkeley's acceptance rate to med schools is higher than the national average, which says a lot about how med schools view Berkeley. This is better than 49% acceptance rates from UCLA and UCSD. So please stop trying to prove Cal's acceptance rate is lower than what stats say because it might be even higher for all we know. I made the same assumptions about law school stats, but it turned out more students were accepted than what statistics said.</p>

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This is better than 49% acceptance rates from UCLA and UCSD.

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<p>Actually, I don't think UCLA's figures are any good either. It's hard to say what the actual rate is for students that are within range. For all we know, UCLA's figures are more realistic than Cal's. Or maybe UCLA's figures are not realistic at all.</p>

<p>Without good figures, we can't make any solid conclusions about any of the schools. Not even yours, aszx5527.</p>

27

<p>
[quote]
UC Berkeley's acceptance rate to med schools is higher than the national average, which says a lot about how med schools view Berkeley.

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<p>I'm not sure about that. If you want to get into a statistical argument, then I would point out that Berkeley's acceptance rate may have little to do with how med schools view Berkeley and more to do with the fact that Berkeley students happen to be better than the average student, and specifically, how they are probably going to get higher MCAT scores than the average student nationwide. That seems to be a far more plausible explanation.</p>

<p>The REAL question to me is how Berkeley premeds do relative to the premeds of schools with equivalent-quality student bodies.</p>

<p>But anyway, if you want to get into a statistical discussion, then I would surmise that there is little reason to reject the 'null hypothesis', that Berkeley is a superior school to go to if you want to do premed. Hence, choosing Berkeley because you think it is going to help you to get into med school is probably a premise with insufficient foundation. I wish there was strong evidence that indicated that Berkeley would help you. But there probably isn't.</p>

28

<p>
[quote]
But anyway, if you want to get into a statistical discussion, then I would surmise that there is little reason to reject the 'null hypothesis', that Berkeley is a superior school to go to if you want to do premed.

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<p>Wouldn't a better null hypothesis be that Berkeley is at the mean? I mean, we usually want to base our null hypothesis on the idea that at the outset of the experiment no difference exists between the two groups for the study? We're trying to see if Berkeley is different from the national average, because that's actually a testable hypothesis. It's after that that we'll go ahead and design a model that tells us the magnitude.</p>

<p>I argue that the data is all heteroskedastic anyway, poorly sampled, and pretty much useless.</p>

29

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Wouldn't a better null hypothesis be that Berkeley is at the mean? I mean, we usually want to base our null hypothesis on the idea that at the outset of the experiment no difference exists between the two groups for the study?

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<p>Uh, that's what I meant by rejecting a null hypothesis - where that null hypothesis would be that Berkeley is not a superior school for premed (and hence would be at the mean). </p>

<p>But the difference is that my 'mean' would be a mean compared to Berkeley's peer schools. It's fairly obvious that Berkeley premeds do get placed at a higher rate than the national average, as it should be, simply because Berkeley is supposed to be an above average school. After all, there are literally over 2000 4-year colleges and universities in the US, the vast majority being no-name schools. You would expect Berkeley to be better than most of them. The real question is, whether Berkeley is better compared to other schools that the typical Berkeley student could have gotten into. That's the interesting comparison. After all, nobody is comparing Berkeley to, say, Southwest Missouri State University.</p>

30

<p>sakky,</p>

<p>I agree. But the more restrained model is better, because it gives you more DF and lets you do more interesting things with the data (since you're comparing to the population mean.)</p>

31

<p>Yeah, but do you really think the result would be interesting? For example, if we were to show that Berkeley really is statistically better than the average school (among the 2000+ out there), do you really think anybody would be surprised? </p>

<p>It's like saying that we've discovered that the average NFL player is stronger than the average man. Not exactly a surprising result. What would be more interesting is seeing whether the Oakland Raiders or San Francisco 49ers have stronger players. That would be a fair and interesting comparison.</p>

32

<p>sakky,</p>

<p>That's only so you can reject the null hypothesis, which is just the first step. After that, you can look at the coefficients and figure out the variance.</p>

<p>I'd think that you could do a somewhat interesting model with some dummies...</p>

<p>But either way, it won't be a good model simply because there's no way to do a good panel.</p>

33

<p>Nobody's doubting that Berkeley probably has a higher placement rate than the average no-name school.</p>

<p>The real questions are more subtle and less obvious.
Does Berkeley have a significantly higher placement rate than other UCs?
Does Northwestern have a significantly higher placmeent rate than Berkley?</p>

<p>No reliable conclusions to answer these questions can be drawn from faulty statistics.</p>

34

<p>lde099,</p>

<p>Of course not. But even if we had good data, you still need a good model...</p>

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<p>UCLAri, just because the data is incomplete doesn't mean we should say "well we can't conclude anything from this data" and abandon it. There can still be analysis and discussion based on incomplete data. Maybe the conclusions we draw from it are ultimately wrong, but seeing as how this is a casual online forum, I don't think many will care. Besides, all of science is based on theories built from a certain amount of data and logic. We don't have complete data for everything, so we debate based on what we do have.</p>

<p>In any case, when you compare Berkeley (~63-65) with another institution with a similar student body like Cornell (~78) or Northwestern (~80), a good theory would be that Berkeley is not a good place to go for pre-med as Cornell or Northwestern. Sure, it's possible that Berkeley is producing all these students who got into Med school but are just not reporting their data, or that a disproportionate amount of Cornell students who are rejected do not report their data, but such a skew doesn't make much sense logically. In this case we may simply invoke Occam's razor and say that since we don't have good reason to believe such skews in data exist, to simply build our theory without such extraneous assumptions.</p>

36

<p>vicissitudes,</p>

<p>Sorry, but I can't agree with you. I've had too much stats and econometrics beaten into my head to be as willing to accept obviously poorly sampled data. To me, this is as far from a representative sample as we can get. Never mind the fact that we have almost no degrees of freedom...</p>

<p>It's just not a good argument without the right data either way.</p>

37

<p>I'm not asking you to accept the data or that Berkeley's not as a good place to go for pre-med as Northwestern. I think based on the data we have it's the most likely solution. After seeing incomplete data that says Berkeley's acceptance rate to med school is around 63% and Northwestern's is around 80%, I'm certainly not going to start thinking that it's more likely that Berkeley's a better place to go for pre-med than Northwestern. Just because we can't get a very good representative sample doesn't mean the sample we have is meaningless. Perhaps the conclusions we draw from it is less supported, but we can still draw conclusions.</p>

<p>By the way, is it just me or are you on CC 24/7?</p>

38

<p>Well, I just tend to err on the side of "no conclusion." </p>

<p>Oh, and I'm on...a fair amount. I tend to log on for breaks between studying. Most of my homework involves Excel or Stata, so I just switch over and...</p>