Best for pre-med?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
21

<p>Okay, I can accept that there are some places that encourage individual's worst habits (whether anti-social studying or going out to party too often or whatever else it might be), sakky. But I still think that if you define fit as widespread "success" in multiple areas (which I do), then it diminishes the chance of that. I'm going to start adding "balance" in to my advice to find fit in the future because of this conversation.</p>

<p>I also feel comfortable saying that fit depends on career goals to a certain extent, but have some (a lot) apprehension in allowing that to be the deciding factor if a person is between several career options each with a different school that presents itself as the "best" fit for that career. It's probably best to take a small hit in the total "fit" for a certain category by choosing the school with the best overall fit in my opinion.</p>

<p>Finally, I do have to question the intent of individuals who say I'm only going to top X medical schools because I have a good engineering job lined up if I don't get in. Perhaps that's my idealism, and partly due to myself basically being "born" to be a doctor (I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 3 years old), but I think medicine is probably better off without these people. That's purely personal opinion.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Finally, I do have to question the intent of individuals who say I'm only going to top X medical schools because I have a good engineering job lined up if I don't get in. Perhaps that's my idealism, and partly due to myself basically being "born" to be a doctor (I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 3 years old), but I think medicine is probably better off without these people. That's purely personal opinion.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I can certainly think of economically rational reasons for why somebody might behave this way. Let's face it. Med-school ain't cheap - not only in terms of tuition, but even more importantly, in terms of lost wages, especially if you have a high-paying engineering job available to you. Hence, from a financial standpoint, if you're going to be a doctor, you ought to be sure that it's really worth what you are giving up. And the fact is, right or wrong, it is perceived that if you end up going to a low-ranked med-school, your chances of ending up in a lower-paid medical specialty are higher, which therefore reduces your return on investment. Note, I didn't say that it was guaranteed that if you go to a low-ranked medical school, you will end up in a lower-paid specialty, or even that there is a strong correlation. Rather, at least, there is the * perception * that a correlation exists, and that perception might be correct or incorrect. </p>

<p>Let's be honest. If medicine didn't pay well and didn't offer a highly stable paycheck, we all know that there would be fewer doctors. I certainly am not contending that money is the * only * driving factor. But we would be naive to ignore the fact that it is one factor.</p>

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<p>BRM, BDM, in no particular order, you are the 1-2 punch when it comes to pre-med and medical school advice. Learn a lot from your posts.</p>

<p>Sakky, you are also extremely knowledgeable and I enjoyed reading many of your posts in many different forums. Hopefully I won't start a debate with you anytime soon because I would surely lose. :-)</p>

<p>In regard to acceptance rate, I also find that it can be very misleading. Ideally, I prefer to look at how many students actually get into med school versus how many pre-med entering freshmen. If 100 students get into med school and there were 1000 pre-med freshmen, we can gauge that you need to be around top 10% of all pre-med freshmen to get into med school. So how do we get to these types of data:</p>

<p>1) Entering pre-med freshmen: We can easily get entering freshmen from collegeboard.com. But pre-med freshmen is a guess. Lets say appx 33% for big state Universities and appx 50% for LACs. Just because most big U's have many more engineering and business students.
2) Students successfully got into med school: We actually can get how many medical school applicants very easily from <a href="http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/start.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/start.htm&lt;/a> but we cannot get the number for matriculants (successful applicants). But if you look at the number of applicants, there's not a big deviation among schools. This leads me to speculate that the applicants usually don't apply unless they feel they are competitive. And we all know that appx 50% of the applicants will not get into any med schools. A dependable acceptance rate from each school could help our data analysis here. And I usually do not trust 90%+ rate except for small LACs with few applicants. BTW, a small LAC will usually tell you how many got into med school and how many applied if you ask. </p>

<p>With that, lets look at some schools just to make a point:</p>

<p>UCLA: 744 applicants / 4400 entering freshmen
Guessing: 400 matriculants / 1500 pre-med freshmen. One should be around top 26% of all pre-meds to get into med school? Actually that would be quite impressive so some of the speculating numbers may be way off.</p>

<p>DUKE: 322 applicants / 1724 entering freshmen
Speculation: 250 matriculants / 750 pre-med freshmen. Need to be top 33% of all pre-meds to get into med school? </p>

<p>Rutgers (from OP's list): 298 applicants / 5245 entering freshmen
Speculation: 150 matriculants / 2000 pre-med freshmen. Top 8% of all pre-meds to get into med school ?</p>

<p>Then, you may ask yourself, is it easier to be in the top 8% in Rutgers or top 33% in Duke or top 26% in UCLA, among the pre-med freshmen? </p>

<p>Obviously, these are appx numbers at best. But it may give a better idea how good one has to be at a certain school to get into the next level. And this is only one variable of choosing a school for pre-med. I agree with all the other advice that one should find a school that has the right fit. Personally, for pre-med, I would look for a school that I like and can afford, in a city that I enjoy, and I want to make sure I can be a good enough student to be a successful med school applicant.</p>

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<p><em>blinks</em></p>

<p>Except... you can't just make up the numbers.</p>

25

<p>Also there's the fact that many times people who are easily in the top 10% change their mind half way through. Its not just the avrg/below avrg students that burn out. I've seen many excellent students with a solid GPA change their mind about med school for x or y reason.</p>

26

<p>Agreed on all the previous points. You are right that I cannot just make up numbers. Unfortunately it was easier to get the point acrossed. Now onto the next controversy:</p>

<p>We do have the true numbers for medical school applicants and the number of entering freshmen, at least for the big schools with at least 80 applicants. If we can assume the applicants reflects the competitive pool, we may be able to say that these numbers somewhat reflects what you will need to do to get into the competitive pool from each school. I understand that there will be great students that decide to go from pre-med to engineering or to pre-law, but with a big population, I will assume that happens with the same frequency in all big schools.</p>

<p>School: Applicants/entering Freshmen</p>

<p>UCLA: 744/4422=16.8%
UCDavis: 321/4381=7.3%</p>

<p>UF: 484/6702=7.3%
USF: 165/4357=3.7%</p>

<p>Umich: 606/5060=11.9%
MSU: 250/7440=3.4%</p>

<p>Northwestern: 321/1952=16.4%
UI Urbana: 422/7580=5.6%
OSU: 279/6280=4.4%</p>

<p>So why does a school have a higher percentage applicant pool? It may be a stronger entering class in the first place or grade inflation or a lot of other things. But it does give me an idea how good I need to be at each school to have a fighting chance. Comparing schools in different regions is less reliable as the population make-ups can be very different. </p>

<p>No? Too many assumptions? Don't buy this, huh? The numbers actually look reasonable enough. :-)</p>

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<p>I don't think the assumption that students drop out in equal frequencies is legitimate. For one thing, schools that do worse in MS admissions will have more dropouts, since those students will realize early on they stand no chance. Schools that are better overall, too, will have more dropouts, since students have other options.</p>

<p>Also, some schools may just have idiotic applicants -- sometimes in rather high proportions. I cannot tell you the number of unadvised students I've seen with absurd expectations for what's going to happen during the process.</p>

<p>Finally, some schools attract more premeds -- schools like WUSTL, Duke, and Hopkins often manage to "lure" kids in over better undergrads because those kids feel somehow like they'll be associated with the more prestigious medical school for having gone to undergrad there. I'm willing to bet that Princeton has a lower premed population than Hopkins.</p>

28

<p>Rutgers for sure! The rest might be good at primary care but they definately lack the facilities to give any research education what so ever.</p>