<p>Yeah, that comment about screening is basically them covering their ass in case someone comes through some sort of bizarre scenario like getting mono, their mother and father dying, and them (or their girlfriend) getting pregnant all in the same semester, ending up with a .001 which drags their overall solid 3.5 down to a 3.1 or something. Or the case of someone getting a 2.9 but a 41 on their MCAT...</p>
<p>At the same time, doesn't it shock you ek1099 that only 7 seniors applied? I mean you can literally count on two hands the number of people from your graduating class who's going to be applying to medical school.</p>
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At the same time, doesn't it shock you ek1099 that only 7 seniors applied? I mean you can literally count on two hands the number of people from your graduating class who's going to be applying to medical school.
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<p>Oh, I don't know. I don't find it to be shocking in the least. After all, Swarthmore is a very small school, with only about 1400 total undergrads.</p>
<p>As a case in point, Berkeley has about 23,000 undergrads. Yet in 2005, only 136 Berkeley graduating seniors reported applying to med-school, or only 0.006% of the entire undergraduate student body. 0.006% of the 1400 Swarthmore undergrads =~ 8. So having Swarthmore graduating seniors apply is not far off in the least. </p>
<p>And if anything, I think the above analysis is biased in favor of Berkeley. After all, a higher percentage of the Berkeley student body won't apply to med-school because they won't even graduate, as Berkeley has a lower graduation rate than does Swarthmore. Secondly, the Berkeley student body is somewhat backloaded because of the large percentage of transfer students who come in as juniors, which means that the number of graduating seniors is larger than the overall student body would leave you to believe it is. Nevertheless, only 136 Berkeley graduating seniors reported applying to med-school in 2005.</p>
<p>Nor is 2005 an unusual year. In 2004, only 138 applied. In 2003, a trough of 114 applied. </p>
<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2004seniors.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2004seniors.stm</a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2003seniors.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2003seniors.stm</a></p>
<p>There's a critical difference: Swarthmore's data is more or less complete since it has a premed committee (and I presume most people would use it) while Berkeley's data isn't nearly complete. Around 700 UCLA students applied last year so I'm going to assume that around that many from Berkeley also applied. Now if you compare the percentages, you will see that the % of seniors from Swarthmore is indeed ridiculously low.</p>
<p>Let's use my school as an example:</p>
<p>Last year out of approx. 12,000 undergrads, 230 first-time senior applicants used the premed committee (just about everyone does). Based on that percentage, we would expect Swarthmore to have approx. 25 seniors, not 7 which is less than 30% of what would be expected.</p>
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Around 700 UCLA students applied last year so I'm going to assume that around that many from Berkeley also applied. Now if you compare the percentages, you will see that the % of seniors from Swarthmore is indeed ridiculously low.
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<p>I'm not sure about that. In 2005, 700 (actually 704) * total alumni * from UCLA applied to AMCAS-affiliated med-schools, * which includes both graduating seniors and alumni *. I am going to assume that the number of people who applied to only non-AMCAS-affiliated schools is so small as to be negligible. </p>
<p>Here's perhaps a better way to look at it. According to the AMCAS data, 605 total applicants in the year 2005 came from Berkeley. Of those 605, about 138 were reported to have applied as graduating seniors. Is that an unreasonable ratio? I don't think so. That's a ratio of about 4.4:1. According to the Swarthmore data presented above, the ratio of non-graduating seniors to graduating seniors is 36:7 or about 5:1. Again, that's not way off. </p>
<p>Or consider this. Again, according to the reported Berkeley figures, the number of "one-year-out" applicants in 2005 actually * exceeded * the number of graduating seniors (158 vs. 138) who applied. And that doesn't even count all the people who are 2-years-out, 3-years out, etc. Hence, it seems to me that, at least in the case of Berkeley, it seems quite common to have lots of applicants who are not graduating seniors. </p>
<p>But anyway, let's talk about overall figures. Let's talk about the ratios of TOTAL applicants to TOTAL undergrad student bodies at the various schools</p>
<p>Berkeley - 605 total applicants, 23000 undergrads = 2.6%
Swarthmore - 43 total applicants, 1450 undergrads = 2.96%
Cornell - 441 applicants, 13500 undergrads = 3.3%</p>
<p>Let's look at peer schools:
UCLA - 700 applicants, 25000 undergrads = 2.8%
Harvard - 304 applicants, 6700 undergrads - 4.5%
Yale - 213 applicants, 5200 undergrads - 4.1%
Princeton - 164 applicants, 4600 undergrads - 3.6%
UPenn - 306 applicants, 9700 undergrads - 3.15%</p>
<p>The point is, I don't find Swarthmore's total applicant-to-student body ratio to be way off, relative to the other schools above. And I think it's quite clear that the actual admittee to student-body ratio is far better than that at Berkeley or UCLA (as Berkeley and UCLA have notably lower placement rates than any of the private schools, including Swarthmore). </p>
<p>The only thing that I might agree is unusual is perhaps that not a lot of Swarthmore graduating seniors, as opposed to alumni. But I only say 'perhaps'. It may well be the case that it is actually Cornell that is the outlier. I don't know yet. But at least we can conclude that Swarthmore is not terribly unusual from a total applicants standpoint.</p>
<p>Duke: 6300 undergrads. 303 Applicants (4.8%*). Of the 303, 181 (60%) were alumni (of all ages) while 122 (40%) were seniors.</p>
<p>So for Swat at 3%/16% -- while Swat's 3% is a little low, the 16% is the weird number.</p>
<p>*Of course, it would be sensible to multiple this by four. But I digress.</p>
<p>the percentage of graduating seniors applying is a bit low, but is it anything to really worry too much about? i'm sure the students here have various reasons for why they take a break between college and medical school.</p>
<p>as sakky stated, the class size is only around 370 at swat. i don't find it too unusual (or worrisome) that only 6 (and this number fluctuates quite a bit from year to year) of my peers would apply to med school with me.</p>
<p>also i would argue that most people don't really think of swat as a 'pre-med' school. i assume that a majority of students look at jhu, harvard, duke, etc as a more typical 'pre-med' school. and so to me it makes sense that those schools have a higher percentage of students applying.</p>
<p>i do understand where all of you are coming from though. it IS a small number. but i don't think that means that swat is a bad school for a pre-med student.</p>
<p>here at Davidson, the same size as Swat, we average about 15-20 a year, however, Davidson is geared toward the professions(medicine and law) and we all know from interesteddad(ad nauseaum) that Swat is a PH.D. school....</p>
<p>The total applicant numbers aren't out of the ordinary. It's the dearth of senior (or "traditional") applicants that surprises me. You would normally expect a 1:1 ratio of senior vs. alumni applicants. In Swarthmore's case, we see a 7:36 ratio. This suggests that either Swarthmore's advising really encourages their applicants to take time off after college (which is not a bad thing; in fact, that's what I'm doing right now) or there is subtle screening going on where they're telling applicants to improve their applications before coming back to them asking for a committee letter. Like I said, you see a 1:1 ratio at most other places (for example, Cornell had 440 applicants, 230 seniors, BDM brought up Duke's stats, sakky brought up Berkeley's stats) so a rough 1:5 ratio is curious (but not necessarily a negative thing).</p>
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You would normally expect a 1:1 ratio of senior vs. alumni applicants.
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Like I said, you see a 1:1 ratio at most other places (for example, Cornell had 440 applicants, 230 seniors, BDM brought up Duke's stats, sakky brought up Berkeley's stats) so a rough 1:5 ratio is curious (but not necessarily a negative thing).
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<p>Like I said, Berkeley seems to have lots of alumni applicants relative to senior applicants, by a 4.4:1 ratio. So I don't know if a 1:1 ratio is necessarily normal. It's possible that it's just a Cornell thing. I don't know yet.</p>
<p>Using your own link:</p>
<p>It appears that are is a 1:1 ratio of self-reporting seniors vs. alumni. For example, in 2005, they have data for 136 seniors and 158 "one year out" applicants, in 2004 138: 155, and so on. As you noted, the data doesn't contain other alumni who are applying from beyond just 1 year out but I'm guessing those numbers are small compared with the numbers reporting. I hope you don't think that somehow there is only 138 seniors out of the entire 600 Berkeley applicant class.</p>
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It appears that are is a 1:1 ratio of self-reporting seniors vs. alumni. For example, in 2005, they have data for 136 seniors and 158 "one year out" applicants, in 2004 138: 155, and so on. As you noted, the data doesn't contain other alumni who are applying from beyond just 1 year out but I'm guessing those numbers are small compared with the numbers reporting.
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<p>Actually, I * strongly * doubt that the numbers beyond 1 year are small at all. After all, there are plenty of people who are 1-year-out who didn't get in. I would surmise that a significant fraction of them would apply again in year 2 (and again in year 3 is necessary). And that doesn't even include those who never even applied at all but who took jobs and/or did post-bac programs and applied after year 1.</p>
<p>Hey everyone, sorry to bud in on tis conversation, but I have some questions as to my eligibility to the pre-med programs at a couple schools. I am looking for some completely objective and unbiased evaluation of my credentials and where it might get me.</p>
<p>I will start with what you guys will want to know first.</p>
<ol>
<li>My GPA is far below what it should be, 3.5. </li>
<li>I took a derivitive of the SAT last year and scored a 1400. this is back when the SAT was out of 1600. I am expecting at least a 2250 on the real SAT.</li>
<li>I am a member of the Portland Youth Philharmonic, which is a well known and competitive youth orchestra.</li>
<li>I volunteer giving disadvantaged kids music lessons on a regular basis. </li>
<li>I am the founder, and captain of the Varsity rowing team at my high school.</li>
<li>I am a member of the National Honor Society, and might become a club officer next year. </li>
<li>My transcript is packed full of AP classes.</li>
</ol>
<p>Do all of my activities compensate for my low GPA? Where do you guys think I stand a chance getting into?</p>
<p>My top choices are Princeton, Hopkins, and University of Washington among others.</p>
<p>What do you guys think? Should I even try?</p>
<p>This belongs in an undergraduate admissions chances forum. We don't know anything about undergrad admissions.</p>
<p>It's obvious to me why Swarthmore students take a break after Swarthmore before applying to medical school; from the link you provided I see that the school itself recommends this. Probably besides that link, faculty and/or administration encourages this. And that probably has an effect on the students. I know if I'm pushing myself hard and there's someone repeating "take a break," it can affect my momentum, and taking a break starts to look real good.</p>
<p>at one point W&M consistently had the highest med school acceptance rate of any college in Virginia. Probably is still the case. I know the Bio and Chem depts are top notch.</p>
<p>how good is uva for premed?</p>
<p>thanks for the advice!!
but i have some questions.
what are some generally good premed programs?
so schools like JH and berkeley wouldnt be good choices for someone who wants to go down the medical track?
how about the premed programs in schools like USC, BU and NYU compare? thanks!!</p>
<p>does UCSD really have a BS/MD 8 year program? i heard about it somewhere but i cant find anything about it on their site.
thanks</p>