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@ucbalumnus, I think bit of both?
I tried to look for some data. Not easy to find direct info on UG colleges of med school matriculants. Found some numbers on
http://medical-schools.startclass.com/l/18/University-of-Chicago-The-Pritzker-School-of-Medicine (no idea on quality of data):
Applicants: 1107 (IL)/5670 (Total)=19.5% apps from IL residents
Interviews: 78/1107 = 7% of IL applicants invited
526/4563 =11.5% of non IL apps invited
Enrolled: 20/78 = 26% of those interviewed from IL enrolled
68/526 = 13% of non IL res who were interviewed and enrolled
In the end, 23% of the class of 88 were IL residents, clearly an overly represented group for a highly nationally ranked, private Medical school. Not unreasonable to assume that disproportionate portion of the 20 IL residents that enrolled were UChicago grads.
Some do, some don’t. From what I have been told, less rigorous med schools are more likely to accept undergrads from their own school in an attempt to help their pre-med program increase their acceptance rate. More prestigious schools like Chicago typically do not do this as they want to attract top-tier students from other elite institutions, and expect other elite institutions to accept their pre-meds UGs in return. It also does not help that Pritzker is a relatively small school with only 90 or so students per class.
As an example, Dartmouth, a very prestigious school, only had 12 Dartmouth undergrads (13%) in their med school class of 89 in 2014.
https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/news/2014/geisel-school-of-medicine-welcomes-newest-md-class/
In contrast, Ohio State had an incoming class of 192 students, and 48 were OSU undergrads (25%).
http://medicine.osu.edu/pdfs/admissions/Entering%20Class%20Profile.pdf
13% from own (small) undergrad is still huge, though.
For state schools, the over representation of own undergrad may be partly due to in state preferences.
^^ Yes, 13% of the medical school class from one school is massive. We are talking 11-12 out of class of 89. I’m going to guess that the next largest contingent from one school would not be >5 and likely much less than that.
Looked at from the other side of Dartmouth graduating class, 11-12 are headed to Dartmouth Med school, and unlikely that more than 1-2 are headed to any other given school with the possible exception of UVM.
State schools are a completely different animal.
My impression is that 3.5 from either school (Chicago or Wooster) would meet initial bar for further evaluation. So I don’t think it matters; the issue might be that at Wooster the same kid doing the same work would get a 3.8 vs 3.5 at Chicago. (I have no idea if this would truly happen–and no one can because each kid only chooses 1 school).
The kid going to Central Michigan doesn’t worry me–maybe she wanted to do rural primary care. I agree that if the kid is SURE about med school, small pond big fish is best bet. But most kids are not that sure.
(FYI, I personally am not in agreement with the GPA-test score focused med school admissions, but this is current reality. There are people working to change the focus, so things may be different in the future.)
Really?
Rochester had 16 out of 100 (16%).
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/MediaLibraries/URMCMedia/education/md/documents/2019-profile.pdf
Brown had 48 out of 144 (33%)
https://www.brown.edu/academics/medical/admissions/class-profile
Miami had 41 out of out 147 (28%)
http://admissions.med.miami.edu/md-programs/general-md/class-profile
USC had 24 out of 186 (13%).
http://www.keck.usc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/
Wake Forest had 16 out of 120 (13%)
http://www.wakehealth.edu/School/MD-Program/Class-Profile.htm
Tufts had 24 out of 200 (12%)
http://medicine.tufts.edu/Education/MD-Programs/Doctor-of-Medicine/Class-Profile
Yale reports that 31 out of 100 came from Yale or Harvard (15% if you split them evenly between H&Y).
http://www.medicineatyale.org/septoct2012/people/peoplearticles/133698/
The 13% of Dartmouth undergrads attending Dartmouth Med School is low compared to these comparable institutions.
I have said lots of times elsewhere that the 20-somethings I know who are having the most success pursuing an “impossible dream” career all went to smaller LACs – albeit prestigious ones – not brand-name research universities. It’s not a scientific sample or anything. In general, I favor the uni side of this argument – that’s what my wife and I chose for ourselves, and that’s what our children chose with our advice. But looking at my younger relatives, my kids’ friends, and my friends’ kids, I am impressed with how well some of them coming out of small LACs do in following their dreams. (In some cases, the dreams are so specific that to give more details would be tantamount to identifying the person, so I am not going to do that.) I am also impressed with the ability of LAC grads to land good PhD program placements, although there I think part of the story is that they are less realistic about what pursuing a PhD is like, so the best students are less likely to be pursuing other options.
LACs vs. unis is not necessarily small pond vs. big pond. I think it’s a model of education that values solid fundamentals and quality experience over sophistication and visiting the cutting edge. The LAC model can work well for aspiring medical students, too.
“I became concerned about Wooster when I heard about a girl who had a 4.0 from Wooster and ended up at Central Michigan med (no slap to CMU but I was surprised she didn’t get into a higher ranked school with a 4.0).”
you know what a surgeon who graduated from cmu does???—surgery. if you think that CMU med school is easy to get in to or is somehow a lesser school …that is silly
http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2014/01/more_than_3000_students_apply.html
good luck getting in if you apply.
Getting into any medical school in this country is difficult and an acceptance is quite an honor. My friend’s niece graduated from Emory and got rejected from (almost) every medical school. The last time we spoke about this she was waiting to hear back from one more school.
My hunch is that it also has a lot to do with recommendations. Most people tend to take recs from people we know well more seriously than recs from people we don’t know. We also know that if there’s a problem with someone we’re more likely to be told the truth by someone who actually knows us…particularly if that person needs our professional help.
So, a bio prof at UChicago is unlikely to write a rec for a student applying to UChicago Med which glosses over his/her shortcomings…or might do that and then call up and say…“brilliant kid but very abrasive personality.” This can, obviously, hurt you at times. If you’re a borderline candidate, though, it can make all the difference.
I’ve been told that if you are applying to PhD programs in science and attend a LAC, it’s helpful to ask a prof who is a peer reviewer or contributes to scientific journals and attends lots of conferences to write your rec. It helps if your recommender is known to the people reading your rec.
A lot of LACs play a game with med school admissions. You have to be “endorsed” by a committee before you can apply. Then they post some impressively high acceptance rate, which doesn’t mention the fact that a substantial number of students weren’t permitted to apply.
While lower than at some other schools, it is still far higher than one would otherwise expect.
Referring again to curmudgeon’s D (she finished med school a few years back and I wouldn’t expect curmudgeon to be around here much): there were enough research opportunities at Rhodes for her to win a major undergraduate science prize–possibly the Goldwater, not sure I remember.
Agree that there will be many more such opportunities at UC, but smaller schools have them as well. At places like Wooster and Rhodes, find out about not just med school acceptances but also where graduates go to grad school.
A highly motivated student, with strong background int the sciences and good MCAT – yet coming from an LAC – does indeed have a good chance of admission to med schools. One case in point is Reed, which is not known for a “pre-professional” orientation among its students. To quote from website:
“From 2005 through 2014, of applicants with a 3.1 science GPA or better and at least 28 on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), 85 out of 106 [i.e., 80% of] applicants were successful.” Source: http://www.reed.edu/ir/medschool.html
Note also that Reed doesn’t have nearly the grade inflation of most other colleges.
Over the course of a decade, Reed had fewer than 11 medical school applicants per year with a 3.1 science GPA (a level I would think would be close to the bottom for a medical school applicant absent special considerations) and a 28 MCAT? With 80% success? That would scare the heck out of me if I wanted to be a doctor and I was considering Reed!
Amherst, which is about the same size and intellectual quality, has 50-60 medical school applicants per year, with a 90% success rate (counting reapplications, which are probably also included in the Reed data), and I doubt many of them are below the 3.1/28 level. https://www.amherst.edu/news/campusbuzz/node/501039
Looking at the Reed data more carefully, something odd was going on. In the past 5 years, it had 89 applicants, or 18/year, and a 70% success rate.15 of those applicants (6 of them successful) had less than a 2.9 science GPA or less than a 28 MCAT. For the whole 10-year period, there were only 32 more applicants with a 3.1/28, and 29 of them were successful, a 90% success rate. So prior to 2010, Reed was only generating 6 applicants with those stats per year, but they had a really high success rate. In the next five years, the number of applicants at that level increased to 15 per year, but the success rate went down significantly.
The ranking of the medical school may matter more if the student is planning a career in medical research rather than clinical medicine.
Re: the different med school acceptance rates between Reed and Amherst.
Is this one of the reasons why there are fewer Reed graduates who apply to med school? Reed attracts and recruits the kind of students who do not fit into the mold of prospective med school students.
Med school training could be more “traditional” than the training in a PhD program in terms of the science and math (especially the latter.) Some colleges could excel in recruiting and sending their graduates to a PhD program than a professional school.
Re: 31 out of 100 from only two colleges at YSM.
I think this number is about right.
After med school, it is likely that the majority of the graduates from HMS continue their residency training at one of their teaching hospitals. If you are from HMS, your step-1 score could be less important. (This is because the majority of their students are doing pretty well in the residency program match despite of the fact that their step-1 class average is not very different from the same at several good and “more traditional” (i.e., actually giving out traditional grades in their first 1.5 or 2 years in med school) public med schools. Some med schools with some “special social cause mission” could do slightly worse in their students’ step-1 test. Chicago or University of Wash or UCSF could be one of these but Northwest or Case or Wash U or UVA may not - if I remember it correctly. Maybe HMS also values some of those “special missions” like Chicago does but to a less extent. The stats is not everything they would consider. I heard of a case that a grad from a small/midsized ivy college with 3.9+ GPA and 39 or 40 MCAT got into a single public med school in California. It is likely he had only stats but nothing else. Also, another CCer here from a “larger” Ivy with a high GPA and a high MCAT once posted that he almost needed to “beg” before he could get an interview slot at a lower ranked public med school in his state, California. His own affiliated med school in NYC even did not give him an interview invite – in term of his stats from the premed crowd at his relatively large college, he was likely among the top 40 premeds from his graduating class. This is another example that the stats is not everything.)
Don’t know anything about UG research options at Wooster, but research opportunities at Rhodes are excellent… on campus with Rhodes faculty and off-campus at St. Judes hospital.
I wonder how many people on CC would be familiar with Rhodes if she hadn’t turned down Yale and/or gotten into Yale Med. CC’s Ivy fixation (“I mean, she got into YALE from Rhodes!”) is what seems to make the poster memorable. It’s somewhat of a pity, as it’s a very good school in its own right.
We’ve actually had quite a few Rhodes students and alums on CC over the years (e.g. lynxinsider, who studied business and CS there), most of whom were very happy with their experience at Rhodes. I have a fair amount of familiarity with the school, and it provides terrific opportunities in the sciences. I was pretty amazed by the research even freshmen and sophomores got to do – very different from my own experience, both at my undergrad alma mater (top private university) and current institution (top public university).
I’m still aggravated that people are confusing competitiveness with actual size of the school, but whatever.
This thread reminds me of a discussion I was having with a retina specialist’s resident. I was at the retina specialist a few years ago because I’d hurt my eye and they were checking to make sure the retina was fine (it was). I was talking to the girl doing her residency with my retina guy (because i’m always curious about people). This is at Emory, btw, so some of the best retina people in the country.
She went to the University of North Carolina (chapel hill) for her undergrad and then got into Emory for medical. She said her twin sister was super grindy and went to Northwestern for UG and is now doing her residency somewhere similar (in the chicago area, I can’t remember the name of it). Her opinion was that her sister had “no life” and “worked all the time” during her UG, and they still ended up in basically the same spot doing the same thing, but with more debt and less life satisfaction.
To be fair, she’s going to be biased towards her own journey, but the fact that this kid seemed to have a healthy grasp of work/life balance while going through medical school had a big impact on me, as did the fact that up until that point I was very prestige-obsessed when it came to schools for our daughters.