<p>I've read many places that Swarthmore's biology program is really strong. How does it compare to school's such as tufts and jhu. Also, their med school acceptance rate is around 80%. Is this because there are barely any science majors/med school applicants?</p>
<p>From what I understand, there are quite a few science majors/med school applicants. Swat just has pretty incredible grad school acceptance rates across the board.</p>
<p>Bio is one of Swarthmore's three biggest majors -- the others being Econ and Poli Sci.</p>
<p>The med school acceptance rate for Swarthmore's seniors applying in 2004 was 92%. The acceptance rate for Swarthmore alumni applying in 2004 (at least one year after graduation) was 81%. The overall rate was 85%. </p>
<p>Be careful that you are comparing apples to apples when comparing percentages.</p>
<p>Here's some recent information from the pre-med advising office that might be interesting:</p>
<p>Basically, if you complete the pre-med requirements at Swat with a B+ GPA (right about the school average) and do well on the MCAT, you are all but guaranteed to get into med school.</p>
<p>Based on last year's numbers (assuming alum apply in roughly equal numbers each year), it looks like somewhere between 9% and 10% of ALL Swarthmore graduates get accepted to med school.</p>
<p>In addition to that, 4.4% of all Swarthmore grads over the most recent ten year period have gotten PhDs in Bio or Health-related sciences. That's the third highest percentage in the US, behind only Caltech and Reed. </p>
<p>Here are the top 25 or so in per capita bio PhD production:</p>
<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 graduates </p>
<p>Academic field: Bio and Health Sciences </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database<br>
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database<br>
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 54
2 Reed College 48
3 Swarthmore College 44
4 University of Chicago 33
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 31
6 University of California-San Francisco 31
7 Harvard University 30
8 Kalamazoo College 30
9 Harvey Mudd College 29
10 Earlham College 28
11 Johns Hopkins University 27
12 Princeton University 26
13 Haverford College 26
14 Mount Holyoke College 26
15 Yale University 25
16 Rice University 25
17 Lawrence University 25
18 Carleton College 25
19 Stanford University 25
20 Oberlin College 24
21 Cornell University, All Campuses 24
22 Grinnell College 23
23 Hendrix College 23
24 Bryn Mawr College 21
25 Bowdoin College 21
26 Wellesley College 21
27 Amherst College 21</p>