^^Agree w/ mom2. Pre meds (and all science/engineering majors) start getting winnowed out the moment they set foot into a science/math classroom. The “story” of D2’s I posted earlier in this thread is exactly how it happens
^^This is exactly why someone who is passionate about premed should consider attending a school where they are comfortably above the 75%. For someone who is just “thinking” about maybe trying premed, its a different story.
For that reason, you do not go to the “dream” school if you are serious in premed. Especially if you are off the waitlist.
My niece went to MIT, her dream school, for premed. She got clobbered in MIT and ended up with no med school. Had she went to something like Holy Cross or USC, she might now attending HMS. Pride and Prejudice, that is the answer.
I have received multiple PMs asking me where I got the number of applicants from a particular school. I got it from
https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/factstablea2.html
Check different tables if you cannot find your school in one particular table. Not all schools appear on every table. You will find very interesting results.
Also, as you can see from https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf , the numbers of matriculants do not reflect the the actual number of slots available to the general applicants as pointed out by @WayOutWestMom . Brown’s 143 matriculant number includes PLME … and those PLME students are not included in the applicant number. Go figure! :-/
The most useful table is https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf
Where do you stand in term of GPA and MCAT? Remember these days medical school applications is just like college applications. It is what applicants do outside of classroom which get them in. GPA/MCAT are just filtering people out.
Also, there were 816,153 total applications but there were only 44,802 applicants. Average 18.22 applications per applicant.
A joke about MIT premed is that you need to count on A=5 so if you get straight B, you will get 4.0 GPA. 
However, non-pre-med science and engineering majors do not face as aggressive weeding as pre-meds do. In many colleges, science and engineering majors just need a 2.0 GPA and C grades in their major courses to continue. In some colleges, some of the majors may be capacity-limited so that higher GPA or grades are required to continue in the major (or enter from an undeclared or pre-major state), but the thresholds are usually lower than the GPA needed to be a realistic applicant who can get admitted to a medical school.
Of course, some non-pre-med science and engineering majors earning 2.x GPAs do change out of those majors because they are not doing as well as they hoped, even if they are at colleges that only require 2.0 GPA and C grades to continue.
There is another stage of GPA weeding as one approaches graduation, which is that many employers use a 3.0 GPA to screen college applicants for interview candidates, so a student with a 2.x GPA is likely to have a more difficult job search. But that applies across many majors and employment goals, and 3.0 GPA is much lower than what a realistic pre-med needs.
"A joke about MIT premed is that you need to count on A=5 so if you get straight B, you will get 4.0 GPA. "
Using your table, I did not see any number of MIT applicants who applied for med school. MIT and Caltech are certainly premed killers.
The MSAR offer more granular data about med schools admissions than the AAMC does. The AAMC is all about gross numbers, whereas MSAR breaks it down more specifically on an individual school by school basis.
One thing to remember about the AAMC FACTS tables–school of origin only reports the college where the applicant earned their undergrad degree, not the college they attended most recently. This means it does not include data on whether applicants have taken post-bacc classes at other schools or earned graduate degrees. (MSAR does.)
FACTS table only report the largest producer of applicants by individual ethnicity. The schools listed skew heavily toward large universities which produce lots of lots of college graduates, or for AA applicants, the HBCUs. The skew also reflect the ethnic make up of the individual colleges. Universities with high [pick an ethnicity] enrollment tend to produce larger number of med school applicants from that ethnic background. Statistical common sense.
@artloversplus Cal Tech has a total undergrad enrollment barely above 2000 students. There’s not any college/university of that small size listed in any of the FACTS tables. So it may not be just Cal Tech’s tough grading policies that is keeping it the lists, but the fact that Tech is a small school that does not produce a high volume of graduates period.
Per MIT’s own archived career data, MIT produces about 150 med school applicants/year.
Congratulations on your decision OP, good luck!
@artloversplus Looks like 3 MIT 2017 grads went to medical school. https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/GSS2017.pdf
Doesn’t say how many applied.
Don’t get me wrong. Actually according to [this blog](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/premed) There were average 3.5 acceptances by MIT applicants … if someone can get to that stage.
BTW, why going to MIT/Caltech for premed in the first place? Choose a school which is good at teaching, focuses on teaching, has a relatively high GPA, and has a reputation for happy students. Med school is hard and residency is terrible. College is the best time to relax.
MIT has total of 4500 UG student or about ~1100 per class, 3.3% of them applied to medical school will be 36, or maximum of 40 in total. And 3.5 GPA in MIT is very difficult to obtain. It can’t be like WOWM said 150 applicant.
As long as you can graduate from MIT, you can get a decent job even if your GPA is 2.0. My niece is working for a totally unrelated to the Bio field.
@WayOutWestMom 's number looks right. According to data in 2010 –
Prehealth advising provided credential services and prehealth advisors to 88 out of 144
MIT applicants to medical school in AY2010, resulting in an 86.7 percent acceptance
rate for those who participated in these services. The acceptance rate for nonusers of
preprofessional advising services was 56 percent. Of the total applicant group of 144 (up
from 131 in AY2009), 69 were undergraduates, 17 were graduate students, and 58 were
alumni. Acceptance rates were 94 percent for undergraduates (up from 82 percent the
previous year), 47 percent for graduate students, and 67 percent for alumni. The national
acceptance rate for all applicants was 46 percent. Average grade point average (GPA) for
accepted undergraduates was 3.7/4.0, and the average medical college admission test
score was 35.
*A=4(AAMC) not 5(MIT internal)
However, biology and biological engineering majors at MIT tend to find lower paid jobs than most other majors at MIT, according to https://gecd.mit.edu/resources/survey-data .
I have been watching figure skating at the Olympic Games for many years. When my spouse and I were watching this year’s games, we were talking about how difficult it has become to win these days. Oksana Baiul’s 1994 performance probably won’t win a medal now. There is a large number of Russian skaters who are practicing quad jumping. The bar for winning is being raised steadily every year … just like medical school admissions.
The new MCAT of 2015 raised the bar also. The total test time is now 7 hours 33 minutes instead of 4 hours 10 minutes. The suggested prerequisite courses is now 11 instead of 8. The number of questions is now 230 instead of 144. By the time class of 2022 graduates from med school, 1 out 10 probably won’t find a residency. (no match)
These days, the acceptance rate for a good internship is less than 15%. Even a school EMT spot has an acceptance rate of less than 25%. If you look at the AAMC applicant data for each school, you will find for most top schools, about 15% (plus or minus 3%) are applying to med schools. So as others have pointed out, if you are not comfortably standing within the top 25%, you should really have a good backup of your career plan. The medical school plan probably won’t work out.
This is very troubling. There is something really irresponsible about opening up all these new med schools without places for the graduates. I smell a big law suit down the road.
Highly doubtful.
There were 33,167 residency positions (30,232 of which were PGY1 positions) offered this year in the NRMP Match. (1) The AOA offer another 2473 residency positions. (2). US medical residencies are continuing to expand (albeit slowly) according to NRMP data (1)–about 3% per year. Given that for the Class of 2021, only 21,388 allopathic (3) and 7197(4) osteopathic students matriculated (and not all of them will finished med school or will choose to pursue a residency)–there will be a surplus of residencies positions for US medical grads for the Class of 2021 and undoubtedly for the Class of 2022 as well.
Those positions may not be in their first choice of specialty, or in areas the applicant finds highly desirable. but US med grads are not going to get squeezed out of residency positions any time soon.
(1) http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Main-Match-Result-and-Data-2018.pdf
http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Match-by-the-Numbers.pdf
(2) https://natmatch.com/aoairp/stats/2018prgstats.html
(3) https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/factstablea17.pdf
(4) https://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2017-aacomas-applicant-matriculant-profile-summary-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4f072597_8
[quote]
the acceptance rate for a good internship is less than 15%.
[/quote]
I'd like to know: 1) what is a "good internship" and 2) where are you getting this information.
Competition for various specialties waxes & wanes over time as the popularity/perceived desirability of specialties change over time. Residencies in certain areas (cough--California--cough) are more competitive than other (upper Midwest/South).
Top ranked academic residencies for competitive specialties in desirable areas may receive 700 or 800 application for 9 or 10 positions, but it's not like that everywhere.Theoretically, the residency spots available will still exceed the number of medical students. But I read something like [url=https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/17/medical-students-match-day/]this[/url] and other articles which talk about “no match”. Of course, if a med student does not care about specialty/location/etc., they can probably find a spot somewhere … Is that a “match”?
Regarding “good internships”, I have real time data for at least three internships which all have hundreds of applicants. I think 15% (announced during orientation) is very conservative since everyone knows insiders tend to fill a large number of those positions. For outsiders, the candidates tend to come from some big name schools. My definition of “good internships” are those clinical positions associated with big hospitals. It is pretty strict by most standards.
@WayOutWestMom : I look at one of the links – http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Match-by-the-Numbers.pdf
Even today, Percent U.S. Allopathic Seniors Matched to PGY-1 Positions 94.3
5.7% do not match. I am wondering what happen to those 5.7%?
Also, Percent of Matched U.S. Allopathic Seniors Matched to One of Top 3 Choices is at 77.3% – a drop of 1.3% from last year.
What exactly are the competitive internships everyone is talking about? Back in my day, kids who wanted pre-med just volunteered at the local hospital. Are there now special recognized internships? Are they specific to each college?
In post med school graduate, the first year residency is considered “internship”. The “internship” prior to entering the med school and the rotations during the med school are all basically shadowing where students does not have a Physician license.