<p>^" My kids attended private K-12, which was attending by many doctors’ children."
-This is exactly the case with my D. and the reason that most of her close friends have at least one parent MD, with exceptions of few lawyers.</p>
<p>not much is still not zero. In a world where money matters (i.e. the real world for 99% of people) I agree that the boost from attending a highly ranked med school is probably not worth the debt.</p>
<p>I’m partial to the BSMD route because I’m a BSMD student at UNR, but it really is the better route. All I need to do is maintain a 3.5 gpa and get an average MCAT score of 28 and I retain my medical school spot. Medical schools are all prestigious, therefore if accepted into any medical school, be proud. If you take the traditional route, you must maintain at least a 3.7 gpa, receive a MCAT score of 30+, conduct extensive research and participate in extracurricular activities to stay COMPETITIVE. Thousands of applicants apply to med schools and 2-6% are admitted, hundreds if not thousands apply to BSMD and only a handful get in (I was one of six for UNR).</p>
<p>2-6% no. Try 40-45%.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Also incorrect…we have a number of posters here who don’t fit this description, yet got accepted into med school–where they are doing just fine thank you.</p>
<p>The numbers reported (for GPA or MCAT) are averages–which means that applicants both above and below the mean get accepted.</p>
<p>^ The quote emphasized “to stay COMPETETIVE”. Having less than the national averages for stats is not being very competitive, is it?</p>
<p>The average GPA is 3.6+ with an SD of ~.25. The closer one’s GPA gets to the wrong end of the SD, the less competitive one becomes. I know, I know - that’s not an earth shattering observation :)</p>
<p>Brown, you are correct. The article I read had wrong information. According to some more research, and depending on the medical school, it is about 20-30%.</p>
<p>There are two sides to it. There are schools with 2% admit rates but according AAMC statistics, 19.5k or so get into medicine out of 45k applicants. Many would be applicants never apply but 40% started med school last year.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321494/data/2012factstable17.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321494/data/2012factstable17.pdf</a></p>
<p>A few years ago, it looked like about 20% of MCAT-takers matriculated to medical school. Again, this is highly dependent on the underlying strength of the candidate.</p>
<p>For the last two years 70,000+/year took MCAT and as @texaspg pointed out, 19.5k matriculate. That’s ~27%.</p>
<p>Several of the BS/MD programs have been phased out recently, or as WUSTL is doing, still requiring very competitive GPA and MCAT scores to continue. With those scores you have an excellent chance at a range of excellent medical schools. Why tie yourself down?</p>
<p>I think the reason for the closing of many BS/MD programs is that it is just too soon to decide, and although medical school admissions are competitive, one of the principal features of physicians is patience. (for example, patience with 4 years of med school, maybe 5 years of residency, and then fellowship). Ability to delay gratification.</p>
<p>The impatient medically oriented folks are going into physician assistant, nurse practitioner programs, physical therapy (PT) and audiology or optometry and getting called “Dr” in 3 or 4 years. Much less debt, low malpractice, nice lifestyle.</p>
<p>Less than a quarter of “very sure” pre-meds stay pre-med. Weed-out orgo, bio and gen chem classes are legendary, and test IF YOU ARE WILLING TO GIVE UP ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE TO DO THIS. </p>
<p>Career choices in the medical field have undergone a profound shift, and PT school is now harder than med school to gain entrance. PA is about as hard. </p>
<p>So med schools know that admitting BS/MD candidates is a whole lot of time spent reviewing applications for a whole lot of anxious overachieving high schoolers that have a substantial probability of falling through anyway.</p>
<p>Just my opinion.</p>
<p>sorry 2prepmom, but I simply don’t buy the statement: “PT school is now harder than med school to gain entrance. PA is about as hard.”</p>
<p>I heard from the optometrist, that getting into Optometry is harder because number of schools is much lower. But all goes down to the fact who one wants to be. I have discussed it with my D. and she said that she see herself only at Med. School. Not because it is harder or easier or more expansive or less expansive. That is where she wants to be, period. In fact, she turned down opportunities to shadow and investigate deeper other options. Simply said, it is not for her. I understood her from much deeper level than most others. I have been in the field (not medical) that I absolutel detest despite of being successful academically. I would say, pursue whatever is in your heart and do not listen to others. What good for them, might not be good for you. And yes, I have gone back to school and switched and got myself into much happier place, thank goodness. Do not repeat my mistake.</p>
<p>@brown–</p>
<p>2prepmom might be correct----</p>
<p>According to CASPA (AMCAS equivalent for PA programs), in 2011-12 application cycle,
</p>
<p>That makes the admission rate just over 32%.</p>
<p>[Physician</a> Assistant Education Association](<a href=“Home | PAEA”>Home | PAEA)</p>
<p>For PT programs:</p>
<p>PTCAS/CAPTE data for 2011-12 available here: </p>
<p><a href=“APTA Physical Therapist Centralized Application Service | APTA”>http://www.ptcas.org/uploadedFiles/PTCASorg/About_PTCAS/2011_12_PTCASApplicantDataRpt.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.capteonline.org/uploadedFiles/CAPTEorg/About_CAPTE/Resources/Aggregate_Program_Data/AggregateProgramData_PTPrograms.pdf[/url]”>www.capteonline.org/uploadedFiles/CAPTEorg/About_CAPTE/Resources/Aggregate_Program_Data/AggregateProgramData_PTPrograms.pdf</a></p>
<p>~25,000 applicants for 9400 seats (includes both MS and DPT programs) Acceptance rate 37%</p>
<p>According to AAMC 2011-12 application cycle data, there were 45,266 applicants and 19,517 matriculants. Acceptance rate 43%</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321496/data/2012factstable18.pdf</a></p>
<p>ok, fair, i guess the question is what it means to be hard. The lottery has a lower success rate but it doesn’t take much effort beyond buying a ticket to win. I felt the statement implied that someone who could get into an MD school but decided to go for PA might have more trouble getting into PA school. I don’t think this is the case.</p>
<p>Well, there you go–I assumed she meant these programs are now more competitive w/r/t admission than medicine and these programs were attracting well qualified people who othewise might have gone into medicine, but didn’t want to spend the next 7-10 years of their life becoming doctors.</p>
<p>(FWIW, my one data point for folks going into PT certainly could have gone to med school–4.8+ GPA in bio at MIT w/MS in molecular bio from Berkeley.)</p>
<p>I TOLD you that it mattered how we defined our concept of “hard” or “difficult.” :)</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1486866-yale-vs-washu-med-program-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/1486866-yale-vs-washu-med-program-2.html</a></p>
<p>isn’t it easier to get to school (any school, could be a HS for that matter), that has 30,000 applicants to 900 spots, than school that has 2000 applicants to the same number of 900 spots. It looks to me that it is much harder to get into the first school. BTW, these are NOT hypothetcal examples, taken from the real life.
It looks to me that one has to work much much harder to get accepted to the first school vs. the second.
If your opinion is different, please, explain why having over 30 applicants to one spot is somehow considered to be easier to get to than having a bit over 2 applicants to one spot.</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>pretty simple, you are an applicant with a 3.6GPA and a 31 MCAT and average everything else. The school with 30,000 applicants receives 29,999 applications from people with GPAs below 2 and MCATs below 10, and absolutely no ECs. The other school’s 1,999 other applicants all have GPAs above 3.8 and MCATs above 40 with multiple first author nature/science papers, thousands of hours of volunteering and shadowing, president of multiple clubs and every LOR says they are the best student the writer has ever seen. Which one do you think you have a better shot of getting into?</p>
<p>Now I know this is an exaggeration, but my point is that I don’t believe the caliber of students pursuing PT/PA is the same as MD and that there are people who might struggle a bit in the MD game who would do perfectly well in the PT/PA game. I’m willing to admit that I could be wrong, but simply presenting the number of applications to # of spots is not proof that I am.</p>
<p>An example that might be more familiar to you, Miami: it sounds like your D didn’t have any trouble winning a great scholarship to UG–probably a mix of her being a great candidate and the (presumably very large) pool of other applicants not being as strong as her. In other words, she was among the top of the crowd, so for her it worked out. On the other hand, she didn’t receive a similarly awesome scholarship to med school in spite of her probably still having great personal characteristics. This time, the pool of competition was remarkably more difficult. Thus, it was easier for her to win a scholarship when competing against a large number of folks compared to when she was competing against a smaller group.</p>
<p>If you can convince me that applicants to other degree programs are more competitive than applicants to med school, then I’ll believe that the numbers are indicative of a much more difficult admissions process. But until then, I’m going to work under the assumption that the pool of med school candidates is more competitive than the other degree programs mentioned.</p>