I happened to be looking at Vandy’s premed advising and I was a little surprised to see how few of the applicants from Vandy undergrad were accepted to Vandy Med.
Just under 200 Vandy applicants, yet only 13 accepted (don’t know how many of those 13 actually matriculated at Vandy SOM).
I was a little surprised at how low that 13 number is. With an acceptance rate of 5-7% from their own undergrad, I’m guessing that’s not much better than an applicant at-large (I didn’t check the overall applicant numbers).
I’m sure that many Vandy premeds chose Vandy as their undergrad thinking they’d have some edge into the med school. Seems like there isn’t one, or much of one, at all.
What numbers have you seen regarding other private SOMs and their undergrad applicants?
At D’s private medical school, the other college outnumbered the graduates from medical school university, which was #2 in numbers. The #1 represented in D’s medical school class was Berkeley, which is long way in the other state. Poor kids from CA had to adjust their driving habits, they had no experience driving in the snow, I guess adjusted well enough to happily stay there for many years of residency. Sorry, I do not know the numbers!
I don’t think the percent of applicants admitted is a relevant number.
The class size at Vanderbilt is about 80-90 students. The entire school is 400 students. So if class size including MD/PhD is 100 students, 13 admitted is a good number. I suspect they have a high yield among their own undergrads.
@MiamiDAP It’s just interesting to see how relatively few students from their own undergrad they admit. This is so contrary to what many believe. So many think that the undergrads are going to have visibility and contact with the med school, and therefore have an admissions edge. There is also a belief that the undergrad “makes a call” to the SOM admins to push thru some apps. If that is going on, they’re successful with very few.
Just to put in perspective for CaseWestern. Over a 5 year period, Case had 37 Berkeley students matriculate at CWRU SOM. That’s about 8-9 UCB students per year. Don’t know how many were actually accepted, but with about 900 students applying, I’m guessing that at least 200 have Case on their app lists…since the Calif applicants know that they have to apply to privates across the country.
Since you’re saying that Case matriculated fewer students than UCB at its med school, that means it enrolled less than 8-9 students per year. Case undergrad has about 200 med school applicants in a year. I’m guessing that nearly all of them have Case on their app lists, so maybe less than 5% matriculate (which is different from acceptance rate).
You also have no idea how many of that 200 actually applied to Vandy. I know lots of kids who didn’t want to spend the whole 8 years in one place, especially when it’s far easier to relocate from UG to med school than it is to relocate from med school to residency.
@iwannabe_Brown
Yes, i do know…
I mistakenly wasn’t clear enough. Vandy had just under 200 of their undergrads apply to their med school…and only 13 were accepted. Vandy had just under 300 med school applicants. So, in this case, 2/3 wanted to spend 8 years in Nashville.
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I don’t think the percent of applicants admitted is not a relevant number.
The class size at Vanderbilt is about 80-90 students. The entire school is 400 students. So if class size including MD/PhD is 100 students, 13 admitted is a good number. I suspect they have a high yield among their own undergrads.
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Your double negative first confused me.
I don’t know if Vandy has a high yield amongst their own. If some held acceptances to other highly ranked or higher ranked SOMs, they may have chosen elsewhere. And, without the super undergrad aid, some may have matriculated for cheaper at their state school, especially if it’s well-ranked.
Vandy SOM is 450 students. Class size is what you’ve stated. I don’t know if the add’l 90 are MD/PhD or what.
I’m not knocking the 13 number. I just found the data interesting because it’s counter to what many people often think. We see that on CC…parents and students thinking that if the student goes to X school as a premed, they’ll have some hook into the med school…and it’s simply not true. I know that my brother-in-law was insisting that his premed son attend either JHU or Vandy (he went to Vandy), because he truly believed that Vandy SOM would strongly-favor their own.
Vandy Med school stopped accepting many of its own undergrads back in the early 1990’s to “expand its base” from what my premed advisor told me at the time.
For all of you Vanderbilt undergrads/alumni out there, don’t expect any special consideration when you apply to the med school or when your children apply to the university. Unless your last name is Ingram.
Sorry, just fixed it.
I looked up USNWR and it said 402. I thought they include MD/PhDs in totals. I found another source which said 96 class size.
I agree with you that many people think attending undergrad can be a shoe in for med school but it is not true for most schools. 10% of their MD class size seems to be the norm at many private schools.
When D started Stanford in 2012, the premed people were showing numbers of admitting almost 30 (a large number after at least one gap year) and 25% of the final class of 80 each year. The next year they moved to number 2, started receiving much larger number of applications and dropped their admit rate to 2.5% and also dropped admitting too many of their own grads.
At one time a Harvard to Harvard kid told me his class had 10% but this was about 8 years ago. I still see a reasonable number on their facebook page this year but don’t know how many matriculate. I see larger numbers at Yale and Penn (more like 15-20%?). JHU Med says they admit 10% of their class but that is not much compared to how many apply.
CWRU numbers would be interesting since they are admitting many for BS/MD upfront and so it would be much harder for more undergrads to move onto med school. Northwestern kept cutting their BS/MD size and now are down to 15-20 kids so they can have a larger admit class each year for regular MD. Brown has 50%+ coming from PLME and so can’t afford to add too many more from their own undergrad.
Michigan is one top ranked school where they admit almost 80-90 of their own undergrads and fill most of their instate quota with their own students.
AAMC.org gives the following numbers for Vandy. I think AAMC.org would be more accurate than UsNews.
452 med students total
90 MS1
13 MD/PhD students matriculate in fall 2015. The med school has about 100 MD/PhD students, they’re staying for 7-8 years.
AAMC listed Vandy SOM as having 452 med students (dont’ know if that includes the MD/PhD students…maybe only those in the med school portion? No idea.)
Michigan, being a state school, is going to be a different situation. I’m surprised that a state med school is allowed to give a preference to their undergrads since the state controls which state schools can have a med school. Maybe because there are at least 4 public med schools in Michigan?
UMichigan SOM is very special case. Its med school has a very odd funding structure, with only a small portion of its funding (like under 15%?) coming from the state of Michigan and an endowment large enough to take the school private if the governing board chose to do so. (That means UM SOM can do whatever it damn well pleases when it comes to admissions.)
“here is also a belief that the undergrad “makes a call” to the SOM admins to push thru some apps”- I do not know if pre-med advisor actually calls SOM adcoms. However, I know for the fact that D’s SOM adcom called her pre-med advisor to apologize for the lack of Merit scholarships in the year that D. applied and they expressed their hopes that D. and her classmates still choose this SOM despite of the lack of Merit scholarships. They explained this lack by very high caliber applicants that included MS from the top grad. schools, PhD from Harvard and several lawyers. So, simple college graduate with simple college GPA of 4.0 was not in a picture for the Merit awards.
Another note. "CWRU numbers would be interesting since they are admitting many for BS/MD upfront " - you refer to less than 15 (as far as I remember the number of PPSP spots). I would not call it a high number though. I am not sure about PPSP “survival” rate. D’s best friend was in PPSP, but she ended up going to a different SOM than Case. In D’s bs/md (not PPSP) average “survival” rate over several years was 50%. D. also did not stay in her bs/md, she ended up attending at different SOM than the one in her program.
In Midwest from what we know from D’s SOM interviews, the CA kids beat almost all others in number of applicants. It includes both private and state SOM. And the vast majority of CA applicants happen to be Asian. Again, this is just an observation of one applicant - my D. Others may have a different experiences.
Indeed, it is well known at Brown that it’s more difficult to get into Warren Alpert as a regular pre-med.
Interestingly, my medical school (which is not Brown) has pretty consistently had about 10% of the class be Brown alumni. Obviously several more get admitted and don’t come.
Definitely possible that the MD/PhD students who are in their PhD phase don’t count towards the med school numbers. At many schools we are technically “withdrawn” or “on a leave of absence” for the 3-5 years. At some schools we may never be considered part of the medical school because we are technically graduate students who take medical school classes.
I was under the impression it was much larger (30-40 spots). Based on the class size of 170+ students, this is not a big program at all.
"Definitely possible that the MD/PhD students who are in their PhD phase don’t count towards the med school numbers. "
-During residency application cycle, those from MD/PhD are counted as coming from the same SOM as regular MD’s and in selective specialties, they do have advantage, they do not have to have as high Step 1 score (and they normally do not) as regular MDs. Some research heavy residency programs (like my D’s that she will start in July, it is wierd to be the 1st year again while you are actually a 2nd year resident), specifically seeking to have a certain percentage to be filled by MD/PhD. D’s residency class will have 1 MD/PhD and 3 MDs, so basically, MD/PhD is 25% in her future class. The MD/PhD is coming from U of Chicago.
I checked CWRU website. They are very clear in listing MD/PhD admits separately from MD admits. 172 MDs and 12 MD/PhDs and 32 for Cleveland Clinic.
“They state up to 15-20 candidates are offered spots in the PPSP medicine program.” Frankly, I never heard of 20.