<p>I just wanted to open this thread for anyone and everyone to asks questions about med school to each other. So I’d like to start by asking the question does anyone know how many students from Davis actually directly get into med school. When I was in the room with the kids of my major(biochemistry) nearly everyone raised there hand, obviously that many ppl won’t get in, so what are the stats?</p>
<p>HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH PRE MEDS
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA</p>
<p>lol k. Im pretty sure that only 20-30 students get into med school a year from davis, berk places 50-60 I believe (I think I saw this on their internship/career site). I think I heard during orientation that davis only writes the committee letter of recommendation for the top 50 candidates or something. Biochem is not for the weak, be sure to apply your junior year. I don't think med schools want to see your grades after the higher upper division biochem classes ><.</p>
<p>Don't forget research and EC's...take advantage of the fact Davis has a medical center and register for internships. </p>
<p>Get to know your profs and their research...it could help you out in a pinch when you need a letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>And concentrate on grades. My apologies if I'm reciting old advice; all this is tried and true.</p>
<p>ya i kno, i'm confident i can get into some med school but I'm just wondering about the stats. thanks! I wish more ppl would post there questions on her tho, I'm sure there's alot of pre meds at davis who have questions.</p>
<p>I hope you are a regent scholar, because thats the only reason you should be confident about succeeding grade wise. Med school acceptances are unpredictable, so you can't be confident about that.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that only 1/3-1/2 of people who apply get into med school each year, meaning LOTS of very qualified applicants get turned away ever year. Being confident you can get in is often the biggest mistake, because even a 4.0GPA can get rejected if you don't have good ECs and MCATs. GPA is only one piece of the pie...</p>
<ul>
<li>fooshy</li>
</ul>
<p>P.S. Personally, I was considering pre-med, but now I'm just considering graduate school in biotechnology instead. Medical school is an enormous commitment-- be sure to be willing to sacrifice the next 11+ years of your life (4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 3 years residency). And yes, it really is as hard as people say it is...</p>
<p>I'm not a regent scholar but I do kno that more kids then 20-30 get into to med school from uc davis. It's about a 100 students out of 500 as far as stats go. And gpa is one thing but like Doctor Who said if you have strong e.c's your gpa will weigh it out. so I'm relying on that here and there and yes 30% is about the amount that get in to med school directly from California. This does not include Carribean schools, those who work for a year then apply, those who do accelerated programs and those who sign directly to davi s med school. So the stats are definitely a lot higher then ppl say. It just to scare guys but it's not impossible that the spirit one should have ( : o and within the next 4 years something around 30% more students will be taken from the U.S to cope with all the doctors retiring so it'll only get easier not harder.</p>
<p>I know that competition at ANY UC is intense... and that it is nessassary to be one of the FEW students who gets mostly A's in order to get into med school . What is your take on UC competition and med school??? I really want to go to a US med school, but dnt know if i can stand the intense competition!!!!! THANKS</p>
<p>100 out of 500 is low for any school. That's below the national average significantly (~45% admissions). I don't think med school is getting easier because the US needs doctors. Outsourcing deals with that nicely (x-rays are sent to India for radiologists there to examine apparently), and I don't think any med school is going to lower its bar because of that. In short, I wouldn't want to be overconfident in med school at all. I'm pursuing pre-med as well, but I wouldn't for one second consider med school as a given.</p>
<p>does davis give any preference to their undergrads for their med school?</p>
<p>See the thing that people don't see when it comes to med school is U.S is not the only option. You have carribean schools for starters and then the schools all over the world, in fact something like 20% of our nation's doctors are FMG(foreign medical graduates) so yes I say 100/500 for just U.S, the options are there ppl just need to make the effort to find em. and I kno many of you think o yea these programs are not licensed in the U.S and if they are most of the time ppl get into bad schools. Well, I will agree with you that it is harder then going from a U.S school but that doesn't mean it's impossible, I know many doctors who have recieved medicine out of state and work comfortably in Kaiser or are a part of other large HMO organizations. In the end, the choice is in your hands but 100/500 is definitely not the exact stats and if one were to believe that they are gravely mistaken. Secondly, yes peppers the program is getting easier in America. the stat is around 80% of doctors in the U.S today are at or around the age of 60. All of them are soon to retire. Making the output and input uneven as fewer and fewer kids are intrested in medicine these days due to the difficulty of the line so yes it can only get easier. The problem with outsourcing is HMO's don't want the entire medical business to outsource to India for obvious reasons and FMG's aren't allowed to produce more doctors then U.S schools that has to be like an unwritten taboo lol. Anyways point is medicine is something ppl are scared about but like i said it's not something impossible. </p>
<p>ugh alot of typing lol. </p>
<p>Peanut_butter to answer your question no davis does not give preference to it's own students in fact you are at a disadvantage to get into davis med school due to the simple fact that admissions officers like newer students. HOWEVER there is an exception to that, there is a contract waiver you sign in your third year I believe. It's only open to students with a 3.65 and above and you have to meet some other formalities I just heard about about it you should look into it but like if you get it you sign it and you guarentee yourself a spot at UCDMS. But alot of the kids who get to sign the contract just ditch it because they get into better med school anyways lol. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Baby boomers are about to retire, and they need to be tended to, I agree thats a very good point, however I simply don't see Harvard medical school lowering its standards to make it "easier" to get into medical school just because we're in a healthcare crisis. It might be easier to find a job, given, if you apply now, and it might be more permissive for someone to graduate from a less well known school to work at more prestigious hospitals/go on the "ROAD to success", but, if admissions rates are anything to be concerned with, the only reason the admissions rates are going up is because fewer people are applying and the ratio is bigger. One can argue that these people are likely the weaker candidates and have instead elected not to apply rather than a more adequate sampling of the applicant pool, which would probably have generated a similar %. Also, if admissions rates are anything to be concerned with, if 17,000 persons are being admitted to medical schools every year, and we assume that at least 10,000 of them end up becoming doctors, I don't know about you, but that looks to be a very promising way to fill up the gap. You throw around 80% a lot, and its probably true, however we'd be mistaken to think that they'd all retire at once. It's going to be gradual (especially with medicine, where doctors tend to be more valued the older they are, up to a certain point of course). </p>
<p>Also, if you're going to talk about alternatives, I can assure you I've perused the Pre Med forum on here long enough. Carribean schools, becoming a DO, its all been mentioned. These alternatives (Carribean school mostly) would only be for someone absolutely desperate to become a doctor. Someone at our school dropped out of HS in sophomore year to go to a Carribean medical school; I would question that medical school's capacity to train high caliber doctors that this country needs (and research on this would hardly be complete unless you include the # of these graduates who fail to pass the board exam). The main stream of pre-meds will likely not consider that alternative for various reasons, although I will agree with you that this is a valid alternative. Being a DO is a much better option than a Carribean school, and you end up being roughly the same as an MD.</p>
<p>Still, I'm afraid I don't share your enthusiasm about admissions into medical school. I understand that confidence is a good thing, and I'm fairly sure of my decision, but to illustrate the process as, happy as you're doing would hardly be true to the realities of the situation. If you're completely devoted to becoming a doctor, I agree with you 100% that you can make it. However if you're relying on some supposed other avenues and statistics to reach that goal, I would be cautious. Doctors are highly respected for a reason; they had to go through a lot to get where they are.</p>
<p>ahhh naive little froshy premeds... let me help you out:</p>
<ul>
<li>no med school is not easy to get into, even with the proper stats</li>
<li>california is the hardest place to get into a med school</li>
<li>you're at a disadvantage for one of the med schools if you go to davis, because davis gives preference to new students.</li>
<li>don't kid yourself, you're not getting any advantage because the US needs more doctors, it's still gonna be just as hard to get in.</li>
<li>DON'T THINK JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A GOOD GPA THAT YOU'LL GET IN... GPA is just part of the story, you need good MCATs, ECs, leadership experience, relevant clinical experience, and on top of that, you need to be given a secondary from the school after you apply, fill that out, hope you get an interview, pass the interview, and then FINALLY you MIGHT get accepted into a medical school, and hope you're ready for the amount of work you'll be doing for at LEAST the next 7 years...</li>
</ul>
<p>and harvard will always be harvard and it will always be near impossible to get in. they only take the best of the best-- 4.0, 35+ MCAT, plenty of research and clinical experience.</p>
<p>so yah, don't kid yourself it's not getting any easier</p>
<ul>
<li>fooshy</li>
</ul>
<p>^Doesn't your first point mean that every med school is easy to get into?
Anyways, that's the kind of thing I was talking about. All the jaded pre-meds go on the med school forum, and it really is a difference between us happy energetic froshies, and the exhausted upperclassmen, which is why I take things about it getting easier with a huge grain of salt.</p>
<p>"HOWEVER there is an exception to that, there is a contract waiver you sign in your third year I believe. It's only open to students with a 3.65 and above and you have to meet some other formalities I just heard about about it you should look into it but like if you get it you sign it and you guarentee yourself a spot at UCDMS."</p>
<p>Rofl, that is the biggest piece of crap that I have ever heard on these forums. Hahahahahahhahaha naive freshmen</p>
<p>Peppers,
sorry my first post got deleted so I have to rewrite it again ugh anyways. I agree with everything you said but even with the 17,000 10,000 item you talked about it still will become easier. I mean you don't have to take my word for it. In medical articles and even in the economist they mentioned that within the next 6 years many doctors would retire. Now, I'm not sure about there age but I do know they will all retire. Everyone has come to the same conclusion tho. We just aren't producing enough doctors. Now I'm not sure about ages of the doctors. And with Caribbean schools I dunno about your friend who went from sophomore year to med school. But most licensed med schools in the Caribbean are considered just as good as lower end medical schools in the us. The process is the same you interview, MCAT required, GPA needs to be good and you need e.c's. The same process only thing is it doesn't look as good as an American med school. but you practice here the last two years your clinical years you do in new york and there is around 800 spots, much much more then any med school in the us so it's easier. For all these reasons you can 't completely dismiss the idea of Caribbean schools. It's just finding the right licensed school which is important. Anyways I had more to say but i don't wanna type it all again lol. </p>
<p>fooshy,
Thank You for pointing out the old information that gives us a good background in this thread but, were talking about new trends here everyone knows the old stuff. And yes Harvard is tough to get into I agree.</p>
<p>Bmbmasta,
I see no proof on the contrary. If you have some proof against what I'm saying I'll be happy to consider it. I do know 3 friends of mine who have graduated from davis and have signed that contract. Many back out tho because they end up getting into better med schools anyways. Out of my three friends 2 backed out. One goes to Mt. Sinai Medical school in new york now and the other goes to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. So it takes really solid consistent ppl with good GPA and MCAT scores to get the opportunity to sign the contract.</p>
<p>What you said about the contract sounds extraordinarily unlikely. The only UC's I know that "guarantee" a spot are UCSD (with their program), and UCR (although fighting off 80 people to get a place in the top 20 of a pyramid system doesn't sound like much of a guarantee) 3.65 doesn't even reach the average of med school admits, and I will be bold enough to say that Davis has a decent med school. Instead of relying on this hearsay about contracts, instead focus on what the seasoned pre-meds on this forum are saying. I'm being very realistic and bracing myself for a radical different perception of pre-medicine when I go to college and take my first requisite class.</p>
<p>Lol, fine believe what you want. Looks like im going to medical school since i have a 3.95 right now. ROFL.</p>
<p>Peppers is right, UCR and UCSD(first ive heard of this) offer guaranteed acceptance to medical school provided they meet some requirements and beat the competition.</p>
<p>it is good to take a harsh perception, but not enough to demoralize you from doing something you've always enjoyed or sumething you wish to do. That's all I'm saying. Medicine is a difficult task I have no doubts on that. But it is our perception of difficulty that makes it harder is it not? I know your trying to be realistic but realism should be attached to a positive attitude And that's what you should go with. You post your profile on here the first thing ppl will say is you have no chance in med school no matter what your stats, if that's the perception then why even give it a try. Have realism with a positive attitud and yes, I trust my contacts more because they are ppl I kno and have kno all my life. I come from a family of medical students who have secured spots in med schools all over the world. 4 of which, are placed in top schools. I have my experience and trust them more then "seasoned" pre-meds. And with the program's GPA requirement I believe I said "I think" that is what it is. I do know the program exists though I must say I was not sure about the GPA requirements it is I'm sure higher then I expected. </p>
<p>Bmbmasta and Peppers,
thank you again or putting that UCR and UCSD are competitive med schools that do have such a contract or at least the program I'm talking about. However, this is redundant and everyone is well aware of this programs. I really think if this blog shall continue that we should start with something else though. As this is just going back and forth with no end.</p>
<p>^UCR doesn't have a med school, its getting one in 2012. It has a shared program with Geffen @ UCLA.</p>