<p>@ucbalumnus: that’s interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.</p>
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<p>Wrong!</p>
<p>UCB premed acceptance rate to medical schools is only 52%. Acceptance rates from top private schools are 75%-90+%.</p>
<p>I know 2 class of 2013 kids who went to UCB with the hope to become doctors but now they stay home with low paid job. One kid is tutoring HS students. One has a temporary job. They were in top 2% in HS. One was one my son’s classmate. One is my niece. Her three premed roommates dropped the program and change majors in junior year. She continued to get a degree in biology but did not get into any medical school after 2 tries. </p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/2013seniors.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/2013seniors.stm</a></p>
<p>@coolweather:</p>
<p>Which doesn’t tell you if you actually have a better chance of getting in to med school at a private or not. You understand that many privates artificially boost up their acceptance rates through use of the committee letter or strongly discourage their students who have poor stats from applying? That said, pre-med advising at some privates, I hear, is good.</p>
<p>Also, your chances of getting in to med school are heavily dependent on your state of residence. Most Cal students would be CA residents, which is one of the hardest states to get in to a med school in. Students at privates come from all over.</p>
<p>^ Do you know how UCB advises premed students?
And what is the point of encouraging students to apply the med schools when you know that they won’t make it? It did not help the two bright kids I know.</p>
<p>@coolweather: no, and if Cal is like most publics, they don’t encourage or discourage. It’s much more up to the student. Laissez-faire/sink-or-swim.</p>
<p>Also, your reasoning skills are poor. How would you know if those 2 kids would have gotten in to med school from a private?</p>
<p>That said, for the pre-med track, I would not advise going to a top public like Cal/UMich/UCLA (or a private with a ton of pre-meds) as the competition would be fierce. Either a private with great advising (if you can suss those out) or honors college at a lesser public where you get better research opportunities and individualized advising would be smarter paths, IMO.</p>
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<p>Looks like mostly self-service information: <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/Medical.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/Medical.stm</a></p>
<p>Some stats matrices by GPA and MCAT score: <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/MedStats.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/MedStats.stm</a></p>
<p>Pre-meds do want schools with high grade inflation and low costs to save money for expensive medical school. Convenient access to pre-med extracurriculars is also desirable.</p>
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<p>The analogy would be if a high school’s counselors and teachers refused to write recommendations for students applying to any college that was not a low match or safety for the student.</p>
<p>OP, how competitive within the programs? Like vs how collegial? I think that depends, too. </p>
<p>I am an Ivy grad from the Dark Ages and don’t remember it being competitive. There was a certain amount of show offy behavior in class, but people did work together and study together. Maybe it was different in premed classes like Organic Chemistry in which there were only a certain number of As given and everyone wanted one. I have a child in a big public who doesn’t find it cutthroat. They seem to have a “we are all in this together” attitude. I’d ask on the forums of the schools you are interested in. </p>
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At the risk of taking this thread away from the original purpose…</p>
<p>At large publics like Cal you’re pretty much on your own, although you can take the initiative to make appointments to talk with advisers, get help from TAs outside of class, etc. There are some advantages to a private college such as smaller classes and better advising. But is that a panacea? I don’t think so. Lets take those 3 roommates. Presumably they gave up because they just didn’t have the GPA for med school. Is this post suggesting they would have done better in class at a private? That’s debatable.</p>
<p>As for the other 2 kids, were they competitive in terms of GPA and MCAT? Post does not say. Did they have experience in a medical setting (an unwritten requirement for med school admission) or research experience (a significant plus)? Again, we don’t know but I’d bet against it. </p>
<p>If you follow that link you’ll see that the admit rate from Cal is indeed 52% overall. The link breaks it down by MCAT/GPA and you can see there are buckets with much higher acceptance rates. Indirectly, though, this brings up an issue about large publics that is buried in the info on that chart. Students tend to identify with large publics much less than at privates. The info in the chart is based on those releasing their info to Cal. Only 75 kids were willing to do so, although <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm</a> shows that 799 kids applied! So only about 10% of the kids cared about Cal enough to be willing to release their information anonymously. Cornell has a similar accept/apply chart and the percentage releasing the info back to Cornell was 5x that of Cal. </p>
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<p>Did I say anything different than that?</p>
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<p>Not sure what your are getting here. </p>
<p>Cal Graduates 2009-2013
2013 2012 2011 2010 2009
Applicants 799 767 751 769 667
Accepted 400 405 376 391 349
Acceptance Rate 50% 53% 50% 51% 52%</p>
<p>With 10 percent of students (75) reporting in the other URL, the overall rate is 52%.
With 100 percent of students (799) reporting, the overall rate is 50%. So, the rate is the almost the same regardless of the sample size.</p>
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<p>That is your opinion and I think it’s childish.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan yeah Yale is actually a lot cheaper for me than Berkeley. The rest of the privates are around 10-15k a year more expensive in terms of total cost of attendance. </p>
<p>Here is the site I am using to compare (a little outdated):
<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/ncoa_chart.php</a> </p>
<p>One additional question I had: how much do department rankings matter in terms of recruitment? I find it surprising that although Cal EECS is ranked a lot higher than similar programs at all the ivy schools, the engineering programs still have lower acceptance rates at the ivies (a berkeley prof told me EECS hovers around 10-15% while schools like Columbia are around 7%).</p>
<p>Also, I’ve heard a lot of AP credits can help you graduate in 3.5 years at a top private, and completing a berkeley education often takes 4.5 years due to low course space. Is this pretty common? </p>
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Perhaps English is not your native language. The implication of “indeed” in that sentence to a fluent speaker is that you left out an important part of the story, and furthermore that said omission reflects either an incomplete understanding of the situation by the original speaker or a deliberate intent to deceive. And you did leave something out. My post went on to explain how the admit rate depends on where on falls in the MCAT/GPA matrix, as contrasted with your implicit assertion that each and every Cal student has a 52% chance of acceptance. Read this paragraph over a few times, look back at my earlier post & reflect on what your original sentence means, and maybe you’ll understand the usage of “indeed”.
I thought this would be obvious. 5x as many students at a comparable private (Cornell) were willing to let the University and their fellow students know how they did based on their MCAT & GPA scores. Can you not draw any implications from this?</p>
<p>So if Yale is cheaper for you, why are you asking about the extra cost vis-a-vis Cal when Yale would cost less, not more?</p>
<p>Also, with AP policies, it’s up to the school. Do research, man. It’s easy online. Some Ivies allow virtually no AP credit. Cal will invariably allow more. Then it comes down to the availability of classes, which the Cal grads can better answer.</p>
<p>^ Sure, I am not a native English speaker. I provided my background everywhere on CC. But you use my background to win a debate with an argument that you did not clearly explain then I think it’s a low blow. As a mattter of fact, I was clearly talking about the overall acceptance rate which most premed students care about. Of course everyone knows that the higher GPA/MCAT gives a better chance of acceptance. I saw all the details in the stats. Everyone can read the stats. Why should it include those details? I am not insulted by a pointless and low class argument.</p>
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<p>No. Did you include any stats about Cornell to clarify?</p>
<p>I reread this thread and not sure what we’re arguing about so can we please stop? It derails the thread unnecessary. </p>
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Nobody is trying to “win” an argument, or perhaps that’s your intent here. Mine is to provide useful information to the OP. I see now that your goal may be different.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you don’t understand the full meaning of some ordinary English sentences, but I don’t see that as a reason for me to stop using them. You might recall, too, that I was replying to your post in #28 in which you wrote “Did I say anything different than that?” which in this language is a veiled accusation that I misquoted you. So perhaps you mis-understand not only what others say but the full implications of what you say too.
The overall stats are meaningless, and if you believe they convey anything meaningful then you are making what is called the “Ecological Fallacy”. See <a href=“Ecological fallacy - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy</a> or google the term and perhaps you can understand your error. To quote from the article “An example of ecological fallacy is when the average of a population is assumed to have an interpretation in term of likelihood at the individual level.” Ponder that sentence for a minute, and once it sinks in then think again whether the overall rate is what “most premed students care about”. Anyone smart enough to think of applying to med school ought to know that the GPA/MCAT bucket they lie in, which you casually dismiss as “those details”, is the only meaningful information on that link, and even that data abstracts away important information. As the Cal link you gave carefully points out “NOTE: MCAT scores and GPAs are important factors in assessing an application for medical school, but these are not the only factors considered and admission to medical school cannot be predicted based on this data alone.” In other words the bucket numbers themselves are not great predictors, and applying the overall 52% number to anyone is just meaningless. </p>
<p>@coolweather:</p>
<p>BTW, back in 2010, Cornell had a 67% med school admission rate:
<a href=“Medical and Health Careers | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Medical and Health Careers | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University;
I presume that you consider Cornell a private Ivy?</p>
<p>Back then, Cal’s was 56%.</p>
<p>BTW, about your friends who didn’t get in to med school: were they at least permanent residents? What GPAs and MCATs?</p>
<p>To the OP: OK, I see the part where you say privates cost 10-15K more a year. At that price difference, it’s a close call. If your family can swing it, it should come down to fit. However, you really should run the NPCs for all the schools you’re interested in to get the true cost.</p>
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<p>You want to use the net price calculator at each school’s web site to check what financial aid and net price will be like for your situation; generalized averages may be of interest from a policy standpoint, but they do not necessarily apply to each individual student.</p>
<p>@mikemac</p>
<p>I don’t want to take other people time here. I just try to be brief.</p>
<p>You say overall acceptance rate is meaningless. However, on almost every premed website of a strong college, the overall acceptance rate is used to compare with the national acceptance rate. Let’s take a look at the UC Berkerley website <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/national.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/medstats/national.stm</a></p>
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<p>If it’s meaningless then why UCB mentioned it and compared it with the national acceptance rate? This comparison indicates that UCB students have a better chance than students of other average colleges. It’s a positive piece of information to attract students to UCB.</p>
<p>Now, let’s take a look a the UC Irvine website <a href=“http://www.bio.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Undergrads_resources_Medical-School-Application-Numbers-2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bio.uci.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Undergrads_resources_Medical-School-Application-Numbers-2011.pdf</a></p>
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<p>If someone thinks the overall acceptance rate is meaningless then that person could go on to argue that UCB is not necessarily better than UCI in premed. I don’t think UCB students and other people who know about the two campuses would agree with that because it’s far from the truth.</p>
<p>You wrote
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<p>I think you try to bully me again.</p>
<p>When I wrote “Did I say anything different than that?”, I never had the intent to accuse that you misquoted. I only showed that you and I agree that UCB acceptance rate is 52% and challenged you to bring out more relevant info instead of mentioning irrelevant ideas like GPA/MCAT ranges, Cornell acceptance rate without supporting data, and the number of students responding to survey in the rest of your post. You got upset because I pointed out the weakness in your arguments.</p>
<p>I stop here and let the CC community give judgements.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan</p>
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<p>They were born in the US and are US citizens.</p>
<p>I don’t know GPA/MCAT because they are personal information. I would be a shame for me to ask them. I only mentioned them to show a sad situation here. I did not intend to use personal anecdotes to prove my point. The supporting proof for my argument is the overall UCB 52% acceptance rate. Besides these 2 kids, there were also 397 other rejected kids. They should have been advised against med school or should have had better advices in order to be admitted. It was a huge wasted effort. Most people would feel sorry for them.</p>
<p>Cornell is probably has the lowest acceptance rate in the Ivys. But 67% is still greater than 56%. Penn has 76%. Princeton 85%-95%. I am too tired to search for other schools.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradprof/healthprof/parents.php[/url]”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradprof/healthprof/parents.php</a>
<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/hpa/premed/prospective-students/2013-HPA-Frequently-Asked-Questions.pdf[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/hpa/premed/prospective-students/2013-HPA-Frequently-Asked-Questions.pdf</a></p>