<p>I am a current high school senior, and I will soon be a freshman at the University of South Carolina honors college. I came here to ask, do private medical schools look for geographic diversity when compiling their admitted student classes?</p>
<p>For example, for undergraduate admissions, we have 2 equally smart kids. One is from California, and one is from Alaska. Most people would agree that the one from Alaska has a better chance, especially if it's a school that doesn't receive a lot of students from the northwest.</p>
<p>Do medical schools work in the same way? I am asking this question as I want to transfer to the honors college at UGA my sophomore year, as i personally prefer the atmosphere of that school. But Georgia has more kids applying to med school (thanks to emory and georgia tech) than south carolina does. Will it be smarter for me to just stay at University of South Carolina?</p>
<p>I don’t know if geographic diversity will FOR you in admissions, but I have seen being from certain states working AGAINST you in private school admissions.</p>
<p>TX applicants have to work harder to convince med schools they’re serious about attending since TX has so many in-state options that are less expensive and some are very highly ranked.</p>
<p>I suspect (but can’t prove) that D1 and her [ex] BF were rejected from a certain private med school in the SE for reasons similar to TX. Both received screened secondaries but were rejected within 4-12 hours post secondary. Both had scores in range or slightly above for the school in question. But the state med school is about equivalently ranked, has a high in-state acceptance rate and costs significantly less than the school in question. </p>
<p>Med schools want to protect their yields so do a great deal of enrollment management. They will reject otherwise qualified candidates if they suspect they won’t attend if accepted.</p>
<p>To be more clear, I believe that unless you are a Texas kid U of C is gonna offer a scholarship, you can kiss your chances good-bye. They must have a metric for Texas kids. "Hey. This kid is gonna turn us down for UT-SW or Baylor unless we give her big money and she just ain’t that special. Reject. "</p>
<p>Be prepared because that same bias exists in residency matches at OOS publics especially if your home program is highly regarded and your LORs say that you have walked on water. They just figure you’d never want to leave program “x” and they’d do all they can to keep you.</p>
<p>All Med. Schools accept California kids in disproportionate numbers according to D’s observation. We have not checked any stats. However, it is definitely very true for D’s private Med. School, with Berkeley representation beating their own pre-meds in number of acceptances and UCLA is being #3 (I think).
In regard to U of Chicago, I believe that most have the same experience as Curm:
“Let’s hear it for U of Chicago. Very efficient. lol “Send us your money. Money sent. Thank you for playing.” All within a few hours.” At least my D. did while Northwestern has accepted her (she decided to attend somewhere else). But mine did not apply far away, she wanted to be close to home.</p>
But is that the result of the sheer numbers of California graduates? If you look at the top private UG’s, California and New York have the highest number of students. I think it’s more a result of the population numbers and not necessarily a bias toward the state.</p>
<p>It is hard for me to analyse as I am very far from California. So, I do not know the reasons, We have just observed results by checking few schools in our (Midwest) region of the country. It may (?) also have to do with the fact that most of California applicants are Asian. They get accepted in great numbers as they have incredible applications.</p>
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