<p>Don_Quixote,
“It’s just a lot of work, as it is probably meant to be. If they’re going to hand out “get into medschool free” cards, and then stop considering the MCAT and lower GPA requirements, then how are they supposed to decide who gets the ticket?”</p>
<p>Fallenchemist is right, this program accepts students right out of high school. High school seniors apply and are chosen to be in this program. Only the people in this program receive guaranteed acceptance, other students with the same stats would not have a guaranteed acceptance. </p>
<p>HPME stands for Honors Program in Medical Education (sponsored by Northwestern University Med)
PLME stands for Program in Liberal Medical Education (sponsored by Brown University Med)
Rice/Baylor refers to the Rice University-Baylor College of Medicine Medical Scholar Program</p>
<p>The quotes in cdz512’s post (#16) describe what the mission of most other combined programs is. To fulfill such mission, however, the med schools bear certain risk of letting in students that may not be as qualified as those who come in through regular admission. </p>
<p>In WashU’s program, the requirements eliminate such risk. But they frustrate what other programs consider the primary educational purpose-academic freedom for the students. WashU’s program therefore serves no real educational purpose. The only benefit that the students get is the increased chance of going to WashU med school. </p>
<p>There’s nothing right or wrong about WashU’s program. It’s better than no program after all. It’s just like a contract available to you and you are free to enter it and accept the terms.</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
I do agree with you on that the other med school do bear certain risk but I don’t think GPA isn’t really a major risk (although it could be).
See here, most Duke graduates that attend med school don’t even have a 3.8 GPA, the average GPA is actually 3.55. Same goes for JHU, the average GPA for the students that were accepted to med school is also 3.55. The average science GPA for Duke student is 3.38 and JHU is 3.48. This is roughly a B+ average. In other BS/MD, the minimum GPA that the accepted students must achieve to stay in their program is around 3.3-3.5 (depending on school). This is not a big difference in the minimum GPA requirement. However I do agree that some students could potentially slack off a little too much. But for the most part I believe that the students that are accepted have no trouble fulfilling the requirement. My issue with the WashU GPA requirement is that it somewhat becomes difficult for students and cause students to study a lot during their time because it definitely is difficult (but not impossible) to maintain a 3.8 GPA at such a prestigious school.</p>
<p>I also have the disagree with your statement “In WashU’s program, the requirements eliminate such risk.”
See I believe that WashU’s program does bring some risk, the risk of not being exposed enough to Medicine and clinical experience. When students have to study very hard to maintain a 3.8 GPA and a 36 MCAT just so they can be accepted to Med school, they don’t get enough experience with volunteering and research, a crucial part of Med school. This is pretty much what I have be stating. The 3.8 GPA is very difficult at WashU to obtain and requires lots of time to study. The amount of time needed for studying causes volunteering and research time to be reduced, thus experience with medicine is reduced also. So the risk with WashU’s program is that they would be accepting students who are “book smart” but have less amount of clinical and research experience.
This is the problem for some doctors that are working right now. There are some doctors that are so absorbed in their work that their communication with others, especially the patient is reduced. Nurses are trained a lot in patient communication but doctors are trained much less. A lot of the communication experience comes from volunteering experienced and when students volunteer less, their understanding of the patient and communication can be reduced also. Clinical experience is important because it allow students to be able to learn about communication with patients. Although this isn’t always the case, I believe this is a potential risk with their program, the reduction of clinical and research experience.</p>
<p>cdz512,
Now I just realized you’ve been confused with one important thing: the average GPA of enrolled students at WashU is about 3.8 even if they are from top colleges. If you look at med school acceptance stats for, say, Duke students, you’ll see the average GPA of Duke students that got accepted to WashU med school is about 3.8, not 3.3-3.5. The MCAT score would be around 36. Those GPAs you cited are for students that get into <em>any</em> med school. The GPA/MCAT requirements of 3.8/36 simply mean they only want the students in this program to have equal footing as those that get in through regular admission, as far as GPA/MCAT go. The risk I mentioned clearly refers to academic caliber, nothing else. It doesn’t guarantee they would get the ones that would become the best practicing doctors. No admission scheme would guarantee that anyway. But at least as far as surviving the academic rigor of med schools goes, GPA and MCAT are the best indicators. Other programs don’t require medicine/clinical experience either. Also, people are supposed to get their medical/clinical experience through med schools, not before going to them. That’s what med schools are for. It’s therefore a moot point.</p>
<p>oh ok, thanks for the correction. still seems wanting a waiving/lowering of the MCAT/GPA requirements is asking the program to be something it’s not, as ultimately this stuff is probably up to faculty in the Med school, not the undergraduate program. I am (much to my glee) not pre-med, though, so this is out of my court a bit. :)</p>
<p>I’m not pre-med, nor did I read the thread entirely, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but to those talking about how to maintain a 3.8 and a 36 alongside research and other stuff: the whole point of having guaranteed acceptance is to take out the stress of applying to med school. At least the way I see it, that doesn’t mean slacking academically or performing poorly on test scores (though “slacking” and “poorly” are relative here considering Wash U’s elite status as far as med school goes), but rather that it takes away all of the other BS associated with med school admissions. I think not having to complete ridiculous amounts of extracurricular activities, research and fellowships on the side, and several applications to various schools including essays and whatnot is the benefit of being a University scholar. </p>
<p>It’s by no means easy, but I think even maintaining a 3.5 at a school and still having to do ECs, internships/research fellowships/etc., and dealing with the stress of the application process is harder than just doing the straight shoot for a 3.8/36. After all, a 3.8 is not easy by any means, but if all you have to do every day is just study without anything else weighing on your mind, I would say it’s entirely doable.</p>
<p>well think about it. WashU’s med school is one of the greatest in the country, probably even the world. You seriously think there won’t be drawbacks to having a program like this? While I agree this program kinda defeats the point of the purpose of even having such a program, but just realize that no one is obliged to go through with this, and even having a program that can guarantee your admission to such a prestigious med school is still quite rare.</p>
<p>And you shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of admissions to a medical school of WashU’s caliber. A relative with excellent grades at HYPSM and a 36 MCAT has not thus far even received an interview at WashU med. Thus, the advantages offered by the USPM program are real.</p>
<p>Compared to the requirements of other combined med programs such as @ Case Western, Brown, Northwestern, and Rice, the requirements of being “guaranteed” to med school at WUSTL are very high. I would hardly call it a guaranteed program.</p>
<p>3.8 GPA at WUSTL in the sciences would be very difficult to maintain. The thing about grades, especially at this school, is that they are not a measure of achievement per se but rather an ordinal metric showing how well you did compared to the rest of the class in a competition for doing well on the exams. I know for me personally, I did quite well there my first semester but the overwhelming homophobia of my peers made it difficult to find study group partners for my science courses and my increasing social isolation affected my GPA significantly. It’s sort of like sports, there’s a performance you’re expected to maintain and all sorts of irrelevant social things will end up having a huge effect on how well you do. Things really went south after I came out but that’s another story entirely. I did get a 35 on my MCAT and felt bad about it? I guess that’s what they condition you to feel like at this place, lol.</p>