<p>The most important point is still missing. The UG has to fit with the student. What is good / will work for one, will not work for another. All these general stats / articles / ranking / reputation, whatever will be irrelevant for a student who is miserable at the UG where he/she suppose to excell for 4 years, to excell in absolutely everything that is going on in a young person life in these 4 years, including personal growth. Find yourself a place where you personally will be happy, not the place that sends most kids to Med. School, this number will NOT help you personally to achieve any of your goals. including the acceptance to a Med. School.</p>
<p>Koriander,</p>
<p>you didn’t finish reading my post. That advantage is marginal at best (the “all else being equal” charade) and the WUSTL adcoms know the professors recommending kids from schools other than WUSTL. Until I see the numbers I still won’t put too much weight in those statements anyway. It’s in the school’s best interest to say they favor their own - where’s the proof they follow through?</p>
<p>Brown,
Look up the numbers for each Med. School. They are very easy to find, I am never interested in numbers / statistics of any sort because it is NOT helpful in this kind of decision making, ONLY self-relience is helpful. However, even I have seen numbers for several schools, while looking for Med. Schools (my D. has asked me to compile the list for her based on her criteria).<br>
All of it is a waste of very precious time, simply the wrong direction, incorrect criteria to choose your future school.</p>
<p>I agree with your point, but no school lists the number of applications it receives over several years broken down by each UG and the # of those students who were interviewed and/or accepted. I’ve seen matriculation lists but that’s not the same thing.</p>
<p>^Yes, exactly the same, “I’ve seen matriculation lists”, but overall, we are going way too deep into something that is completely irrelevant…do not loose the forest with all the trees around you. I would say, stay focus on you, youself and I, these are the only 3 that are important, forget the rest…you will be there doing what will be required from YOU. You got to assess your strenghs / weaknesses / abilities / talents / goals, all should be your personal, not your friends, cousins, anybody on CC or their kids, nothing from the rankings, whatever…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll repeat this for you as I agree with it 100%. Find a school that fits you as a student. If you want a school that concentrates on undergrads - great, go to one! If you want a research U - great, go to one! If you want a big/small, rural/urban, public/private, secular/religious, etc/etc, it is all fine - just find what fits YOU!</p>
<p>That said, after comparing all fits… my pre-med wannabe picked a small research U with a med school on campus and is completely happy there with great grades (so far). One of the labs he’s working in is in the hospital… he walks to it. He wanted both oodles of research ops and a hospital and got both. BUT, that doesn’t mean his fit is yours. Pick based upon YOU. Everyone can join together and compare stories/experiences in med school later - assuming you do the work to get there.</p>
<p>
There is a not so well known fact about WashU SOM - they interview every applicant from WashU. Nobody knows how WashU SOM treats these interviews. Many WashU applicants who know this and also know that they don’t stand a chance of getting an acceptance still end up applying. I guess they use this as a practice interview for $100. :D</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Interesting. How many washu applicants do they generally have each year?</p>
<p>I believe the med school affiliated with DS’s college has the same policy.</p>
<p>Assuming that the yield is 50%, there is about 20% chance that an applicant from the affiliated college could get in, in my educated guess. (I think at DS’s college, if you are one of the top 40 kids from your 200-220 premeds at your college who actually apply to med school, you will have a decent chance to get into the affiliated med school. I also heard top 10-12 kids in each class of his college likely get into HMS or JHU - like one kid per residential college.)</p>
<p>However, it is rumored that, the yield is higher for the admitted applicants from the same school. So the med school may not need to “reserve” so many admission slots for “their own.”</p>
<p>After sweating through this process with DD, there are a few other things you need to consider when choosing an UG college. They have to do with the extracurricular activities that are almost mandatory when applying to med schools.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Research - will your undergrad college afford you research opportunities? Long, sustained and real opportunities in which you could get a second or third authorship on a poster or article.</p></li>
<li><p>Is there a hospital nearby? You will need to do some sort of clinical extracurricular. That will be either volunteering or a paid job in a hospital where you have interaction with doctors and patients. Same goes for shadowing. Is there a large enough medical community in the college town to allow for this.</p></li>
<li><p>What other EC opportunities will the college have? Will you be able to TA? Are there organizations relating to medicine for you to join?</p></li>
<li><p>How rigorous is the coursework going to be? I think medical schools look at this and give ‘extra points’ to those whose transcripts show that they are doing high level, advanced class work.</p></li>
<li><p>And then the very practical stuff. I read one student’s tale of woe on another website. His college is so far out in the sticks that just getting to an airport to fly to his medical school interviews take hours.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Regarding #5, among the top colleges, Williams College and Dartmouth (especially the former, IMO) appear to be like that, if you only count a major airport at least as large as Bradley International Airport.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is more accessible from a major airport.</p>
<p>mom2ck, You asked the question about how many applicants are from WashU (as a college) each year (post #28 on the second page?).</p>
<p>The following link shows that this number is 310.</p>
<p>BTW, the number from JHU college is 364.</p>
<p>These two moderate-sized schools are like “magnets” which keep attracting more premeds than other colleges do, in terms of percentage. I also suspect that the proportion of white applicants applying from JHU could be lower because of its location (being on the coast instead of being in the middle of the heart land. Remember Joe Biden’s joke: “You need to have some Indian accent in order to go to a Dunkin Donut.” He is from Delaware.)</p>
<p>Penn and Duke are 341 and 360 respectively.</p>
<p>Yale and Brown, which some CCer claimed they would be “better places to do premed”, are 232 and 249 respectively in terms of “premed high pressure vs a slightly more pleasant atmosphere metrics.” LOL. (Yale increasingly has more STEM majors in recent years.)</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/321458/data/2012factstable2-7.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/321458/data/2012factstable2-7.pdf</a></p>