Hi everyone! I’m a senior who is very interested in Fairfield University, which is in Connecticut. I was wondering if anyone had an idea how good it was for their science programs/ premed. They report a 100% rate of recommended students went to medical school, which I’m not entirely sure what that means. If anyone could explain or even offer any schools similar to Fairfield that would be great.
It means don’t go to this school unless you think you are a great student.
Colleges have the option of supplying what is called a “committee letter”. Most large publics don’t supply one, and as for privates you need to check. If you look on their website, Fairfield provides such a letter. At a few schools it is just a summary for the convenience of the med school, but far more common is an evaluative letter. Some colleges pledge to write as supportive a letter as they can, but most report the judgement of the committee. They can recommend a kid, recommend with reservations, or say not recommended. If you are smart enough to apply to med school you are smart enough to realize that if the letter says anything other than “recommended” you are wasting your money and time by applying.
It is clear from what you say that Fairfield (like Holy Cross, interestingly enough another Jesuit school with wonderful med school placement rates) pens an evaluative letter. Here’s the deal. A college can make its med school admit rate anything they want with the sword of the committee letter. Set the bar high enough in terms of gpa, letters of rec, MCAT, etc. for that precious “recommended” stamp and you can in effect decide what your med school admit rate will be; all the other kids don’t bother applying. If Fairfield is telling you 100% (a bit hard to believe, actually) then they are setting the bar even higher than Holy Cross at 91%
So its up to you. If you’re pretty certain that you’ll end up as one of the sure admits to med school, Fairfield may be a good place for college (I have no idea what the student experience is like, but if you are considering them presumably you know about it and think it is a fit). However if you end up as one of those kids with a 70% chance of admission to med school, or 60%, or g*d forbid 25%, then if you go to Fairfield you won’t be going to med school after college.
You need to compare medical school acceptance rates from a set of data points. The national average for a 3.5 gpa and 32 MCAT is 45%. Some schools do much better than that.