<p>Can anyone tell me whats considered a good rate?</p>
<p>W&M sent me a package saying they have a 75% (approx) rate of getting students in... how strong is that?</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know the rates of schools such as colgate, brandeis,nyu, washington and lee, and lehigh</p>
<p>bump 10 char</p>
<p>I heard Colgates is good.</p>
<p>I don't think the rate can tell you much! It depends on the "weeding out" process! In a tough program, a lot of pre-med student are weeded out and only strong pre-med students go on and apply to medical schools. The rate only tells you the percentage of students who applied and got accepted! (not the percentage of all pre-med students including those who were weeded out)</p>
<p>It's an awful metric to use for picking a school, namely because it can be easily manipulated. There are plenty of schools out there that advertise their 100% placement rate, but don't tell you how they get it that good. Often times its the result of having a pre-med committee in place that pre-judges potential applicants and only allows the "sure things" to apply. </p>
<p>Further, you'd be best served by picking a school without any consideration to your future plans of med school. You'll end up at a school that you love, which will probably be the place where you can accomplish the most and that's what med schools are looking for - WHAT you achieved, not WHERE you achieved it.</p>
<p>The problems with these stats:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They generally follow selectivity. Would it surprise you if Harvard applicants get into med school at a 95% clip while state school applicants only get into med school at a 50% rate? Harvard students are generally brighter and more driven to begin with.</p></li>
<li><p>What schools define as "med school." Some schools only count allopathic schools. Some schools count everything (US allopathic, US osteopathic, Carib, Poland, Madagascar, etc.). The most competitive schools are the US MD schools so you can see how counting every kind of "med school" would inflate your %'s.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>3) What schools define as "getting in." Some schools only count first time applicants. Some schools track their applicants over a period of years and as long as they get in, it's called a "success." For example, if Johnnie applies to med school 5 times and finally gets in, some schools will go back and retroactively change their data from 5 years before. Therefore, X percentage of their applicants EVENTUALLY get in (rather than X percentage of their applicants get in on their first time).</p>
<p>4) Screening: Some schools flat out refuse to write you a committee letter if you are underqualified. Hence, their acceptance rates are artificially inflated.</p>
<p>5) # of senior vs. # of alumni applicants. Some schools actively discourage their weaker applicants from applying as college seniors (even without a screening policy). For example, Swarthmore has a 100% acceptance rate to med school...from a whopping 6 senior applicants. A 6:40 senior:alumni ratio is definitely abnormal. Overall, it's not a bad idea for colleges to encourage weaker applicants to improve their applications before applying. However, you can see how that would inflate your med school acceptance rates.</p>
<p>6) Which applicants are included in the applicant data. Some schools include all applicants (seniors and alumni). Some schools include only seniors. Some schools include only non-URM's. Generally, whether you include URM's in your data or not, it probably won't affect your acceptance rate too much since URM's generally get into med school at the same rate as non-URM's. However, it is worth scrutinizing if you see a school claim that its students are accepted into med school with a lower GPA. Including URM's in that data would definitely help bolster such claims.</p>
<p>You can see there are a lot of variables to consider. Hence, it is difficult to compare data from any two schools. But, if you want to find acceptance rates and acceptance data, you can generally find it on the Career Services web pages of colleges. There's no single website out there that has tabulated the various med school acceptance rates. Such data is simply not publically available.</p>
<p>Some colleges list their prescreening criteria before recommending a student, if you search the right set of words via internet. norcalguy, however, has some tremendous points which can't be refuted.</p>
<p>I'd echo the comments of the earlier posters. The admit rate stat is one that is easily manipulated. </p>
<p>And the basic premise underlying the OP's question is also flawed. It supposes there is something the school can do to influence the rate that many others can't; that a "good rate" is a sign the school has some particular strength in its premed program that turns kids into better applicants than they would have been had they gone elsewere. Amherst has an excellent webpage on the whole preparation & admission process that is well worth reading; in part they say
[quote]
Amherst College has no magic touch that automatically elevates a student's chances of entering medical school simply by virtue of the student's coming to Amherst; no college or university has that kind of magic touch. What does elevate a student's chances is to go to an institution (1) that energizes and challenges that particular student academically, while providing good teaching and academic support so the student can meet the challenge satisfactorily; and (2) that provides opportunities for accomplishment and leadership in extracurricular areas. Of course the student must take advantage of these educational and extracurricular opportunities - in the end it's the student's accomplishments that count, not the name of the institution.
<a href="http://www.amherst.edu/%7Esageorge/guide1.html%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5D">http://www.amherst.edu/~sageorge/guide1.html
[/quote]
</a></p>
<p>But that is not the whole story. There are very tough premed programs and not so tough programs!</p>
<p>In a tough program, a hard working student can be weeded out easily by getting a D in OChem and has no chance to go on to apply for med schools.</p>
<p>In a not so tough program, the same student can get a B and goes on to apply for med schools !</p>
<p>So the institution is important ! Med schools do not like bad GPA and low MCAT scores! An excellent student can be weeded out if she/he selects to be in a very tough premed program!</p>
<p>I hear Bates and Bowdoin have good rates.</p>
<p>More than 10 percent of Holy Cross alumni are currently practicing medicine.</p>