<p>Goucher College boasts that "over the past few years nearly 80% of Goucher students applying to medical school have been admitted. Most students receive two to three acceptances."</p>
<p>This is really good! Better than Emory and right up there with Swarthmore?</p>
<p>Is anyone familiar with their premed program?
Are there any statistics to substantiate their claim?</p>
<p>There is much discussion about how schools control who will become an applicant from their school. I would also investigate this in addition to the success rate of current applicants.</p>
<p>td;</p>
<p>IMO, a better question is how many premeds matriculate as Frosh and actually get through the gauntlet of the premed curriculum AND are accepted to med school. Otherwise, such statistics are gamed by colleges.</p>
<p>Agree with blue. The issue is that decent colleges get the kids who won't make it real before it comes to applying to med school.</p>
<p>I work for a medium-sized state university you would not even know with a biology program that has the med school admission rate in excess of 90%. Quality programs do exist outside the Ivy League.</p>
<p>And what school would that be? Got a link to where it reports that statistic?</p>
<p>I've seen lots of schools w/ fairly avg. students (SAT's from 1000-1200) claim 80-100% acceptance rates. Definitely some number fudging going on. Kind of like how every med school claims to have above average USMLE scores.</p>
<p>No, sorry, it was an internal report.</p>
<p>You figure a state school with that good of a number would report it. Even top publics like Berkeley and UVA only boast 60+% acceptance rates.</p>
<p>One way to get a rough idea of how successful a school is with a premed program, is to get the number of chem/bio/ natural sci majors declared as freshman, then compare that to the number accepted to med school. This figure is useful if you do this with, say, 10 schools. At a school like Johns Hopkins, which is a pre med mill, most pre med enter declaring those sciences as their majors. Though there are a few who are studying those disciplines just because they like the subject, or want to get into doctoral (non MED) research, those numbers are relatively few. Most of those who can get into med school will apply. Otherwise, they change to a social science or other major. Those who have a good shot of getting into med school are the ones that school will recommend through their premed committee. And those who get in will be a very high percentage of those who apply. This occurs at all schools. That's why you should have the beginning data. It isn't perfect, but it is near impossible (for me, anyways) to get from any school the number of premeds freshman year vs how many of those premeds actually got into med school 4 years later.
There are some premed programs, that do nurture the students towards a medical school application. Some of the smaller, lesser known colleges have such programs. My understanding is that those programs, given the same type of student (test scores, grades), do better than some of the big boys in getting kids into a medical school.
I have heard that Goucher is nurturing that way. But I have not seen a rush of Hopkins students going there to get their sure path to med school, and many of those students and family have their sniffers to the ground looking for any in. Goucher and Hopkins have an exchange agreement, so I would think this would happen if that were the case---take those pre med courses at Goucher, major in a social science area at Hopkins, and voila, better chance for med school.</p>
<p>Be careful with these percentages. </p>
<p>Is it the percentage of all pre-meds?</p>
<p>Just the pre-meds who receive college recommendations? Do all pre-meds receive college recommendations or just those the committee thinks will be accepted?</p>
<p>Is it the percentage of first time applicants applying as college seniors? </p>
<p>Or does it include alums applying after a year or two of work experience (more and more the norm for med school)?</p>
<p>Is it 80% on the first try? Or 80% including those who finally get an acceptance after the 3rd try.</p>
<p>Ideally, the medical school admissions office will provide statistics that cover all of these...or at least let you see what percentage they are reporting.</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that the percentages can fluctuate considerably year-to-year, especially from from smaller colleges.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, the University of Arkansas (Go Hogs! Beat USC!) has a 100% med school acceptance rate. That means that every student who wishes to go to med school gets to go.</p>