My question is regarding the GPA required in general to have a good chance of getting into medical school or osteopathic school. What should you target for? Also for the sGPA and GPA in general, does it make a difference where you earned that GPA from? Because I think it would be harder to get a certain GPA at Harvard compared to say a state school. So is the GPA curved or anything?
GPAs are not curved.
You want the highest GPA and sGPA you can possibly earn if you want to have a shot at any medical school. You also will need the highest MCAT score you can possibly get.
That will get you to the door. Then you need sufficient shadowing, excellent LOR, and excellent interpersonal and interviewing skills.
As high as possible. The median GP for accepted MD applicants during the 2018-19 cycle was 3.75. The median GPA for accepted DO applicants was 3.56.
It does to some extent. CC science credits are not accepted by some medical schools and many adcomms believe that CC science grades are highly inflated and therefore tend to devalue them. CC science credits must be supplemented with additional upper level science credits at a 4 year college or university if you want to be taken seriously as an applicant.
GPAs for med school admission are not weighted based upon where you attend undergrad. There are no bonus points for attending a âbrand nameâ college or university. Your GPA is your GPA.
However, there is no guarantee that you will earn a better GPA by attending your state U over a private U. At public colleges, the strongest students tend to cluster in STEM fields. And State Us practice grade-capping and grade curving to limit the number of As awarded in pre-req classes.
Keep in mind that the MCAT is the great equalizer when it comes to the various different grading methodologies used, both by individual instructors and individual schools. You need to have BOTH a good GPA and a good MCAT score. A excellent GPA will not make up for a weak MCAT. An exceptional MCAT will not make up for a meh GPA.
Also be aware that a strong GPA + a strong MCAT by themselves do not guarantee you will gain an admission to med school. Per AMCAS, last year 18% of applicants with a GPA >3.8 AND a MCAT > 98%ile were not accepted into any med school.
I know someone who fits this category. She graduated from a top LAC with a near perfect GPA and with a near perfect MCAT score to go with it. She applied to 15 med schools last year, but to her and her familyâs shock, she was rejected by all of them. Sheâs now taking a gap year and preparing to reapply.
Iâm not at all familiar with the med school admission practices, so my curiosity is what are some of the main factors that someone who graduated from a top college with a near perfect GPA, followed that up with a near perfect MCAT, yet end up being rejected by every single application? In fact, I believe she was granted an interview from just one med school. 14 other schools, in other words, didnât even bother to invite her for an interview. Itâs my understanding that she had a good mix of âreachâ med schools as well as more or less âsafetyâ schools. I understand that there are no med schools that are âsafety,â but the point is that she wasnât trying to apply to top 20 med schools only.
@TiggerDad most medical school applicants we know applied to 20 schools or more. All medical schools and DO schools are reach schools. There are no matches and no safeties.
Beside a high GPA and a high MCAT score, what else did this student have? Excellent patient contact? Shadowing experience? Excellent letters of reference?
Any special things that would make her stand out from the crowd like EMT certification and work experience? Work with underprivileged people? Something else!
Is she doing something to fill in the blanks during her GAP year?
Also, what state(s) because some are much harder for applicants than othersâŠlike California.
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All medical schools in the US are reach, high reach, or unrealistic reach. So the expected result is a shutout, which happens to about 60% of medical school applicants.
Iâve seen this statement before and it makes me curious. When Yale, for example, says they have a 90% med school admission rate compared to a 45% national average - does Yale just have some type of pre-med grade inflation?
Harvard 93%, Duke 85%, Hopkins 80%, Penn 78%, Cornell 76% - seems hard to see no correlation.
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Other than what my friend told me about his daughter, I didnât want to ask any questions for greater detail given the state of shock and profound disappointment he was in. I donât approach him about the subject in fear of prying. Theyâre in Ohio, but I donât know which specific med schools she applied to other than they were a good mix.
The med school acceptance rates can be very easily manipulated by colleges. Is it only for students that were recommended by the committee? Does it include students who took multiple gap years? How many students were weeded out before they got to a point of being able to apply? EtcâŠ
@RichInPitt
First of all, the source of your informationâprepscholar is a for profit site that flogs its âmedical school applicant preparation servicesâ and definitely NOT a reliable source of information. You will not find claims of these success rate anywhere on the health profession advisement offices webpages of those specific schools.
Second, the one factor all the schools you mention have in commonâthey ALL use committee letters to weed out applicants the HP committee feels have a poor chance of a med school admission. In essence, the school controls who is allowed and not allowed to apply. And the committee letter comes only after repeated waves of winnowing in the pre-req classes along the way.
And third, as@momofsenior1 mentions above beside the use of a committee letter there are no consistent definitions of things likeâWhat exactly is a pre-med? What exactly is a medical school admission? Does the success rate include admissions to Caribbean or other foreign medical schools? Does it include MD schools only? MD and DO schools only? Admission to any health profession post-graduate program? (i.e. PsyD, PT, OT, PA, NP, DAud, etcâall doctoral programs that produce Doctors, but not physicians) Does the success rate include only current seniors (i.e those who applied at the end of their junior year of college)? Or does it include this who took one or more gap years? (Some colleges include graduates who are 10 year post-grad in the success rate.) Does the success rate include those who did the pre-med coursework elsewhere after graduation? (IOW, they werenât a premed during college but did a formal post-bacc later and then went to med school.) Those who did academic enhancing post-bacc programs or SMPs? You just donât know.
There is just no reliable way to confirm how many students exactly any given college places into med school during a given time period. The schools may track their own students and make claims, but their actual data are not public.
As @thumper1 mentioned above, admission to medical school is more than just stats. Having good, even great stats only guarantees an application wonât get auto-screened out during the first round of winnowing.
Med schools get several thousands of applications each year for typically 150 seats. Every single US med school has an acceptance rate in the single digits. Admissions is a negative process for medical schools, with admissions offices actively looking for reasons to toss an application. Reasons could range from bad timing, poorly written PS or secondaries, lukewarm LORs, not enough community service with the disadvantaged/clinical volunteering/physician shadowing hours, no/limited leadership experiences, no/limited research experiences, bad school application list, bad attitudes, poor fit w/ the schoolâs mission, the wrong reasons for choosing medicineâŠto just plain bad luck or living in an âunluckyâ state. When there are 15 or more applicants for every seat at a med school, adcomms can afford to be very picky and it doesnât take much for an application to be tossed.
And medical school actively practice yield protection. Not because it affects their ranking, but mostly to conserve resources. Out of 7000, applications, a med school may have 300 interview slots. Why tender an interview to someone from a state or undergrad that historically have not matriculated into the school.
@TiggerDad Suggest to your friend that their daughter email med school admissions asking what she can do to help her application next year. This was suggested to my lad when he only got waitlisted. Turns out he was given 100% wrong advice from his premed advisersâŠ
Fortunately some knowledgeable folks found out about it and he was quickly pulled from one of the two waitlists. But if that hadnât happened, his second attempt would have been much more in line with what they want to see. If she asks directly, sheâs likely to get solid answers.
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Thank you for the suggestion. I will convey this message should my friend broach the subject once more or when I feel itâs opportune time to do so.
@TiggerDad If you do get to say something - or for anyone else reading in a similar circumstance - it might help to know that it was doctors who suggested my lad email and ask. He didnât just âdo it.â He didnât ask every place he applied - just a handful. Each place told him the same thing and seemed more than willing to assist.
The other thing I often share with potential pre-meds at school is this class profile from the University of Rochesterâs med school:
If you read past the basics, they go into specifics of what they found attractive about those in the class (the âotherâ stuff beyond grades and MCAT). If you change the year in the URL (2022, 2021, 2020, etc) youâll soon discover itâs a template - they look for those sorts of things over and over again. I suspect most med schools look for the same sorts of things. I tell kids to be sure they have something their med school can âbrag aboutâ on their application along with all the things that seem âexpected.â Getting into med school is definitely more than GPA/MCAT - at least for most students.
Itâs also interesting noting the schools they accepted students from each year. There indeed is a wide variety. I suspect that is similar in other med schools too. A lot can be gleaned to get into the process with âeyes wide openâ if one is interested.
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Some colleges with pre-med committees say that they will write a letter for every medical school applicant. However, the advising process does presumably let pre-meds with no realistic chance of medical school admission know that, discouraging them from applying â a âsoftâ weeding process that has the same effect as a âhardâ weeding process of refusing to write a letter.
There is an advantage to being a pre-med at such a college. If the pre-med committee tells you that you have no realistic chance of medical school admission, you can abandon that futile quest before spending a lot of time and money on it, and be able to pivot to your backup plan earlier.
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Except the schools donât always just weed out those with no realistic chance. The schools with high numbers often weed out those with a so-so chance too. If one has a 25-50% chance of making it in, many might want to try those odds considering 1/4 - 1/2 will actually get in. The school doesnât want to take the chance because 3/4 - 1/2 not making it in will drastically hurt their numbers.
Also I think it should be studentâs decision to pursue application process or not. College should not be forcing it on students by using some cutoffs. Presence of pre-med committee is one of the factor that students (particularly average or above average students) should consider while choosing premed college.
No college can force a decision not to apply to med school on a student. Students are perfectly able to apply to med school without a committee letter. (Though applying without their schoolâs endorsement may raise questions about their applicationâŠ)
In order to get into medical school, a high gpa and good mcat are just the beginning. Med school adcomms look for students who have done extracurriculars, have leadership roles, volunteering (medical and nonmedical), research experience, clinal experience, and have shadowed doctors. no gpa or mcat score can make up for not having done these activities. While not every single one of them is a must-do, without a good portion of them, medical school will see someone who know how to do school, but doesnât have real life experience (jobs, leadership, extracirriculars), community engagements (via volunteerism) and probably doesnât know what day to day life as a doctor looks like (shadowing, clinical work).
There was a person in the other site who claimed to have a 528 and 3.9 GPA and didnât get a single Ivy or top school interview which was quite shocking to me. Not sure where @TiggerDadâs acquaintance applied but I think of different schools following different policies. There are schools like Michigan and Vanderbilt which like high stats and big school names but others have a formula that says a minimum of a GPA, MCAT and then a bunch of other things that define the applicant outside of stats once they have met the high stat bar. Only schools where people get in automatically are state schools with high instate preference.