Hopping on the pre-Med track in college?

@JHS I 100% agree with you. It astounds me to think that someone who is even thinking of applying to med school couldn’t look at the well-known, posted, stats and not figure out their odds regardless of which college they go to. They can opt to try or not.

Gatekeeping is solely in favor of the college who wants to attract students with their “great acceptance rates.” That’s where there’s a smokescreen. Jr goes there because “90% of their pre-meds get accepted!” not realizing that some never got a chance because of the school or that many of those 90% ended up in the Caribbean or any other way numbers can be adjusted.

Plenty willingly divert from being pre-med for oodles of reasons. That’s not even related to this discussion. We’re solely talking about those who apply (or want to) and are/aren’t accepted.

And the OP just needs to figure out which type of school they are in and if they would get support. They need to talk with their Pre-Health department specifically for that.

100% of kids who go to West Point and the Naval Academy have jobs waiting for them when they graduate.

At some point, I’m putting the onus on “Jr” to understand what the statistics mean. If 90% of pre-meds at college A get accepted to Med school, surely Jr is not so deluded as to think that he still won’t have to put in the work, get the grades, get the score, or horrors- might even end up in Granada if he’s at the bottom of the “acceptability” range.

Just like kids understand that the jobs waiting for them out of the academies means wearing a uniform, potentially being sent overseas, and dying when the mission they are commanding gets ambushed. Does a HS student smart enough (potentially) to be thinking about Med school really need to be protected from a college’s statistic?

Creek- you don’t like gatekeeping, you think that all pre-meds have the right to try for med school. I respect your position. I respectfully disagree, having no dog in this hunt whatsoever. I think the fetishization of med school among college kids does a real disservice, and diverts thousands of dollars away from actual learning and education into the application process. If every kid who came up dry after applying to 15 med schools had used that money for their own education instead of fees- they’d be much better off. There are no other honorable professions out there? I think the colleges that have strong pre-med advising- even if that means the gate-keeping- are much more transparent than the others about what it takes to get into and STAY in med school.

What I don’t care for is false advertising. I do a lot in my line of work at high school helping people see through false advertising. This is just one area I deal with occasionally. Not many can see false advertising on their own without being shown how it works.

When students correctly understand what’s going on, I don’t care at all which path they choose.

Not just the money (several thousand dollars of application costs), but also time (putting one’s life on hold doing pre-med stuff and applications) that could have been spent on preparing for a more realistic career path.

UCB, exactly. Think of every college kid spending the summer shadowing a physician and filing insurance claims in a medical office or hospital under the guise of “real life experience” who could be doing something else. I know a college junior who is spending the summer doing one of these administrative hospital jobs… his original idea had been to volunteer at a local hospice, but several med students he knows told him that this isn’t considered “medicine” (after all, the folks in hospice are all terminal and just getting morphine and fluids) so he’s stuck in the basement of a hospital with zero contact whatsoever with patients. I’m sure his title will be impressive but the actual job requires knowing how to alphabetize.

I just see the entire “I might not get into any med school but I’m giving it a try” industry as a waste of time, money, and energy. Creekland and I would probably find common ground in the transparency department…

My current med school lad had Hospice experience. It didn’t hurt him at all. At least, it didn’t seem to. It wasn’t his only medical type of experience, of course.

I fully agree with full transparency. Whenever a student asks me about pre-med I try to present all the cons for them to consider (they already have their pros figured out). I emphasize having a Plan B, costs, and overall odds along the way.

Regardless of career plans I think it’s best if students go in with eyes as wide open as possible. Med school acceptance rates are hardly the only false advertising out there.

Acceptance rates without context (not just to medical schools) do seem to be given much more credibility than they should be.