<p>What percentage of people who declare themselves as "Pre-Med" when they begin college, actually go through with applying to medical school. Are there any statistics on this, or what would you guess the percentage would be?</p>
<p>I suspect the exact percentage varies by school, but the typical attrition rate I’ve heard is 2/3rds or more drop out before applying.</p>
<p>At D2’s school, 45% of incoming freshmen self-identify as “pre med”, but 80% of those never actually apply.</p>
<p>*At D2’s school, 45% of incoming freshmen self-identify as “pre med”, but 80% of those never actually apply. *</p>
<p>45% !!! Wow…that is really, really high! Is this a state school?</p>
<p>I know that at son’s school, the pre-med advising is divided into 2 groups…frosh/soph and jr/sr. The senior pre-med advisors deal with the juniors and seniors. I imagine that the frosh/soph pre-med advisors are used to seeing a lot of students weeded out.</p>
<p>My son would say that 80% get weeded out by the time pre-med pre-reqs are complete.</p>
<p>D2 attends a smallish (6000 undergrads) private research university in upstate NY (that is NOT Cornell) which has its own medical school and a top ranked music conservatory. (That ought identify it… if not I’ll PM you.) </p>
<p>And, yeah, I was astonished how many pre-meds there were. (It’s not why D2 chose the school. She chose it because the school courted her and offer big time merit $$.) D said practically her whole freshman hall were pre meds----at least until the first Gen Chem exam, then they all became econ majors. </p>
<p>So 80% attrition at other schools too…interesting.</p>
<p>At Duke, you actually have fewer freshmen identifying as premed than those who will eventually apply, which I always found fascinating.</p>
<p>At most schools, it’s probably around 10-20%. It cannot be much higher than that because only 50% of students who take the MCAT each year actually apply (~80k/yr take the MCAT; ~40k/yr apply). Further, if you watch, a great number of freshmen fail out of premed courses end up in the B/C range. Their chances are generally minimal so they end up dropping out of the race. Additionally, quite a few schools boast 90+% acceptance rates (incl. my UG) which means an awful lot of students are likely getting bumped out by those universities’ advisors.</p>
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<p>The numbers are true for most schools.</p>
<p>Applying to medical schools is a very tedious, time consuming and expensive undertaking. Since the average GPA and MCAT score for accepted applicants at nearly all medical schools can be obtained fairly easily I believe that a very high percentage of pre-med students will have realized by their senior year that going through this process, given their own academic records during their first three years of college, would be an exercise in futility.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are some students who start college with no intention of going to medical school and end up medical doctors. I am one of them. I started college hoping to be an Astronomer but upon receiving my BS in Astrophysics had my own moment of self-reflection and confontation with reality and realized that while I had very good grades as an undergraduate, I knew I did not have the Mathematics aptitude to do graduate work in Astronomy. While I had not seen it as a likely career up until then, I had always found Medicine fascinating and decided I would try to become a doctor. I had already taken Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Calculus as an undergraduate. I took Organic Chemistry through a University of Oklahoma extension program while stationed overseas, signed up for the MCAT and applied to a bunch of medical schools and got accepted at MCP Hahnemann, now Drexel University, School of Medicine. </p>
<p>However, for every student like me who was never a pre-med major but eventually ended up in medical school there are probabably at least ten who start as pre-meds but never become physicians.</p>
<p>^I assume that was a typo when you said, “Since the average GPA and MCAT score for accepted applicants at nearly all medical schools can be obtained fairly easily,” because if it wasn’t, you are sorely mistaken. Yes, the average GPA isn’t out of a strong student’s reach (3.66) but an average acceptance MCAT score (32) is the 85th percentile! Realize, too, that this is the 85th percentile AFTER most premeds are weeded out. We’re talking somewhere around the 99th percentile of high school graduates (over 2 SDs above the national mean IQ score). This is anything but “easily attainable”.</p>
<p>colleges:</p>
<p>at schools with engineering and undergrad biz programs, among other specialties, the Frosh premeds has to be a lot lower %. In addition that one upstate NY school, I’d guess that Hopkins is also 40%+.</p>
<p>This is a difficult question to answer as there are many students interested in going into medicine when they first enter college. Some declare and some do not. Am not sure there is any relation between one’s desire or commitment and one’s declaration. My guess would be that 60 to 80% find other interests, or get weeded out by the competition or academics.</p>
<p>*45% !!! Wow…that is really, really high! Is this a state school?</p>
<p>The numbers are true for most schools. *</p>
<p>I highly doubt that. It may be true for STEM majors…but certainly not when you include all majors across the board…education, music, fine arts, business, communications, humanities, nursing, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Wowmom…I know which school that is and I’m not surprised that that school has a lot of pre-meds. I do think that some schools are known for having a ton of pre-meds…Creighton is one.</p>
<p>Most private schools don’t have their incoming students declaring majors. Plus, it’d be much higher than 45% (approaching 100%, probably) among biology and chemistry majors, so you’d have to average that out.</p>
<p>apumic - lemaitre wrote “obtained”, not “attained.” The data is easily obtainable. The scores, however, are not easily attainable. Having obtained the information regarding requisite scores, many students realize they cannot attain them, and abandon the goal.</p>
<p>No typo, and a good analysis.</p>
<p>^ Thanks, I would never imply that competitive statistics for admission to medical school are easy to “attain” only that the information is easy to “obtain”. In my case I had a 31 on the MCAT which included a 10/15 or 67% of the maximum possible in Reading Comprehension. To put that in some perspective, when I took the GRE I attained a 730/800 or 91% of the maximum possible in the Verbal section of the test.</p>