<p>If all U.S medical schools are good, and if people are advised not to allow the rankings to effect their decision, how does one choose prospective medical schools?</p>
<p>Have you signed up for the Chat, in about 20 mins? See the thread, this is likely to be discussed.</p>
<p>Well, first you look at your in-state med schools. These are usually your best chance for acceptance since they are heavily invested in providing doctors for that state. Residents are very strongly favored in admissions.</p>
<p>Next, once you know your MCAT score and GPA, you start looking for other schools where your stats are within the norm for accepted students. (If you’re a URM, you need to look at the acceptance data specifically for your ethnic group at individual schools. Acceptance stats are not the same for everyone.) This data will be available in MSAR. (Medical School Admission Requirements, published annually.)</p>
<p>Next, you look for schools that either do or do not show a geographic bias. (Depending on whether it will work in your favor or not. If the regional bias works in your favor, then you apply to schools that favor your locale; otherwise you look for schools that do not show any regional favoritism.) This info will also be apparent if you look at MSAR data and see who does and does not get interviewed. (OOS vs. in-state numbers) Some private schools demonstrate a preference for students who live in the same geographic region; some don’t. Some public med schools are more accepting of OOS candidates than other.</p>
<p>Then you look at school which have historical or religious background similar to your own. (Historically black medical schools or Catholic medical schools, for example.)</p>
<p>Next, you can start considering some personal preferences—do you prefer school East or West of the Mississippi? Do want to remain in particular geographic area? Major population center or smaller city? If you have a particular area of interest–you can consider which schools specialize in those: rural medicine, primary care, research thesis required, etc. </p>
<p>It’s complicated process and requires a great deal of thought–and one everyone approaches differently.</p>
<p>Once you have acceptances, you go with the school that feels “right” to you.</p>
<p>It is very personal and different for each. What is your personal criteria? My D’s most important criteria was distance from home. She refused to apply to any beyond 4.5 hrs driving, despite advisor’s strong recommendations. She also could afford to apply to relatevely few becasue of specifics of her situation. So, I am not sure how you can ask somebody else, what school you personally prefer.</p>
<p>Considering people who get accepted tend to only get accepted to one or a small number of schools, it is much easier to put aside things like arbitrary rankings when considering that smaller pool. I definitely used rankings when picking what schools to apply to, in order to ensure that I was applying to a fair range of schools.</p>
<p>I worked with my son on his list and started by taking the AMCAS listing of all schools and eliminating:
- Schools that accepted 90% or more from their state (other than his home state),
- Schools in the south and west, as he was interested in the midwest and northeast,
- Schools that had a requirement he hadn’t met, such as biochemistry,
- A few school such as Harvard and Hopkins that he wasn’t competitve for. </p>
<p>This left, as I recall, about 35 schools, and he applied to 15 or 20. So it wasn’t really that difficult a process. He applied to all his instate schools and then picked from the rest to fill out his roster.</p>
<p>We followed the pattern described above. We are also of the belief there are no bad US medical schools, so the process was driven by in-state first, then any medical school with comparable admissions stats; the MSAR is a good place to look for this information. The Annals of Internal Medicine had an article a few months back, and gave the stats for every school in the country, public and private, in terms of percentage of in-state admitted. For example, U of MIami, a private school, favors Florida residents. This is true in many states-see the private medical schools in Chicago. And there are quirks-Jefferson, a private medical school located in Philadelphia, is the state school for Delaware. I’d strongly recommend the Annals article, as it can be a waste of money applying to a private school that gives in-state preference for a state you’re not a resident of.</p>
<p>Citation for the Annals article?</p>
<p>I looked for it in every 2011 issue table of contents, but didn’t see it… I’d like to read it since I have one who will be applying in 2013.</p>
<p>WOWM-sorry, gave bad info. Article is in JAMA Sept 7, 2011/vol 306 No.9 “Medical Schools in the United States 2010-2011” by Barzansky and Etzel; the stats are in the appendix.</p>
<p>Great! We get JAMA in hard copy at work so I’ll look it up Monday.</p>
<p>thanks cranky. Very helpful.</p>