<p>how did you all go about choosing which med schools to apply to? how many did you apply to? what were your main criteria? how did you find the info you needed? </p>
<p>i'm looking at the numbers and it seems that there is little variability (especially in terms of GPA) so what else should i look at? also it seems that schools in the same geographic area (city) cluster in terms of numbers...how do you differentiate between them?</p>
<p>I'm not very good at this whole picking schools thing since i applied ED to college and didnt practically had rankings dictate my grad school choices. </p>
<p>Any help (from current med students or those in the midst of the application process) would be appreciated.</p>
<p>You don't differentiate between them, at least not at this level. You don't want to over-apply, of course, but there are some common pieces of wisdom. Lots of people suggest, for example, applying to every medical school in your state (regardless of selectivity, within reason). I would assume the same rule holds for cities. If you know that there's a particular geographic region (city, state, whatever) where you'd like to go to medical school, you pretty much apply to all of them (again, except for perhaps the most selective). I have friends who were determined that they wanted to go to a school where research was one of the most emphasized things, and so they applied to all of the "research" schools. Etc. Etc.</p>
<p>That said (and this will come across as kind of contradictory), my main piece of advice is to set yourself a limit on how many schools you're going to apply to, and don't let yourself go over it. It's way too easy to find yourself saying "well, it's only one more school, so I'll send my AMCAS to this one as well." And before you know it, you're applying to 45 schools or something. Set a reasonable number. Every medical student has the thought "I'll go anywhere if they'll accept me," and so in some peoples' minds it makes sense to apply to more schools than they can possibly complete applications (quality applications) for.</p>
<p>My pre-med advisor told us that the average pre-med applied to 12 schools, and I wanted to keep it at or below that number. For me, geographic area was my main concern, and so I knew that I was going to apply to all schools in my state, and then I looked at the schools in the surrounding states and their numbers, philosophies, and out-of-state acceptance rate and narrowed the list down so that I wasn't applying to more than 12 (I actually think that I ended up applying to 11).</p>
<p>I should add that while I have been incredibly happy with the choices I made for applying, I think, in hindsight, that 12 is a little low. I got lucky (plain and simple) and got into my first choice, and withdrew almost all of my applications in November. I know plenty of people who apply to 18-20 medical schools and successfully managed the applications.</p>
<p>I would say apply to as many as you can afford. You can decide to not send in secondaries if you change your mind. For me during senior year, it ended up being 7. I had to tap into my savings a little bit to do the airfare for interviews and to send all my secondaries.</p>
<p>As far as what schools to which you should apply, I would check with your advisor. I don't know what school you're going to, but at smaller schools like mine, I just asked my advisor what schools had accepted people from my college recently. She had a list, and it helped to make sure that I wasn't wasting my secondary fee when the school wasn't going to seriously consider my app anyway. Also, if you're applying to a school that's out of state, check the demographics of their class to see how many out of state students they accept. </p>
<p>Take this all with a grain of salt, by the way. All of us commenting really only know what got us in, not what will work for someone else.</p>
<p>Side note: Tell your letter-writers that the letters of rec are due two weeks before the actual date. I learned this the hard way for a few schools.</p>
<p>My normal recommendation is 15 to 20. However, students with weird circumstances need to up that considerably and follow SOO's strategy in #4 -- I might well advocate a number like 30 or 35 for those students, just to see how many will filter out such a student during the primary/secondary process.</p>
<p>would it really be practical to apply to 30-35 schools especially considering that most schools don't screen prior to sending out secondaries?</p>
<p>my adviser recommended applying to 15 but i'm having the most trouble trying to figure out which state schools (that aren't in my home state) would be best, since they're all in the middle of nowhere and i feel like i need one or two schools with avg MCATs below 30</p>
<p>Ask him if he knows what schools have accepted grads from your college recently. Odds are, if they took someone from your school, they might take another.</p>
<p>Interesting thread, and it's something D & myself have discussed. 15 sounds about right without breaking the bank, providing she gets to the interview stage with some of the OOS schools.</p>
<p>Speaking of the interview, reading the MSAR book with the stats of every med school, is the low percentage of interviewees to applicants, especially for out of staters, an accurate ratio? Or are there other factors (such as withdrawals before or after the secondaries) that aren't figured in, that would make those numbers look a little less dire?</p>
<p>Some people do withdraw their applications before interviewing, but if you're looking at info for state schools, the dire numbers are probably right for OOS applicants-vs.-interviewees.</p>
<p>I applied to 11 schools. Things worked out for me (current 2nd year) but in hindsight, I should have applied to a few more.</p>