<p>So there was a lot of talk going on in the "were you accepted to other ivies?" on the Emory board. And the topic of Pre-med Medical school applicants came up and someone mentioned that only 48% of the students that apply to medical schools are given an offer. That scares me. A lot. I mentioned that on the thread.</p>
<p>But basically, the real questions I have are:</p>
<p>1) Is the Emory Pre-Med program good? In the sense that, does it prepare you well for the MCAT (the courses you take) and does the administration help you out with your Medical school application or is it really tough to get help?
2) Do Pre-Med applicants normally get into good Medical schools like Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Cornell, NYU, Columbia, Brown, Baylor etc etc? Or do they go to the lower-tier medical schools?</p>
<p>I was really thinking of Emory as my first choice, but then when I saw the low 48%, I got REALLY REALLY scared, because I'm almost 100% sure about Medicine as my career. <em>sigh</em> someone please help me out!</p>
<p>1.) Yes, Emory has a good program. There are plenty of resources for you to access to help you. The vast majority of kids that don’t make it are just the ones who were too lazy to access them, the obvious downside being that the program does not seek out its pre-meds, but requires to them to be active in seeking help.
2.) The link I provided has this information. My advice is to drop the prestige game, though. Nearly every medical school boasts 5-10% acceptance rate, so just getting into one is a huge accomplishment. Remember, medical school is the MOST competitive professional school out there. My friend at Harvard said most of the kids there enter as pre-meds and end up switching to economics by the end of their freshman year. </p>
<p>The grim reality (from my personal experiences) is that going to a top-notch school actually hinders your chances at medical school. Most of the kids here probably could’ve gone to their local state university and ridden the curve straight into medical school. The MCAT helps this a bit, but it does not do enough. Unfortunately the system is not perfect and a lot of very qualified kids don’t make it in.</p>
<p>The main problem with Emory, in my opinion, is that there are too many pre-meds. Almost 400 applied last year, which is just absurd. I’m not a pre-med, but if I were, I would consider schools like Rice if you’re thinking of medicine. </p>
<p>^^^^ The number of pre-meds who apply from Emory is roughly the same as the number of pre-meds from other similar sized schools (Duke, Vandy, etc), so I don’t see what you are trying to say. </p>
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<p>If you look at this chart, you will see that half the pre-meds who apply from Emory at the end of senior year (NOT COUNTING THE ONES WHO WERE WEEDED OUT), won’t be able to score above a 30 on the mcats. And if you can’t score at least a 30 on the mcats, its really hard to get into any U.S. M.D. medical school let alone a top elite medical school. </p>
<p>IMO, its sad that half the pre-meds at Emory can’t even score above a 30 on the mcats…and we are supposed to be a “top” school…</p>
<p>400 at Vandy and Duke? Are you sure?
I haven’t seen a school with more than 300, aside from huge state schools like UT-Austin.</p>
<p>edit: Yah, I don’t understand the MCAT thing. That’s really odd. Our median SAT scores and GPA rival pretty much every other school with 80%+ acceptance rates, so it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve heard people accuse the student atmosphere, but could that really be wholly responsible for an almost 40% drop from our peer universities? Your guess is as good as mine.</p>
<p>^^^ its roughly the same, anywhere from 300-350 if I remember correctly</p>
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<p>^^^ Maybe its the science classes that don’t prep us enough, or its bad advising that doesn’t tell us how to prepare for the test, or it is that most of get complacent. I am sure its not any one factor, but rather a combination of various factors.</p>
<p>Emory’s pre-med program still has a long way to go but it’s definitely improving, especially for the 2010 graduates since the pre-med advising office opened during the 2009-2010 academic year. For the fall 2010 entering class the acceptance rate increased to 193/347 = 56% (<a href=“Career Center | Emory University”>http://www.career.emory.edu/parents/pdf/Applicants_Emory_2010_Matrix.pdf</a>) and it’s probably no coincidence that the percentage of students scoring above a 30 on the mcat was 195/347 = 56%, almost an identical proportion to the acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Also for those that say emory’s undergrad admission standards are comparable many top 20 schools, remember that many emory seniors applying to med school were oxford transfers who got in w/, on average, MUCH lower stats.</p>
<p>collegestu816, 56% is still not too good. And the MCAT is really important like the SATs basically, so does that mean Emory, honestly, does not prepare Pre-Meds well enough for the MCAT?</p>
<p>I would have to disagree. I’m currently a sophomore pre-med here and having taken or seen my friends take all the pre-med courses makes it clear that they’re by no means a joke and really push students to think critically, which is what the mcat essentially tests. and material-wise, the the only gap i’ve noticed in the basic requisite classes is a lack of anatomy/human phys which is a good portion of the Biological Sciences portion of the MCAT. But if you think about it, it’s not the job of the professors to strictly prepare you for the MCAT, that’s what prep courses from Kaplan and the like are for; the professors really only need to teach you what they think is important in the subject, so in the end it’s more about the student body and not the curriculum that determines the school’s overall mcat schools. Personally I’ve tried to rush the process by taking orgo, physics, and bio my freshmen year and then taking the mcat this summer after some self-studying. I managed to score a decent 34S with at least a 10 in each section after my freshmen year and w/o taking many of the upper level sciences (I’m probably gonna retake next summer cuz I know I can do a lot better).</p>
<p>Put the point is, you definitely shouldn’t put all the burden on the university. The only factor that shouldn’t be in your control is the general “atmosphere” of pre-meds at a university, and at emory here most of them are definitely motivated enough to give you enough incentive to work hard and efficiently.</p>
<p>I recently took the MCAT and did very well (>99th percentile). My friends and I don’t really tell our scores, but the few who have told me have gotten 39, 40, 37, 38, 37, and one in the lower 30’s. We all took all of our pre-med courses at Emory.</p>
<p>Just so you know, I am not an oxford student, but I will tell you this, Oxford students can’t be responsible for the huge drop in medical school acceptances. Remember only 300 kids are in a class (class of 2010, 2011, etc) at oxford, wheras Emory main campus has roughly 1200 kids. So lets say 20 percent of the kids at school were pre-meds. 20 percent of 300 is SMALL number compared to 20 percent of 1200…Oxford kids are not solely responsible for Emory’s terrible MCAT scores.</p>
<p>I’m aware of that, I wasn’t putting the blame of low MCAT scores solely on Oxford students. But of course the next question would be what else is causing Emory students to score lower than expected? Gaps in the pre-med science curriculum, poor professors, lazy or complacent students, students who are aren’t very good at test-taking, lack of test prep resources available to Emory students, or too many students who can’t afford test prep company courses, etc…? Which one is it?</p>
<p>Personally I believe it comes down to the attitude and abilities of the student and not so much the environment. It seems like Emory generally has a laid back atmosphere and even among pre-meds, who tend to be more hardcore when it comes to academics, many still are in it just because their parents told them to become doctors or everyone else is on the pre-med bandwagon. In effect, a good amount of students don’t really try as hard as the should be, whether it is science classes or mcat, and often prefer a “watered down” version of the premed science classes to get an easy A at the expense of not being well-prepared for the MCAT. Math/Science in fact tends to be a weak point among many of the premeds here (many are into the humanties), which is a real killer on the mcat when 2/3 of the sections are science ones.</p>
<p>The curriculum itself here may also exacerbate the laziness among some pre-med. In short many of the key science classes physics and bio in particular, are often not challenging enough (they are somewhat watered dwn) and many students can often get away with not paying much attention in class, studying just the night before at test, and pulling off an A- or A in the class, and believe that this pattern will carry over when they take the mcat. The reality is that most students (not just at emory) who do well (30+) will spend about 250 to 300 hrs studying for the mcat alone (not counting time taking the prereq science coures), which is a large time commitment that many emory students may not want to commit to. Another note is the timing of the sections on the mcat; you get 70 minutes to do 52 questions for the science sections and 60 minutes for 40 questions on the verbal, which is a much more stringent time constraint than what most profs here are allowing on their tests (most give you more then enough time and hence students dont have a sense of pacing during tests).</p>
<p>Of course all this only describes a portion of students here. In contrast many pre-meds here still have 3.8+ GPAs and 34+ MCAT, the general average of accepted students at top med schools. Emory itself has all the opportunities and resources for pre-meds to be successful, in the end the question of whether YOU will have a high GPA/MCAT and get into med school depends on your motivation, work ethic, and efficiency in getting the important things done.</p>
<p>“many students can often get away with not paying much attention in class, studying just the night before at test, and pulling off an A- or A in the class.”</p>
<p>not true</p>
<p>but i agree with the rest about students not being interested… maybe lack of interest is why so many of these students got rejected from ivy league schools in teh first place? and now its why htey have trouble getting into med school</p>