<p>Im sure this has been asked 1000 times but im can't seem to find it. Does anyone know of a list of what colleges send the highest % of students who want to go to med-school to med-school. I know PR has these states but they seem misleading cause 1% of a school may get into med school but if the school is 90% liberal arts and 90% of the Bio majors who were thinking pre-med got in thats pretty good...</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>First off, you're exaggerating your point wildly - under no circumstances would a 1% admissions rate be remotely acceptable. </p>
<p>Second, given that your major makes no difference whatsoever, then your explanation would not prove useful.</p>
<p>Therefore, I believe the PR list - if you've seen it/have it, given that I've never heard of it - will be reasonably accurate. There are, however, a few caveats.</p>
<p>First, you must remember to control for student quality. Harvard having better rates with its premeds than Wash U has may simply be because Harvard kids tend on balance to be more qualified generally - therefore, for a specific kid (in this hypothetical example), this does not tell you that Harvard is actually a better choice.</p>
<p>Second, you must control for screening. I insist that this is an extremely rare policy, practiced only by a small handful of schools (the only one I know of is Hopkins) for extremely underqualified candidates, but many seem to think the policy is more widespread. In any case, a school that screens will artificially boost its numbers.</p>
<p>Third, you must control for underreporting. UC Berkeley, for example, has no information regarding the vast majority of its candidates. I maintain two positions, which are not universally agreed upon:
(1) Many schools (those with premedical committee recommendations) have no underreporting regarding applicants and therefore their estimates cannot possibly be inflated.
(2) Schools with underreporting are likely to have considerable upward bias - i.e. their numbers will appear to be dramatically inflated.</p>
<p>It's a good question, if I'm reading it correctly.</p>
<p>Are you looking to see the number of matriculants from a school in comparison to the number of kids who at any point declared as pre-med? I think this is a very valid question, b/c it gives you an idea of the actual pre-med experience at that school and how well they are really educating future doctors. For example if a school has 1000 freshmen enter as pre-med, but only 150 actually end up applying (sort of my general estimation of the sort of attrition I saw during my undergrad years...I did a lot of HS recruiting and always amazed at the number of kids declared as pre-med) at all, and only 75 are accepted, that's very different from a school with 1000 pre-meds entering, 25 applying and all 25 getting accepted. The latter is certainly preparing those who make it through the 4 years to get accepted, but it's absolutely killer to make all the way through.</p>
<p>As for BDM's points...
I agree with (1).
As for 2...for some reason, I vaguely remember a pre-med advisor telling me that the universities actually get reports on the acceptances for their students. I don't think that they find out where you were accepted just that you were...again that's a very vague memory...so it may be that schools know exactly where they stand. I found this page on the AAMC website: <a href="http://www.aamc.org/students/applying/advisors/ais.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.aamc.org/students/applying/advisors/ais.htm</a></p>
<p>Actually, I think I stumbled across the information from the AAMC myself the other day. If you and I are right, that makes the underreporting that is rampant (at least, at the UC's) totally inexcusable.</p>
<p>BDM - the Princeton Review stats are not the percentage of applicants who get into med school; they're the percentage of total graduating students who go on to medical school. Therefore, some liberal arts colleges might have 1% of their students moving on to med school, but maybe 2% applied which would yield about a 50% acceptance rate. Unfortunately, PR doesn't say how many people applied in the first place, so their statistic only gives you an idea of how popular pre-med might be at that particular school.</p>
<p>And as for reporting, when I visited USC and asked about their med school acceptance rate, they claimed there was no possible way to track that. While I think this might be an exaggeration, they may be right about the fact that when students apply after graduating, their undergrad doesn't hear about it.</p>
<p>Schools that provide committee letters of recommendation for their candidates are mandated to do so for all candidates - that is, students are not allowed to apply without this. So if USC writes such letters - and it might not - then it would, in fact, have access to the information (unless any kids applied primary and did not receive any secondaries).</p>
<p>And VO, thanks for the clarification about PR's numbers. Obviously, I misunderstood.</p>