Looking for pre-med experience at Ivy versus LAC

Right…so this data is for just a subset of applicants who did their undergrad at UCB. Average age of med school matriculants is 24, so many matriculants (and applicants) are more than two years out of undergrad (and certainly some of those attended UCB for undergrad). And we still don’t know if it’s MD school only, or if it includes DO (it does seem like it might be MD only based on their report footnotes, which would be excluding pertinent data of those who apply/attend DO school).

The UCB data should absolutely be including data for all applicants who graduated with a BA/BS, no matter when they apply, and no matter how often they apply. That missing data is important to understand the entire picture. Some schools include all this data, some don’t. Generally no way to know unless one asks.

Yes, it is a subset, but I think a relatively meaningful one when a student considers what university will best set him/her up for medical school. The subset is for first time applicants who submitted their application within 2 years of graduation and agreed to release their data to the AAMC, which I think is the “traditional” path for doctors. It provides useful data for a prospective premed as to what they need to achieve in terms of GPA and MCAT scores to have a good chance at getting into an MD program. Of course many other factors will come into play, but this is a useful table. Also Berkeley does provide comparable overall numbers by graduating class with national averages, and we can see Berkeley is above national averages. That doesn’t tell you whether or by how much a 3.7/505 Berkeley grad is advantaged/disadvantaged over a grad of University X with a 3.7/510 in terms of historical acceptance rates. I guess I am just reacting to the multitude of comments we see on CC that undergrad doesn’t matter when we talk about professional schools (med and law), just GPA and test scores. I just don’t think that is the case and each family needs to dig into the success rates of each university. The tables/matrix I linked from Berkeley would be a good place to start to compare colleges against each other.

I hear you and understand your points, but we will have to agree to disagree. I don’t think partial data is necessarily meaningful or useful, when I can’t see what’s missing, or for what proportion of applicants/matriculants the included or excluded data represents.

And for the record, DO school is certainly a traditional path to becoming a physician. Why leave that data out (seemingly it’s not included)?

Similarly, why leave the >2 year applicant data out? That could easily be as large as, or even greater than the sample size for the within two year of graduation data they do show.

UCB is purposely selecting a subset of data to show, and excluding potentially significant data. That makes me suspect the data they are choosing to show us, and I am not comfortable drawing conclusions from this incomplete data.

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Thank you-this is all very interesting! Was trying to get a better idea of “weeding out,” recommendations, versus support and the general atmosphere.

IMO, the two categories you are working with aren’t helpful for that- the differences between individual schools in each category (say, Harvard v Brown and Swat v Bowdoin) are greater than the differences between the two categories as a whole.

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Absolutely–I’m not premed but I am a bio concentrator at Brown, and my friends at Harvard, JHU, and Dartmouth are all having way different experiences. I can talk more about brown if OP has any specific questions

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You can get a great pre-med expereince at a LAC or a university. IMO what you SHOULD be considering is what type of environment (LAC, mid-size university, large university) you want for your undergrad experience – where do you feel most comfortable? where do you feel you can best thrive?

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I know of one student at Amherst College that has been able to work closely with their advisor and profs to their satisfaction in building a robust resume, complete with clinical and lab experience, along with being published. I think this has been one of the many perks of attending a school that only has undergraduate students.
Here is a guide that may be of interest:
https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/gradstudy/health/guide/part2

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Thank you for that advice. I would be interested in particular experiences at:
Princeton, Yale, Williams, Swarthmore & Bowdoin. thx.

Thank you for that advice. I would be interested in particular experiences at:
Princeton, Yale, Williams, Swarthmore and Bowdoin thx

I do not think that the applicants from Harvard have the distribution that is at all similar to that of UCB. To begin with, the average GPA of graduates of UCB’s sciences is under 3.5, while that of Harvard is 3.7. The median GPA for Harvard’s entire Class of 2021 was 3.8. 88.1% of the Class of 2021 reported having a GPA of 3.6 and higher, while only 4.4% reported a GPA of 3.5.

Since the applicants to Medical school would have a GPA distribution that is higher than the graduating class as a whole, so it is highly unlikely that there would be very many applicants with GPAs of 3.5, or even 3.6.

Best advice in the thread so far. There is no magic involved in getting into med school. Take the dozen or so required lower-division courses (which any college in the country offers) and do well in them, get to know some profs for personal recs, take part in medical ECs, prep for the MCAT. Do this at a college that’s a fit for you. If you’re the kind of student that can get acceptance letters to Harvard or Haverford undergrad then you’ve already shown the academic ability and ECs that puts you at the top of the country’s undergrads; it’s no surprise these kids can end up in the 50% of med school applicants that are admitted.

Not addressed yet is why med school is right for you. Many HS kids think they need to pick something as they enter college and since they aren’t aware of more than a handful of career fields medicine is attractive. And even within medicine many can only name a few occupations such as doctor or nurse but these are far from the only in the health field that help people. Physical therapists, radiology techs, speech pathologists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, to name but just a few as shown on http://explorehealthcareers.org Careers that take less than 11+ years of education and training and the immense debt that comes with a M.D. If you don’t have exposure to exposure to medicine such as thru volunteering then I suggest thinking of yourself as wanting to explore medicine, not someone who’s made a decision.

If we take your suppositions, let’s assume 90% of the 17% who applied to medical school had GPA’s in excess of the Harvard median of 3.8, which is over 15% of the total class. So of the remaining top half of the class, 35% of total students were spread among top law schools, finance, consulting, tech (FB/Google/etc…), pharma/research, plum government/NPO positions and top graduate programs? Or looking at it another way, almost 31% of the top 50% applied to med schools? Doesn’t seem probable. I think it is more probable that top half of the Harvard class had a wider dispersion of post graduate outcomes.

But we don’t even need to go there. The UCB grads with 3.9+ GPA and 515+ MCATS only had an admit rate of 87% (91/105). By the stats you stated, with relatively lower grade inflation at Berkeley (3.9 more select at UCB vs a Harvard 3.9), the Berkeley outcome for the highest stats group was lower than Harvard’s rate of 93% for a much wider group.

You are correct in that Harvard graduates have better outcomes. However, we are talking about, as you said, students with 3.9 GPAs whose acceptance rates are close to 100% instead of 85%-90%.

I do think that a large part of that is both preference of Ivies for Ivy graduates, as well as better advising and more strategic applications. I think that Harvard pre-meds are much more likely to have “safety” options than UCB graduates, and to have more guidance during their undergrad.

All that being said, yes, you are correct in saying that not only MCAT and GPA matter, but also the undergraduate college.

Back to the original question: Having seen the actual AAMC undergrad college stats (I have never seen DO figures from AACOM), I can tell OP that all of the colleges mentioned in their post fall in the same MD acceptance rate range (and Harvard is not the highest). Having said that, there are a ton of things that can affect those rates, and I suspect that includes advising, tutoring opportunities, and the fact that the students accepted to those colleges would “naturally” be attractive to med schools (FWIW, I don’t believe any of the top admit colleges have policies that limit who gets a committee LOR, other than hitting deadlines and attending meetings).

I would suggest that you or your child look at the links to the medical school application advisory process I posted above. They will answer a lot of your questions. I’d also look for similar links at the SLACs of interest and read through them.

I do think that if your child is undecided it may be helpful to attend a school at which undergrads can work or volunteer at an affiliated hospital. This is not just to improve a resume for med school; it’s to figure out if you really want to be a doctor.

For everyone’s horror stories about the cost of med school, there is a small but growing group of med schools that are waiving tuition for all or a substantial portion of students. Yes, competition for them is extremely competitive, but who knows what the landscape will be like when it’s time for your child to apply.

Not sure what qualifies as a “top admit” but have to disagree with the above, as it’s clear that many colleges-including “top” colleges-use the committee letter for exactly that purpose-ie limiting who applies to medical school.

And reiterating what has been said above: it is virtually impossible to know exactly what any UG’s medical school acceptance rate is, since there is no standard definition of either “pre-med” or “medical school” so pre-med might only be people with committee letters and medical school may be allopathic, DO, dental, etc etc.

And as nobody has been to both an Ivy and a LAC, it’s impossible to answer the question asked. At best a prospective student has to weigh all the personal variables-location, cost, reputation, personal “fit”-and make his or her own decision.

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Could you quickly describe each ones experience (jhu, harvard, Dartmouth)? Thanks!

Absolutely agree 100% with your concluding paragraph, particularly the importance of the things you mention. And, some colleges definitely do use the committee letter system to limit applicants - and that’s info that’s generally pretty easy to dig up if anybody cares to. But as of early 2019, of the 20 or so non-service academy colleges with the highest MD applicant acceptance rate (according to AAMC) including those mentioned by OP, not a one has any grade or test-related requirement for receiving a committee or composite letter (and a couple don’t even offer those). The only requirements involve meeting and paperwork deadlines - and if you can’t hit those, maybe you shouldn’t be applying to med school. Now, I’ll try to shut up and let folks who’ve been at the schools OP mentioned talk about their actual experiences.

There’s difference between receiving a committee letter and receiving a strong committee letter. Med school applicants are ranked by their health profession committee Into categories based on how strong their application portfolio is relative to other students who are applying from the school. So don’t think for a minute that just because a school says it has no requirements for receiving a committee letter that everyone applying from the school is going to get their highest endorsement. (Or even a recommendation that is offered without any reservations.)

Also based upon D’s experiences at a private university well known for its pre-med program–there is substantial amount of subtle and not-at-all-subtle discouragement given to students whose application falls short of expectations long before the student even applies for a committee letter

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