Medical Schools to apply

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

I have posted here before and your guys have been so helpful.

Anyway D is a CS premed junior at Vandy who has 3.933 GPA, and with one premed class (bio 2) to go. The plan is to take MCAT the end of May, and go straight to a medical school after undergrad. Her BCPM is about the same as her GPA, about 3.93 or 3.94 (7 credits of A minus), but has more math due to her CS major.

She is a planner, so she set up a meeting with premed counseling office to go over personal statement, ECs, list of schools to apply, etc around MLK day. Apparently the meeting is like 2 hours.

While working on the list, she is looking at where Vandy kids went in the past, the rankings and the costs. She wants to apply some medical schools in TX, and saw that only 3% medical students in TX are from OOS. Is it even worthwhile for her to apply to TX medical schools? While I think it might be too pre-mature to think of schools without MCAT scores, there is something to do with committee letter(she says). And if you add a school, you need to let them know or something like that.

We are PA for instate, and for now if you assume above average ECs and average shadowing and volunteering. What are her matches, safeties and reaches?

Thank you! Still I am so confused about what she has to do after her MCAT. I think someone told me that she needs to pretend to apply a school or something to keep herself in the system?

2

All med schools should be considered reaches…many (most?) successful applicants only garner one acceptance. Best chances are the med schools in your home state, and your D has some great choices in PA.

For 2019/20, 41% of applicants were accepted, many (most?) med schools have acceptance rates in the single digits. The average number of applications per applicant was 17 for 2019/20.

There is a lot of good data here: https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/interactive-data/2019-facts-applicants-and-matriculants-data

A-1 has acceptance stats by state, and there are many other good statistics in the other files…acceptance rates by MCAT/GPA (table a23), gender, race, etc.

I expect @WayOutWestMom can tell you more and answer the questions about TX and those in the last paragraph.

3

There is no such thing as a safety for med school. Your D should consider all med schools reaches since the acceptance rates at nearly every US MD program is under 20% and in most cases under 10%. At least 25-35 have acceptance rates in the 2-3% range.

(And per commentary on SDN and elsewhere, schools are being particularly cautious about issuing acceptances. Last year was the first year without the weekly acceptance report and several schools over-accepted. Because of that, schools are being exceedingly cautious about the number of acceptances they are issuing and are giving out more waitlist spots.)

Having the right GPA/MCAT is only the first step. The rest is about fit.


TX med schools are required by law to take 90-95% of their students from in-state residents. Unless your D lives in a southern OK or southeastern NM region that shares a TX border or she has some other strong affiliation with TX, she's wasting her time & money applying to TX med schools.

PA only offers modest instate preferences at Pitt, Penn State and Temple.

Commonwealth-Geisinger is looking for students who are from
central/NE PA (or adjacent rural areas of NY, NJ or MD), or who have demonstrate interest in rural healthcare & primary care medicine.

Temple, Jefferson and Drexel all get huge numbers of applicants–typically over 10,000/year for 200 seats at Temple (with about 10% of those seats going to grads of Temple’s SMP) or 260 seats at Drexel & Jefferson. (NOTE: approx 50 seats at Jefferson are reserved for residents of Delaware). The Philadelphia schools should be considered “lottery schools” because of the very high number of applicants. They are not a safety or match for anyone.

(BU, Georgetown, Tulane, Tufts and GWU likewise receive 8-15,000 applications/year. These are all “lottery” schools.)


After your D takes the MCAT and if she is planning to apply next cycle, she needs to apply to the HP office at Vandy for a committee letter. There will be a timeline with deadlines and a list of materials required on the health professions webpage.

Next, she will fill out her AMCAS application, arrange to send her official transcripts (after her final grades have been posted for the spring term), and submit her application after AMCAS opens on or around June 1. 

She doesn't "pretend" to apply to a school; she will actually apply to at least 1 school. Why? Because unless she has at least 1 school on her AMCAS application list, AMCAS won't process her application.
4

Too late to correct—

The one exception to the TX instate rule is Baylor, which is a public-private hybrid. At Baylor, only about 60% of the class is in-state. But the acceptance rate for in-state applicants in 3x that of OOS applicants.

Even private schools tend to favor in-state students because they know local kids are more likely to attend. (And that boosts their yield.)

5

Texas medical schools are capped for 90% in state but do try to meet the 10% OOS admissions. What usually happens is that those admitted OOS might not show up and they end up with more instate.

A little known secret is that Texas has to give instate tuition to anyone with a $1000 scholarship and UTSW, UT Houston and probably few other schools always give that scholarship in order to allow most OOS to pay instate.

Used to be Baylor was at 75% instate but the latest numbers from MSAR show that it has gone up to 85% and also MD/PhD has most of the OOS that are adding to the 15%.

It is quite possible that 10% is also being fulfilled by MD/PhD students at other Texas schools.

6

Would state where you attended undergrad count as in state? Thanks.

7

Or would it be state where the parents reside? Or both?
Would it matter if parents do not pay for tution?

8

@Angelino

Every state–and every med school within every state–has its rules w/r/t in-state vs. OOS classification. You will need to check every school’s policy.

In general, a student cannot establish a state residency if they are in a state for educational purposes (like attending college). It doesn’t matter whether your parents pay for your tuition or not.

Most public schools will ask for certain proofs that you are a bona fide state resident. These proofs of domicile include things like federal & state income tax returns for past years, a lease in your name, utility bills in your name, driver’s license, voter’s registration, proof of in-state employment (W2s) etc.

For students trying to matriculate directly into med school from college, many states look at where you graduated from high school to determine your state residency.

A few things–

  1. AMCAS does not verify your state residency. Whatever you list on your application is what med schools see.

Whether a particular school decides to accept your self-declared residency is entirely up to the school.

  1. Some state med schools include residency determination questions on their secondaries.

  2. In-state status for tuition purposes and in-state status for admission consideration may not be the same

  3. In-state status for tuition purposes is determined by the bursar’s office of the medical school (not the admissions office) and the determination is only made after you enroll

  4. public medical schools are allowed take the length of state residency into consideration when making admission decisions, favoring longer term residents over more recent residents.