@GotamaTheBuddha,
That 1-2% figure was back when I was applying (which wasnât too long ago, in medical education terms) which I had found in the actual hardcopy version of the Medical School Admissions Requirements (the MSAR) book - back when all med school information could be found in one place, although the list of the BS/MD programs in their chapter aptly titled, âInformation on Combined Undergraduate/M.D. Programsâ was ridiculously out of date. They had stats specifically for each program with # of applicants, # interviewed, # offered acceptance, and # who matriculated, all specifically for the Bachelor/MD cohort. I believe around either 2012 or 2013 they moved a lot of information in that book to the AAMC website in which you have to pay for subscription access, unfortunately. I havenât done the math (Iâm interested, but honestly, not that interested to sit down and do the calculations for every BS/MD program). Iâm only counting those that fit the definition of a BS/MD program which are always directly entered into after high school.
Back when I graduated there were only 126 med schools. From 1986 to 2005 - no new allopathic medical schools were created. All the new med schools that have been created have only been within the last 10 years, with the first new school receiving preliminary accreditation in 2008: https://members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/A%20Snapshot%20of%20the%20New%20and%20Developing%20Medical%20Schools%20in%20the%20US%20and%20Canada.pdf. Weâre now at 142 med schools for 2015-2016. Overall class sizes now tend to be higher on average, which doesnât necessarily mean the BS/MD track size increases.
In 2015, 18,025 U.S. senior med students entered the residency match. So already your figure of # of med students of 21,000 is off by about 15%, which isnât explained for by attrition which is lower compared to other professional schools. This is all assuming by the way, that 100% of those initial Bachelor/MD seats end up actually reaching the MS-1 matriculation stage and actually becoming med students (and we know for a fact that does not happen, for a whole variety of reasons), since those attritioned BS/MD seats canât be made up with undergraduate transfers (since BS/MD programs usually donât allow transfers into the BS/MD program). Very few schools recruit a full medical class or even half a medical school class of Bachelor/MD students â the only ones in which there is a large sizable number that I know of are UMKC (since the entire school was meant to revolve around a 6 year model), NEOMED, and Brownâs PLME. Even with the example you mention of UT-Southwestern, with a class of 240, have a very small cohort of Bachelor/MD students as part of UT-PACT, which only started in the Fall 2012. And like you said, there are BS/MD programs that disappear completely â i.e. U Michigan, USC, OSU, UCSD, etc. although the ones that are newly made donât necessarily replace the ones that became defunct in terms of total numbers, in fact, they start out quite small.
My reference to my internship class, wasnât to do a statistical analysis in terms of percentages. My point in bringing up my own personal example was more for anecdotal purposes to compare to the high school BS/MD mindset. In my internship class even after asking them if they could go back and have done a combined program that assured the med school acceptance part from the beginning, would they have still done it? They all said no, with no pause. There were quite a few reasons why they wouldnât do it, which I didnât list in that post. Itâs much different than the frequent high school BS/MD mindset, in which it seems to be med school or bust, no matter what the cost (and not just financial, since med schools donât have to give you any extra financial aid to entice you to come, unlike what happens in the traditional pathway, i.e. Case PPSP) and no matter what the caliber of the med school. My point is that the calculation behind it is a lot more nuanced, which tends to get skipped over by BS/MD applicants.
