If the pre-med advising committee doesn’t recommend a student to apply for Medschool, then there is no chance for them to get accepted in any Medschool. That is the main factor in top universities. We may see high acceptance rate, but how many of the potential applicants were actually allowed to apply is the main question to think about. I know a very bright student who had very good MCAT score, 4.0 GPA at a top university, who couldn’t apply to medschool for the same reason. He was told he did not have enough shadowing experience to apply! He then felt Medicine is not worth the effort, decided to pursue MBA.
Also, some of the top universities advise students to do one year of research in gap year, that may be the reason large number of alumni applying to medschool .
About 40% acceptance rate of all applicants each year sometimes is a misleading indicator of the difficulty. Out of all those 50K applicants each year, there are many strong applicants after gap years, which is more and more common now. Most medical schools’ entering class average age is about 23/24 years old. I believe there are three attrition factors in the pre-med to med school process:
- College pre-med weed-out process. Normally there are only between 5% and 15% of graduating senior class students eventually being able to apply for medical schools; for example, Harvard, 80/1600 = 5%; UCB, 800/7000 = 11%, etc.
- The myth of that the top university brands can carry relative lower GPA of their students in cut-throat environments has been debunked many times. If you have a 3.60 GPA at University of Chicago, medical school AOs know there are many more qualified students in U. of Chicago who are better than you with 3.8~3.95 GPAs and you are just simply not as good as them.
- Even with high GPA and MCAT, students still need many other credentials, such as strong LORs from professors and committee, deep and strong research, publication, volunteering, clinic experiences, community services, etc. That is why many students are taking gap years to pump up resumes.
@dadofd oh wow I had no idea that myth #2 wasn’t true…everyone has always told me that the medical schools take into account the competitiveness of the undergrad school
According to U of Miami Miller School Medicine, reapplicants to that medical school had lower rate of acceptance. Princeton Review states that second-time applicants have about same rate of acceptance as the first time applicants.
I am guessing that reapplicants to U of Miami MSM include third or more time applicants, which would bring down the overall acceptance rate for the reapplicants to that school. Therefore, we can safely assume that 40% (or higher with above fact) rule still remains firm for the overall acceptance rate for the first time applicants.
As I understand, more and more students are taking gap years without applying as graduating seniors, and when they apply for medical schools after gap years, they are still treated as first-time applicants. @upstream is correct that only those applicants who applied many times are treated as re-applicants, and in many cases, they are not as strong as those first-time applicants, with or without gap years.
As I have posted in the earlier post, college and medical school application is like a dating game, where no one wants to be rejected. When a medical school such as Chicago Med. (Rosalind Franklin U) is selecting its interview spots from the application pool ( 971 interviews from 10,935 applicants, 190 matriculants), the admissions committee will carefully choose applicants, who will most likely accept their offer. The accepted MCAT scores ranged from 27 to 32 (10th to 90th percentile) for the 2015 entering class, and Chicago Med.s matriculant mean MCAT was 30. Therefore, the most of applicants with high MCAT scores were probably not selected for the interview, and 1% matriculation rate is not that discouraging since that number is from the targeted pool, which is much smaller than the overall application pool. Many medical schools accept students from their waiting list or under consideration list since pre-meds apply to many many schools, which distort the matriculation rate. Also, acceptance number is much higher than the published matriculation number.
These numbers are from MSAR online service, which anyone can purchase with a nominal fee.
I agree with @dadofd that lower GPA from top schools are considered differently by AOs now. As more and more students are taking gap years and application pool is expanding, medical schools are finding enough people with higher GPAs and strong ECs.
I remember there are some stats about acceptance/matriculation rates, which are about 2.5x to 3x; so if they target 100 matriculation, they will accept about 250~300 from interviewee pool. But interestingly, that rates are normally lower for state medical schools and higher for private ones. I guess many applicants want go to their own state medical school if accepted due to much lower cost, while applicants for private medical schools will consider many other factors.
Hey Everyone!
I realize that everyone is either on their interview stage or almost over with them so I’ll just focus on talking about interviews. College Confidential’s posts were very beneficial when I was applying to programs. I would frantically check these posts every single day to see updates and such so I thought it would be nice to give back to the community.
I am currently in one of the BS/MD programs, particularly the RPI/AMC Program. Honestly many of these programs don’t have a certain type of algorithm in order to accept students but there is a clear trend in what and who is accepted for certain programs. What people don’t tell you is that for 95% of the programs the student’s interview and how well it goes is really what determines if you’re accepted or not. When advisors are given the difficult task of choosing between 40-80 candidates that all equally deserve the spot BASED ON ACADEMICS, the only way to differentiate them is how well they can keep the conversation in the interview going as well as how well they do under pressure. I personally have been under many interviews and I felt like each interview can be categorized in certain ways.
Some doctors interviewed students in a manner in which they wanted to break the student. They put heavy pressure on the student and use many different tactics such as throwing question after question and ridiculing you during the interview. Yes, it sounds harsh but I have been in one and all you must do is hold your ground. I call those Pressure Interviews.
Other doctors or PhDs interview students in a friendly manner that are looking for how well the student can hold a conversation and how welcoming they are. Imagine having a patient for the first time as a doctor; you must make sure in that situation to show the patient that you are knowledgeable in the field as well as how much you can sympathize. These interviews are simulating those environments.
Other doctors or PhDs truly just want to know if you know your resume and personal statements well. They want to know that you can talk about fluently and answer their questions well. Those interviews don’t have too much emotion but is heavy on information and is quite straightforward.
In my opinion however, with these different interview types, it is essential that you do ONE THING regardless of what interviewer type you get. It is that you can paint the whole picture and connect every single thing that you talk about to one central topic and that topic should most likely be about why you want to become a doctor or something along those lines. You want to make sure that, that is the recurring theme since that’s what will stick with the interviewer when they report your interview to the admissions committee.
I will be glad to help anyone who has any more interviews coming up so please PM me if you do!
I agree with @dadofd in that the acceptance to matriculation is 2x-3x. I just logged onto StartClass and took an average of their top 101 med schools (from Harvard being #1 to Texas A&M being #101) on their list. For what it’s worth the average acceptance rate for those 101 schools is 3.5% according to the rate for each school they have listed there. They seem to have accumulated a lot of data which at least when I was researching undergrad last year seemed valid so I am going under the assumption that their statistical data at least in terms of applicants to acceptances is accurate for Med Schools as well.
bsmdman18
Great comments
I agree with different styles of interview
@Empire007 good stat. On an average each applicant applies to 14 -15 med schools so given that fact, then around 45-50% of the qualified applicants get accepted into med school through the pre-med route. Not bad average…
Got accepted into the Siena BA/MD program!!! 
I got into SIENA/AMC program as well
Congrats! @DrTOBE and @misophoniax
Did you guys get notified by email or mail?
Mail @str82med
Nothing new since most of you knew already. But still thought of posting since at times it may mislead unless you read fine points. It is related to all the recent posts about MD admission.
Do any one know (or care) how many students applied to college via common app and got acceptance from any college for UG admission? No. Here for MD admission, the 40-45% admission rate is based on the total applicants filed with AAMC which is similar to Common App. Rather the more useful stat is # of applicants to a particular college and how many offered acceptance and how many matriculated. For UG, the acceptance rate is very low for top college (5-10%) vs low tier colleges (70+%). But the acceptance rate for top MD college is around 1.5-2% to bottom most college is 1.5-2.5%. So the key take away points.
- MD Admission is super competitive (and insane similar to what you have gone thru BS/MD admission). It is not going to slack by any means! It is 1 to 2% is admission rate.
- MD admission is also going to be holistic (a.k.a unpredictable or God knows!). If you read the post from upstream on UofC, the average GPA is not super high, it means many other factors play, with the given point that GPA and MCAT should be damn good.
If some one is super clear that medicine is career path and if you will/have BS/MD admission take time to think thru and decide based on the individual situation. Few points noted from the various pre-med threads.
- Unlike any other education, only medicine (MD) is a consistent and controlled form of education across all colleges in US (MD education). It explains and supports why top and bottom college admission rate is almost so low (unlike any other higher education admission rate)
- Very important part is where some one does the residency (if not more, but in equal measure to where you do MD). 3.BS/MD only students in HS12 can apply (smaller pool and 3-5% of total MD seats) . But for MD any undergraduate can apply. (of course larger pool and 95+ % MD seats)
- Each BS/MD program has its own flavor. So review your specific program and your specific situation to make the final call. For example, no need to take MCAT alone, may not be considered as a significant. Because in medicine profession, taking tests is a routine activity, with various USMLE tests, board tests etc which is more grueling than MCAT. MCAT is a practice test!
UConn bs/md emails came out today
I consider the most important factor to keep in mind with the applicants vs admissions statistics is how much your residency contributes to your admission.
Texas has close to 1900 seats but they reserve 90% of them for residents. California, with a much larger population has around 2300(?) or so seats but they have about 65% or so residents getting in which effectively makes it much much more competitive in California compared to Texas. I know Cal residents who got into top 10 medical schools outside of California who were not even given interviews in Cal state schools. It is an incredible disparity in terms of merit required to be admitted to a medical school when one considers what it takes to get into “A” medical school strictly based on one’s residency and also the choices one is forced to make in terms of applications and cost of attending a medical school.
Unlike undergrad apps with a deadline, the most important thing for medical school applications is applying as soon as it opens or as soon as you can get everything in. The admissions are limited very much by the total number of their interview slots and they cover 4-6 months at most schools. So applying in October is pretty much not a worthwhile effort even if the deadline says November 1st.