Not even close to comparable. Barnard students just have to walk across the street. No permission required.
Harvard/MIT is one of those things that sound good on paper, but is a logistically nightmare in actuality with each college on a different academic calendar, class schedule, etc.
Great question! I think this is very dependent upon the school and the counselor. Our large public high school doesnāt do outreach and also doesnāt do a great job of managing and updating naviance. Itās a bummer.
At our public high school, I believe counselors would only know if students have been accepted/waitlisted/denied, if a student told them.
The school does have a College Rejection Letter Wall where students can submit their rejection letters. Iām not clear on exactly how it works thoughā¦
Georgiaās population is about 10 million and growing fast. Alabamaās is less than 5 million.
Without looking them all up, Iād guess that both states have similar numbers of state universities. So it stands to reason that Georgia is going to have 2x the demand and pressure from in-state students compared to Alabama, and that Alabama is going to have to cast a wider net to fill out itās freshman classes.
In the vein of the previous āpre-medā discussion, I had breakfast with someone who said his son had a 3.97 GPA and was turned down to some in-state med schools and is on the wait list for one. He blamed the lack of admission on preference for diversity candidates. Oh boyā¦
A very high GPA isnāt enough for med school.
Apply broadly. [Not sure if DS only went to select schools or to 20+.]
Make sure you nail the MCAT. [Not sure how this score compared against other candidates.]
Own your result.
@tristatecoog I hope his kid gets off the waitlist. 3.97 GPA is a great accomplishment, but youāre absolutely right on MCAT. Even those two arenāt enough. Thereās ECās, clinical volunteer hours, job shadowing, and maybe research. You really have to demonstrate and convey your passion when being interviewed, as well as demonstrate maturity on how they approach the questions/answers. I have a friend on an admission panel so I hear general comments and theyāre enough for me to realize that itās like this yearās undergrad college admission process for T30 schools but 100x more demanding. The LORs are really important. Much more than undergrad. Iāve helped a kid with her secondary essays and I donāt think theyāre that drastically different or surprising vs what weāve seen in college supplementals. It seems like the interview is also a huge make or break deal.
I read that even when they get to this point in the journey, thereās a significant amount who get denied. Every step that the high school kids go through when they apply to college is just so amplified and so critical in Med School (and Iām totally simplifying this).
My boys go to a Bay Area public school. The counselors do get reports from some schools at least. The counselor mention to me in passing that the Dartmouth one was grim.
Part of the checklist to attend graduation at our local public, along with turning in locker keys, books, equipment, athletic uniforms, etc., students must update their Naviance.
We might get an in-person graduation. Got a parent survey asking if we would attend. I hope they will at least give parents and grandparents a chance. Itās been a year.
S21ās last swim meet is this Friday and we canāt even attend. I told my son Iām going to bring a tall ladder and park myself outside in the parking lot area so I canāt watch. Those 22-23 seconds for the 50M free can go fast. I told him to ask for the 500M so I can have more time to see him but he said he didnāt want to die (not his event).
Oh geez, people really need to stop believing that URM are just given admissions without qualifications. We get rejected and WL just like everyone else.
I think people donāt realize that minorities they see for the most part are over represented minorities and they donāt get any extra points for being minorities in the whole scheme of admissions. Same rat race. If we break down % of URM at places like med school, itās sooooo dang low of a number that Iām pretty sure they didnāt oust the 30% who got rejected from anywhere. Imagine 30% URM. I canāt find in what world in the US URM makes up 5-10%, on paper, let alone visibly observable.
Sigh. White woman, faux blonde hair until Covid, here. Married to a doctor. We are privileged. We are always given the benefit of the doubt. We are always treated nicely and respectfully (until the time I put a Pete magnet on my car in 2019).
Anyhow.
I canāt get over how many people blame POC for the majority group and their kids not getting (fill in the blank) job, internship, college admissions spot, scholarship, etc.
Itās ridiculous.
What is happening is competition. Too few college spots or jobs for those who need them or want them. Thus, people who may feel entitled to them donāt realize that there are LOTS of people who have similar or greater accomplishments. Not everyone is top dog. Period. Itās not bc of POC you donāt get what you feel you have ādeservedā.
Just a sample of medical school class info.
Harvard Medical School:
Yale Medical School:
27%ā identify as being part of a group traditionally underrepresented in medicine.
Stanford Medical School:
38% Under-Represented inMedicine
12 Hispanic/Latino(Mex Amer/Chic/Other Latino)
20 Black/ African American
2 Multiple Race URM (American Indian and Hispanic/ Latino; Black/ African American
UPenn Medical School
60% Black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American
Jefferson Medical College
And women outnumber men as well at all of these schools.
No medical school is going to let in a POC or any other minority just because theyāre a minority. The future Drs these schools take are without a doubt going to be the best and the brightest of the bunch. Not a bunch of kids taken just to meet some arbitrary ratio of diversity in someoneās mind. You said it perfectly. Itās called competition.
When my ex sister in law went to medical school at Tufts (weāre turning 53) I believe her class was 50% female. When my ex husband went to medical school (heās turning 50) his class was I think 60% female but 50% minority or the other way around, 60% minority and 50% female. It was huge percentages both ways. The majority of the minorities were Asian in both cases (hers and his and the women) but no one really thought about it or them that way. In residency he had all different genders and races in his program as well.
Agree with you that people have to work for what they get/earn. There may be some advantages in some instances we all know that, but that only gives someone a slight edge (ie legacy, being a female applicant to a place that has mainly men and vice versa, stuff like that) but we all make our own successes, etc. Itās not a given and there are plenty of POC and other minorities sitting in the same boat as many privileged white kids that didnāt get into the college of their dreams. They will all survive and itās not such a bad thing to always get what you want or expect. Life isnāt perfect and rejection sucks but it is also a part of life!
Thatās helpful data. You still have the majority being the majority. Thereās a small handful of Asian ethnicities that are considered URM, but the majority are ORM. AAMC published numbers recently and Iāll try to find the link, but it has t broader snapshot of the US Medical School landscape across all the schools.
I think one of the probs with med school is that we have more people wanting to be doctors (and we need more doctors), but the residency spots are capped since theyāre dictated by Medicare and that number hasnāt changed since probably the '80ās. Thereās just a bottleneck at every step and the competition is fierce. If we thought T20 schools are tough for undergrad admission, I bet it is so much tougher for med school and then residency spots. The education industrial complex is one that needs to be reviewed but at this rate, the funnel just gets smaller and it creates so much resentment and blame-placing and division when the students are the pawns. here.
The guy who bemoaned his sonās predicament was referring to URMs. This was a particularly striking comment because we were a group of white males at a country club. It just struck me today because thereās so much that goes into admission beyond grades and letās stop blaming others for our woes.
In the mean time several of my non Indian friends tell me that my daughter must be getting easy admission as she is not white. We are considered ORM by admissions and others think we are URM. I donāt even explain it anymore.
@tristatecoog Yikes! The setting you just painted for us! This type of thinking gets us to division and resentment. Itās really classic!
@anaray Hugs. Parent of East/SE Asian male here for 2021 season. I feel your pain, my South Asian pal! I so feel your pain.
There are many residencies that go infilled every year, so thatās not the issue. The issue is that many Doctors donāt match in the residencies they want like specialties like surgical ones because those are the hardest to get and truly only the cream of the crop get those. The primary care programs tend to go unfilled and many med students get stuck going into those programs/residencies even though they arenāt what they want. The pay is also not as high in those fields so for the Drs who take out loans etc these are physicians that will never be making a ton of money. Sadly many people have this idea that all adds make a lot of money when they donāt just like some people think all lawyers make a lot of many when they donāt, which also in the past is what caused so many people to go to law school and saturate that market and then never be able to find a job or a decent one. Unfortunately I know quite a few of those.