“The 25 Best Colleges for Pre-Meds”
With respect to evaluating opportunities for pre-med students, portions of the methodology seem substantive.
Sorry but have to disagree. Yes, some of the standards seem objective, but many seem pretty pointless-e.g. whether a school is “popular” with pre-meds isn’t reflective of anything objective. And the list itself covers pretty much every top school in the country, with a few exceptions. And those exceptions are pretty significant-not a single public college/university makes the list. So if you attend any of the UCs or Virginia or Michigan, forget medical school.
And a list which has Harvard as #23, just ahead of Centre College? Of course, Centre claims “Recent first-time applicants achieved an 83% acceptance rate, among the highest in the nation.”
Sounds great, right? But Centre doesn’t define how it got to first time applicants, and how it determined this was “among the highest in the nation.” They don’t state anywhere on their website how many started as pre-meds and how many actually apply? So are they brutally weeding out pre-meds, or do all who start as pre-meds go on to medical school(or at least 83% of them?).
In the comments section, someone pointed out that there are several schools on the list known for grade deflation. I found the response by The Savvy Premed quite interesting:
“Grade deflation is really hard to measure. In general, I agree that a student should be wary of selecting a college known for grade deflation. However, many med schools adjust GPA’s for the difficulty of the school…”
This is the first time someone definitively stated that “many med schools adjust GPA’s for the difficulty of the school.” Hope this to be true as my son’s school is well known for grade deflation and is high up on the list…
Best wishes to your son, but there is no evidence that “many med schools adjust GPA’s(sic) for the difficulty of the school.” It’s best to keep in mind that this is one opinion, not based on any objective data.
Most important line from the above site:
“And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter below to access the full list of schools!”
It’s also telling that “savvy premed” answers questions in the first person…again, the whole website is one person’s opinion, with little or no objective data.
@crankyoldman’s two posts are spot on. It’s something that needs to root itself in the minds of all these “aspirants.”
The more usual phrasing is “xx% of med school applicants got into one of their top 3 choices.” No, that does not tell you how many applied to undergrad wanting to later go to med school. It doesn’t tell the vast and brutal weeding, to get to that much smaller number of “applicants.”
And unfortunately, your record when you apply IS your record. No guessing, adjusting or “maybe ifs.”
But you do not need a 4.0 to be viable. You do need a threshhold gpa, the right pre-med courses, high MCAT results, the right experiences, and, very important, enthusiastic support from the UG committee.
Addressing the comment above (#1), Centre reached its position irrespective of any claims regarding medical school acceptance rates. The linked site entirely disregarded that aspect in its methodology (for all schools).
Well from this list CalTech is definitely not a desirable pre med school.
I have no experience with med school applications but that surprised me as well so I googled “ucberkeley undergraduate acceptance to medical school” and this is what popped up:
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Link not allowed, so I deleted. The article is entitled “3 Reasons Many UC Pre-meds Regret Their College Choice” which you can find via Google.
Among their points is that UCB, with 587 medical school applications per year
has only two dedicated pre-med advisors. UCSD, with 571 applicants, has one.
That means that a small school like Bowdoin or Bates, with fewer graduating seniors than UCB or UCSD has actual med school applicants has as many dedicated medical school advisors. Getting an appointment seems to be much easier. If you look at UCB’s med advising site it shows that they have half hour 1:1 meetings with an advisor but they’re not available to first year students and they caution,
Bowdoin’s med advising system seems comparatively easy to access. They offer 1:1 advising as 50 minute intro meetings and 50 minute extended meetings, both first available a week from now or 25 minute standard meetings, first available this week.
These numbers are several years out-of-date.
AMCAS has data from the most recent cycle here: https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/report/facts
(There is a separate database of undergrads that supply 5 applicants/year. It’s a subscription only database and requires a med school email account to access.)
BTW, the number applicants produced annually includes both current undergrads and alumni applicants. AMCAS only captures the applicant’s baccalaureate-granting institution of record… The alumni may be several years (even decades) out from graduation, may have earned graduate degrees or attended post-bacc programs, may have completed the bulk of their education at one school but received their degree from another—there’s no way to tell.
Also be aware that less than 40% of matriculating med students move directly from undergrad to med school. Most take one or more gap years. And 1 in 6 med school matriculants have been out of undergrad for 4 to 10 years.
(Data from the 2018 MSQ.)
RE: HP advisors
I wouldn’t consider easy access to premed advisors necessarily a major plus for an undergrad.
Since there are zero training requirements for health profession advisors, many are truly horrendous and often give spectacularly bad advice. (There 's a recurring theme offered by actual med school adcomms over on SDN: the road to med school is littered with the corpses of students who listened to their pre-med advisors.)
Additionally, very few, if any HP advisors, have much experience with the vast majority of med schools. They may know something about one or two med schools if their school serves as “feeder” to particular med school or if there is med school associated with the undergrad… But med schools outside their locale? Or outside the school(s) the undergrad typically sends students to? Hopeless. The best they can do is point the student at MSAR.
Also HP advisors have no idea what to with non-traditional applicants or students whose journey to medicine has been atypical.
The truth is , even at smaller schools, student get very little guidance beyond generic guidelines: fulfill the pre-reqs, study hard for the MCAT, make sure you have appropriate ECs, make sure you have strong LORs from 2 science and 1 non-science professor. All information readily available on line.
Students don’t receive guidance about what schools to apply or how many.
I wouldn’t say Stanford has any real premed advising.
This is simply a made up statement. If someone believes this, I own the Brooklyn bridge that is weighing heavily on my portfolio and I would be glad to sell.
I agree that med schools probably don’t make official institutional adjustments for UG difficulty, but from one of my past lives in the admissions office of a selective UG I can understand how a reader’s own biases about a particular school might have some affect on their academic assessment of an applicant. We, and I assume most med schools, didn’t look at an applicants GPA as a raw number, but rather gave a 1-7 score based on their transcript (rigor, and all that…). Based on my experience (and what I heard from others in the office) I formed opinions of which schools were a little more lenient on their grading, and conversely even got to know the names of which APUSH and TOK teachers tended to be tough graders (to put it nicely) - and I suppose that probably nudged my assessment a point in one direction or another. I’ll bet some med school readers do the same. And, yes I know this doesn’t prove anything by itself, but the average GPA of an admitted MD student from Princeton and Swarthmore (which both are in the top 5 for MD admit rates) does happen to be a full point below that of the national average…
I’ll admit I’m confused by your post:
" …the average GPA of an admitted MD student from Princeton and Swarthmore (which both are in the top 5 for MD admit rates) does happen to be a full point below that of the national average…"
Do you mean a tenth of a point? And where is the data to support this assertion? And note that in Swarthmore’s case, according to their numbers, the successful applicants’ MCAT mean was much higher than the national admitted average.
And even in that case, those numbers don’t tell the whole story-as in, how many started as pre-meds, and how many actually applied?
In Swarthmore’s case, it’s claiming that 83% of its applicants were admitted the most recent cycle, but also states that “between 20-25%” of freshmen" in an incoming class expressed pre-med interest. According to their common data set, there were 414 freshmen, so approximately 100 would have been pre-med. For the most recent application cycle, a total of 29 seniors/alumni applied to medical school, of whom 24 were accepted-so using that data loosely, a Swarthmore freshman pre-med has a 24% chance of getting into medical school.
https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/institutional-research/MedSchool.pdf
While many assert that medical schools give bonus points for applicants from selective colleges, there is no information from any medical schools confirming this.
There’s a lot of opinion and fluff, but the best chance of medical school is from your own home state, because of residency preference. Rankings, especially for “premed” are pretty much worthless, because medical schools look at grades and MCAT scores far and above anything else.
I totally agree. My Swarthmore/Princeton comment was meant to be an interesting aside, not evidence to the contrary of your statement. I am glad you posted that Swarthmore med school link. That data actually comes from AAMC (bravo to Swat for being one of the few colleges showing that instead of some alumni survey), and when they post the latest revision it will show that their admit rate stayed almost the same for 2018-19 while the number of applicants is back up to the 15-16 level. It will also show a big leap in the mean MCAT for applicants from Swat to above the national average for accepted MD student (which helps explain their high MD admit rate). And yes, I meant a tenth of a point on the GPA thing.
I will point out the both Princeton and Swarthmore use committee letters to artificially limit the number of students the schools allow to apply thus keeping their med school acceptance rates high.
This might be one of the only times I will ever even mildly disagree with WOWM, but I’m not sure I’d characterize the committee letter process at either of those particular schools as “artificially” limiting their med school applicants. Both are very clear about what it takes to get a letter all the way through their advising process (meeting deadlines, taking required classes, etc.) . If you can’t fulfill those requirements, maybe you shouldn’t be applying to med school, and a pre-med committee certainly isn’t going to write a very glowing letter about you anyway. However, I am concerned that students from other colleges have complained that they were never informed about committee letter criteria until they were “ambushed” when it came time to apply. And, I definitely agree with WOWM that the committee letter process can affect the number of applicants from a college, is something that an aspiring premed student should consider when applying to a particular school, and is one of the reasons you shouldn’t base your college pick purely on its MD admit rate.
As the parent of a kid at Centre who was pre-med I can tell you they have a tremendous number of resources to help students get into med school. Due to the rigor of the academics, there are some med schools that give Centre grads a bump due to the notorious grade deflation at the school, and they are very diligent with providing research and internship opportunities within the medical field. I don’t know how they arrived at their numbers or if it’s accurate or not, but I can tell you there is a concerted effort to help the kids navigate the med school admission process.
There are a number of colleges that similarly mentor kids through the process. They have the rep of putting forth solid med students.
It’s not so much about accepting grade deflation as the quality of the applicants from certain colleges and recognizing their success history through med school.
In that respect, a prestige UG is not necessary.
No doubt Centre is a fine college, but can’t find, anywhere, evidence that its applicants receive a “bump due to the notorious grade deflation” from “some medical schools.”
But if there is evidence, please provide.
And it seems that everyone attends a college-or is in a major-which is “notorious” for grade deflation.
I don’t have the “evidence” – I am simply sharing that I was satisfied with the anecdotal stories, the resources they offered her and looking at the med school admissions stats when helping guide my daughter on her college decision. And in the end, it’s up to the individual kid vs the school. Out of five siblings, I am the only one not an M.D. with numerous nieces and nephews either MDs or currently in med school. The undergrad school they attended and med schools they were accepted to were as varied as you can imagine.